PM — Public sector workers are getting a week off for Eid

We can hear the screams of joy of every public sector worker, ladies and gentlemen, as the Madbouly cabinet announced that all of next week will be a holiday in observance of Eid El Adha. In a statement released right on dispatch, the government announced that state bureaucrats will take off from Saturday, 9 July to Thursday, 14 July.

What about the private sector? We should be hearing from the EGX and central bank in the coming days on what the holiday landscape looks like for the private sector. Now, on to more depressing matters…

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THE BIG STORY TODAY- The slide of the EGX continues, with the main index falling 3.6% at today’s close. With a turnover of EGP 639.5 mn (22.5% below the 90-day average), the index is down 27.3% YTD.

Almost everyone is in the red, but today’s worst performers were: Ibnsina Pharma (-15.4%), Credit Agricole Egypt (-10.7%) and MM Group (-10.3%).

HAPPENING NOW- The House of Representatives approved bill to extend the Tax Dispute Resolution Act once again in a plenary session today, as the legislature looks to sprint through its agenda ahead of the start of a potential summer recess tomorrow.

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• Expedition Investments submits bid for a stake in Domty: Expedition Investments has submitted an official bid to acquire a 34% stake in cheesemaker Domty, offering to purchase up to 96.2 mn shares for EGP 5 a piece in a mandatory tender offer.
• Intercap Capital to set up a USD 30 mn VC fund: Investment banking firm Intercap Capital is working on setting up a USD 30 mn fund for investing in tech startups, with an eye to complete its first USD 10 mn close in early 2023.
• NBFS players are filling a gap in tuition financing: As the banking sector faces rising interest rates and a slump in demand for tuition loans, non-banking financial services players are stepping up their game with more popular alternatives.

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FOR TOMORROW-

Public consultations on the state’s privatization plan resume tomorrow with the transport sector taking center stage. Sunday saw the automotive and engineering industry players discuss the state ownership policy document that outlines its privatization plans. Every Sunday and Tuesday sees workshops on how privatization plans will affect specific industries. You can find more details on the schedule of the meetings here.

Our national dialogue kicks off this week, with Diaa Rashwan, the general coordinator of the dialogue, convening the first meeting of the 19-member board of trustees organizing the event tomorrow, according to the State Information Service. Board members include lawmakers, journalists, and political and economic experts. President El Sisi also signaled the beginning of the dialogue in a report picked up by Al Oula (watch, runtime: 2:18).

Need a refresher on the national dialogue? You can read our explainer here.

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The fuel pricing committee could meet this week to review fuel prices for the third quarter.

Other news triggers to keep an eye on this month:

• PMI: Data measuring activity in Egypt’s non-oil private sector will drop on Wednesday, 6 July.
• Foreign reserves: Foreign reserves figures will be out sometime this week.
• Inflation: Inflation data for June will land on Sunday, 10 July.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect a daytime high of 39°C tomorrow in Cairo, before the mercury falls to 23°C at night, according to our favorite weather app.

Is the global chip shortage finally over? The global chip shortage — one of the biggest legacy pains of the covid-era — may be subsiding, as a number of major manufacturers, including Intel and Nvidia are warning of “rockier months ahead,” with inflation being cited as a major contributor to declining demand. Intel, whose 1Q2022 revenues fell 7% y-o-y, is expecting a tougher 2H2022, with CFO David Zinsner declaring that the rest of the year will get “a lot noisier,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “The industry demand environment has weakened,” with PC and smartphone sales declining, Micron Technologies CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a sales outlook statement.

The pendulum swings: It is perhaps ironic that the boom chipmakers have seen since the pandemic began is now coming back to bite them, as the resulting inflation has slowed down the sales of electronics. The decline in consumer electronics spending came in hand-in-hand with a decline in crypto as a result of global economic turbulence after two years of solid growth.

