2023 (MMXXIII) is the current year, and is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2023rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 23rd year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 4th year of the 2020s decade.
The year has seen the decline in severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the WHO ending its global health emergency status in May. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has continued, and a series of coups, an armed conflict, and political crises broke out in numerous African nations. An escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict occurred in October when Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, launched an attack on Israel, leading the latter to declare war on Hamas. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ended after 100,000 Armenians fled the region. Catastrophic natural disasters included the fifth-deadliest earthquake of the 21st century striking Turkey and Syria, leaving nearly 60,000 people dead, Cyclone Freddy – the longest-lasting recorded tropical cyclone in history – leading to over 1,400 deaths in Malawi and Mozambique, Storm Daniel, which became the deadliest cyclone worldwide since Cyclone Nargis after killing at least 11,000 people in Libya, a major 6.8 magnitude earthquake striking western Morocco, killing 2,960 people, and a 6.3 magnitude triplet earthquake striking western Afghanistan, killing over 1,000 people.
2023 additionally witnessed a banking crisis resulting in the collapse of numerous American regional banks as well as the buyout of Credit Suisse by UBS in Switzerland. Among American banks, the two largest banks which collapsed were Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, the third and second largest banking collapses in US history respectively. In April, India surpassed China as the world's most populous country.[1]
In the realm of technology, 2023 has seen the continued rise of generative AI models, with increasing applications across various industries. These models, leveraging advancements in machine learning and natural language processing, have become capable of creating realistic and coherent text, images, and music. An AI arms race between private companies has continued since the late 2010s, with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google-owner Alphabet today most dominant among firms.[2]