No doubt about it, the whole world had its eyes on artificial intelligence in 2023.

The groundbreaking tech touched every industry, from agriculture and medicine to retail, food, and finance. We feared its impact on our livelihoods and revered its ability to generate images, text, sound, and data as well as — or better than — any human.

Let’s take a look back through the key numbers:

1m+: The number of people who used ChatGPT within its first five days. Now, a year after the generative AI chatbot’s launch, 100m people use ChatGPT weekly and 2m+ developers are using the company’s API, including most Fortune 500 companies.

$1T: The market cap Nvidia hit back in May (it currently stands at $1.2T). The chipmaker’s meteoric rise was largely fueled by tech companies of all sizes racing to add AI features to their products.

15: The number of tech companies that have agreed to abide by the Biden administration’s AI safeguards. The voluntary commitments, made by many of the major AI companies, aim to advance the technology in a safer, more secure way.

$10B: The amount of money Microsoft pledged to invest in OpenAI over the coming years, on top of the $3B it had previously invested, as the tech giant looks to keep up with AI.

$113.5m: The seed round raised by AI startup Mistral, just one month after launching and before its first product was even developed. It was the biggest seed round ever recorded in Europe.

$6B: The combined investment made by Amazon and Google in AI company Anthropic, OpenAI’s main competitor.

4.4%: The estimated adoption rate for businesses using AI to produce goods or services. While ~50% of S&P 500 earnings calls have referenced AI since May — on par with mentions of interest rates and the Federal Reserve — the hype isn’t trickling down to everyday use cases.

4: The number of days it took Sam Altman to get fired and rehired as CEO of OpenAI.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you feel the economy is doing? If you answered anywhere between 1 and 10, yep, you’re correct.

The year in economic data was a roller coaster ride — and a Rorschach test. You could find reasons to say the sky was falling; you could find reasons to say things were better than ever.

The narratives behind year-end economic headlines tend to lean toward the latter’s rosier outlook:

• The Congressional Budget Office is confident the US economy remains on track to avoid a recession next year.
• The Federal Reserve has held interest rates steady as inflation normalizes.
• Employers added 199k jobs in November, with the unemployment rate at just 3.7%.

That’s all great, right?

For now, yeah. But broad economic uncertainty still reigned supreme in 2023.

For every good number, many people were left waiting for a different shoe to drop. Case in point, here’s the flip side of the numbers above:

• The CBO sees unemployment rising to 4.7% by the end of next year.
• The New York Fed president called the idea of lowering rates “premature.”
• A survey of execs found 38% expecting more layoffs in 2024, with 50%+ anticipating, at minimum, hiring freezes.

So, which set is correct?

Both, ultimately. This duality is how “vibecession” — generally meaning pessimism about the economy, no matter how the economy’s actually performing — rose to prominence this year.

Just look at University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, a popular gauge of those public economic vibes:

• The measure started at a modest 64.9 in January.
• … but things soured by May, when it bottomed out at 59.0.
• … then it took off again, peaking at 71.5 in July.
• … just to tumble back down to 61.3 in November.
• … only to rebound once more in December, up to 69.4.

The fact that we’ve ended on a high note says a lot. Lest we forget, 2023 was the biggest-ever year for US bank failures, as banks with $548.7B in combined assets folded.

Recency bias can be a beautiful thing, it turns out: Since most of that damage was done in the year’s first half, everyone’s apparently feeling fine about all that bank drama now.

It’s all in the (very recent) past, right?… Right?

~11k: How many washboards the Columbus Washboard Co. still sells annually, down from 1m+ in the 1940s. Sales jumped 57% in 2020 during the pandemic, but it’s not all about doing laundry — percussionists make up ~40% of sales.

$1.3B+: How much Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” grossed in NYC alone during its legendary 35-year run on Broadway. The show closed due to unsustainable operating costs of $950k/week.

$51: Average amount workers who returned to the office this year spent per day on things like coffee, meals, parking, and commuting. This figure increased to $71 for those who needed pet care, and dropped to $15 for those who worked from home.

383.2B+: Possible latte variations Starbucks can make. Drink customizations add $1B+ in revenue annually — but workers loathe them and customers hate the wait times. Consequently, Starbucks has invested billions toward finding ways to churn them out faster, including switching to smaller, easier-to-scoop ice cubes.

1.3m+: Players who completed Larian Studios’ “Baldur’s Gate III,” winner of The Game Awards’s 2023 game of the year. Most importantly, players pet Scratch, the RPG’s lovable dog and certified good boy, 48.5m times.

237: For those who enjoy complaining about “kids these days” and their smartphones, that’s the median number of notifications US teens receive on an average day. They only engage with a median of 46 per day, thanks to blocking, filtering, or prioritizing apps — but the max number was a whopping 4.5k+ notifications delivered with 1.2k+ seen.

$1.1B: Taylor Swift’s new net worth. Like it or not, 2023 was the pop star’s year. Her Eras Tour became the first to gross $1B+ and added $4.3B to the US’s GDP, while her concert film set AMC’s new record for single-day ticket sales at $26m.