Could we be getting a reprieve? Egypt had been hit hard by the global chip shortage, with prices here jumping 50% y-o-y in 2021. With a number of industries (particularly automotive) being hard hit, this “rocky” 2H2022 for chip manufacturers may prove a welcome lifeline.

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China’s rainy season does wonders for fossil fuel energy usage: In an accidental “W” for the environment, China’s extended rainy season this year may have depressed demand for fossil-fuel energy this year, as the country increases its dependence on hydropower. Hydropower generation until the end of May jumped 18% y-o-y, thanks to rainwater filling reservoirs along the Yangtze River to elevate production, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration cited by Bloomberg. The cooling summer temperatures led to a drop in consumption of 15% in May, saving around 4.6 mn tons of coal.

NASA is going back to the moon: NASA’s microwave oven-sized Capstone satellite successfully broke from its orbit around the Earth yesterday heading towards the moon, AP reported. It will take the satellite, launched last week, about four months to reach the moon. If successful, the satellite would deliver important information ahead of the space agency’s bid to send astronauts back to the moon.

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Get a tour of the world’s national parks — with Obama as your guide: Our Great National Parks is a five-part Netflix documentary series hosted and produced by former US President Barack Obama. The series highlights a few of world’s most astounding national parks, spanning five continents, and the wildlife that reside there, stressing the importance of the synergy between humans, plants, and animals.The show opens with Obama’s home state of Hawaii, then takes us through a journey of some of the countries where he grew up. Later episodes he visits parks in Indonesia and in Kenya, his father’s birthplace.The visuals are breathtaking, with alternating overhead drone footage and close-ups of the animals. The former POTUS makes an on-camera appearance at the beginning of each episode and provides a calm and soothing yet engaging narration throughout.

⚽ No Afcon in 2023: Next June’s Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Ivory Coast has been postponed until winter 2024, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Patrice Motsepe said in a statement. The tournament, which was supposed to take place from 23 June to 23 July, will now take place in January and February 2024 due to the rainy season in Ivory Coast.

But we’re getting the African Super League: The African Super League will kick off in August 2023 with a prize money of USD 100 mn, Motsepe said. CAF is “engaging with stakeholders over the next few weeks to discuss the mechanics of the tournament”. There’s still no word on which clubs will be participating from how many countries. Announced last year, the league was meant to be CAF’s answer to the African Champions League, though we still have no idea how.

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Don’t miss Ein L Aql, a collaborative project between Alexandrian musician and composer Bassem Diaa and music producer Amro Zidan. Their album titled ‘El A’sara’ debuts at Makan tonight from 8pm to 10pm.

It’s salsa night at Cairo Jazz Club tonight every other Monday, with one-hour lessons start at 8pm. Our friend and salsa aficionado Rasha Sadek leads the lessons along with Salah Eissa from Soul Motion Dance Studio.

Catch theater troupe Regency’s take on ‘Carmen’ tonight at 7pm at El Sawy Culturewheel in Zamalek.

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Acting as therapy — the Viola Davis: To anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock in the past 10 years, Viola Davis — the 2016 Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards — is a mainstay of critically acclaimed television and acting projects (there’s a whole Wikipedia page just on her awards and nominations). Fans of her work (particularly Doubt, Widows, the Help) should recognize themes of poverty, gender and racial abuse that are prevalent in her work. That is no coincidence, as her autobiography Finding Me: A Memoir shows how she channeled those similar experiences from her traumatic past into her work as a form of therapy. In it, Davis narrates how the choice of becoming an actress had the power to heal the broken. “All that was inside me that I couldn’t work out in my life, I could channel it all in my work and no one would be the wiser,” she adds. All in all, it paints a nuanced picture of one of the best thespians of our day.

A new AI program is creating a buzz within the art world: Think of a phrase. Any phrase. Any collection of colorful, crazy concepts that you like. Research laboratory OpenAI’s new artificial intelligence program will create an art piece in less than a minute.

