Inside the AI chip race | Cyber Monday expected to hit record $12B

Inside the AI chip race: Amazon’s custom silicon, including its chips for advanced artificial intelligence, will be in the spotlight this week as Amazon Web Services tries to stake its claim in the new era of AI at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. GeekWire sat down with some of the company’s key engineering leaders (including Nafea Bshara, left, and James Hamilton, pictured above) to learn more about Amazon’s silicon strategy, revisiting the site of a fateful happy hour in Seattle a decade ago that altered the company’s approach. Read more.

From streaming to spreadsheets: Amazon WorkSpaces, the company’s virtual desktop service, just unveiled its first device for end users, a $195 product created by directly repurposing the hardware design for Amazon’s Fire TV Cube.

Huge spending expected on Cyber Monday: The traditional online shopping holiday could be the biggest in U.S. history, with more than $12 billion in sales.

The OpenAI drama highlights a debate of science-fiction proportions: How risky is it to accelerate the push toward powerful AI tools like ChatGPT and its successors? Could artificial intelligence become conscious and create its own agenda? Here’s what researchers say about the issue. 

Hot Links: 

• What happened to Amazon’s healthcare ambitions? Having spent almost a decade and billions of dollars trying to re-invent the industry, the company has settled on a decidedly traditional approach. (Bloomberg)

• ZeroAvia, a climate friendly aviation startup with an R&D center in the Seattle area, announced a $116 million Series C funding round. The 11 investors included the Pacific Northwest's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Alaska Airlines and Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund. (ZeroAvia)

• We got a laugh out of the “make it more” trend on ChatGPT. Check out what happened to a bowl of ramen and a goose. (X)

• The latest “Acquired” podcast episode is a deep dive into Visa, one of the most “incredible and incredibly durable business franchises of all-time.” (Acquired)