Uber riders in Egypt will stop struggling with drivers’ hatred for credit payments: Our friends at HSBC have teamed up with Uber Egypt to roll out “on-demand cashouts” for Uber drivers, according to a statement (pdf). The digital solution, named Flexpay, allows drivers outside the banking system to access their full earnings on-demand, the statement notes. Flexpay will help drivers save around 5% of their earnings by providing them with a cost effective way to receive their earnings, the statement says. Digital payments through Uber have been a thorny issue for drivers, who were previously unable to instantly receive earnings for completed rides where the customer paid through a debit or credit card, and led to many drivers to decline noncash rides.

More countries want to co-host the 2030 World Cup: Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay have officially announced a joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup, to bring the tournament back to “where football was born” — alluding to the first-ever World Cup being held in 1930 in Uruguay’s Montevideo, Reuters reports. Bolivia will also be invited to join “this dream,” Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez said on Twitter. “The 2030 World Cup is not just another World Cup; it deserves a celebration with recognition for 100 years,” Alejandro Dominguez, president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) said. Although not unheard of, multiple nations hosting the tournament is still unusual. Mexico, the US, and Canada will jointly host the next World Cup in 2026.

KSA + Egypt + Greece bid? Saudi Arabia reportedly offered to fully underwrite the costs for new stadiums in Greece and Egypt, if they agree to a joint bid for the 2030 World Cup, reported the Daily Mail. All the KSA wants in return is to host three-quarters of the matches. The suggestion reportedly came during private conversations between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, last year — however, there’s no indication that any offers have been accepted.

We said it first: Sports Minister Ashraf Sobhy said in November that Egypt is working on joining a bid with Saudi Arabia and Greece to host the World Cup in 2030 or 2034, and Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Al Khateeb echoed similar statements last year, saying it would be a “successful” bid if selected.

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Move over, ChatGPT? Google plans to launch a new AI tool, Bard, to trusted testers, with a public roll-out expected in the coming weeks, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post. “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information,” Pichai said. He stressed Google’s progress in AI as his company makes efforts to catch up with the success of Open AI’s ChatGPT.

But the chatbot competition is heating up, as Microsoft unveiled a “smarter” ChatGPT, PC Mag reported. An enhanced version of the popular chatbot will run on the Bing search engine and Edge browser as a limited preview, CEO Satya Nadella announced at a special event yesterday at Microsoft headquarters. Featuring improved summarization capabilities, personalized recommendations and answers to complex questions about today's topics, Nadella called it your personal “co-pilot” for everyday needs: making life easier by delivering instant results in intelligently crafted lists and summaries, rather than forcing you to scroll through endless pages of search results.

And China will soon have its own chatbot, too: China is joining the race to integrate an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT to its search engine (Baidu), a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The “unnamed” chatbot — which will deliver conversation-style search results similar to ChatGPT — will roll out to the public next month.