Introducing DALL-E 2: The DALL-E 2 program was created by sourcing an enormous amount of images and adding detailed captions to them, allowing the program to pull up and combine elements of images based on the inputs provided.

The concept is simple enough: You type in a phrase or a group of words into a search box, and the program creates a series of images from what you described. The full program still hasn’t been released to the public, but several people have been given access to experiment with it, and a simplified version, DALL-E mini, is accessible to all. Adobe Research’s Aaron Hertzmann has an article on his blog dedicated to all the artwork he has created from DALL-E 2, trying out different styles and techniques such as images in the styles of contemporary and modern artists, architectural images, classic computer graphics imagery, and portraits.

Enterprise gave it a try: We had some fun with DALL-E mini and typed “flower ducks” into the search box. Around 27 seconds we were met with nine pictures of ducks that seem to have taken on flower-like qualities in their coloring and texture. We weren’t super impressed with the outcome as the ducks’ appearance turned somewhat demented, but maybe our search phrase just wasn’t up to par. How about “coyote in a kilt”? Or “Donald Trump ballerina”? No, these are just terrifying.

Not everyone is a fan: CNet puts it best, calling the creations “nightmare fuel” — which we don’t think is overly harsh considering what we managed to generate. That being said, DALL-E mini is apparently a poor imitation of the all-powerful DALL-E 2, which seems to be far more sophisticated in the art it generates.

But DALL-E 2 is opening new conversations around how we define art: Can we consider algorithmically-generated images works of art? The fact that “creative AI” is receiving pushback from artists and audiences is “a sign of the power and potential of the new medium,” Stephen Marche writes for Lit Hub. “The most exciting promise of creative AI is that it runs in complete opposition to the overarching value that defines contemporary art: Identity. The practice itself removes identity from the equation,” he writes. Instead, creative AI is a recombination and reframing of other identities, with the possibility of choosing old artists or artistic styles and allowing technology to reimagine them based on any random phrase you come up with. “The power of creative AI is its strange mixture of human and other. The revelation of the medium will be the exploitation of that fact.”

It also raises questions about what it means to be creative when technology now has the ability to automate the process: The quality and realism of images created by DALL-E 2’s software is giving digital art a run for its money. For those who aren’t gifted with artistic ability but would like to see a certain image, these softwares can now pump out visually appealing results within seconds — a much faster process than hiring a human artist.

The controversy surrounding AI art is reminiscent of the outcry when photography emerged as a medium: When the first camera was created in the 1800s, it threatened everything the world believed about art. At a time where it was up to artists to capture the essence of a person in a portrait — a process that could take hours or days at times — the technology behind photography seemed to threaten their livelihood and the entire existence of art. Why paint a landscape when you can just take a photo of it? Until today, debates continue about whether photography can be considered art. Nonetheless, even with cameras being more accessible than ever, the continued importance of human-made art remains a testament to its necessity as a form of expression.

But in the same way as photography, creative AI should have a different approach to its development, argues Marche. AI should not be used to create art that people could make otherwise is the first point he makes. Meanwhile, creative AI should develop as more than just a showcase of the abilities of new technology. Creative AI could help the graphic design industry by offering tools that allow you to move things around in an image or conjure up an extra element — options that DALL-E 2 is working to provide, according to its website.

There’s also an ethical side to the equation — one which Google is currently working on: Since these AI ‘artists’ are designed by people, the risk that human biases creep into the algorithm are real. Google is trying to jump on the AI art trend with these concerns in mind, recently announcing Imagen — a text-to-image program “with an unprecedented degree of photorealism and a deep level of language understanding.” All the images the program produces have no people in them in case it reflects a Western bias and viewpoint. For this reason also, Imagen is not available for public use at the time, but this could change as the researchers develop more ethical code. “In future work, we will explore a framework for responsible externalization that balances the value of external auditing with the risks of unrestricted open-access,” Google researchers said in a paper (pdf).