Apple Needs a New Strategy for Generative AI in iPhone 16 Pro

Published Date: 1/09/2024

As OpenAI faces increasing competition from startups and tech giants, its dominance in the AI market is under threat. Meanwhile, open-source AI is gaining traction, with Meta's Llama model being downloaded nearly 350 million times.

The AI market is heating up, and OpenAI is facing a growing threat from startups and tech giants alike. Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft are in talks to invest in OpenAI, valuing the company at $100 billion. However, this investment comes at a time when OpenAI is facing increased competition from startups that promise to undercut its services with cheaper and more specialized AI models.

Meanwhile, open-source AI is gaining traction, with Meta's Llama model being downloaded nearly 350 million times by software developers and tinkerers. This is 10 times the number of downloads from just a year ago. OpenAI's ChatGPT service, on the other hand, has 200 million weekly active users.

For many everyday applications, AIs that are trained to do only specific tasks can be better and cheaper to run, says Julien Launay, founder of Adaptive ML. His startup uses Llama to train small, customized AIs for companies. These smaller AIs can be more easily customized by users than giant, closed AIs like ChatGPT.

DoorDash, Shopify, Goldman Sachs, and Zoom are among the companies that have said they use open-source AIs for tasks ranging from customer service to summarizing meetings. Procore Technologies, which makes a platform for managing complicated construction projects, is a good example of how a variety of both closed and open AIs can be used for real-world tasks.

AI can be helpful at lots of points in that process. At the start of this year, when Procore first rolled out features that used large language models, the company relied on OpenAI's ChatGPT, accessed through Microsoft's cloud platform. However, prices have plummeted in the past 12 months, making it more affordable for companies to use AI.

Now, however, Procore has built software that makes it easy to use just about any AI throughout its system. This illustrates one way retaining customers could be an issue for OpenAI. Most companies do not want to be beholden to a single AI vendor, and for now at least, switching between them is relatively easy.

Open-source AI may make sense when running on individual devices like new AI-enabled PCs and smartphones, says an OpenAI spokesman. In general, the company welcomes competition for any of its services, because it is confident it is best positioned to deliver the capabilities, prices, and performance that software developers want.

All this competition from open-source AIs grows the pool of engineers who know how to use AI, which translates to growth in demand for OpenAI's services, as well, says the OpenAI spokesman.An even greater level of transparency than most open-source AI models offer will be necessary when it comes to AI systems for sensitive fields like medicine and insurance, argues Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

In February, the Allen Institute, a nonprofit research group that aims to solve the world's problems through AI, released its own open-source AI, and took the unusual step of also releasing all the data on which it was trained, and all the steps involved in tuning the model to offer better answers. When it comes to bigger-picture concerns about safety, opinions vary as to which approach is more likely to stave off worst-case AI scenarios like the malign, all-powerful intelligence of Skynet in the 'Terminator' movies.

Advocates of closed systems say they have the resources and control to help prevent misuse of the technology, and that open-source tools can be abused by bad actors. Open-source backers say their systems are subject to public scrutiny, allowing them to detect problems more easily, and deal with unintentional harms from their systems, which would be difficult to detect in closed systems.Long before we get to the point of battling sentient AI overlords, though, those making systems of more modest power will have to prove their enormous investments are worthwhile.

FAQS:

Q: What is OpenAI?

A: OpenAI is a company that specializes in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Q: What is ChatGPT?

A: ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI that can generate human-like text.

Q: What is open-source AI?

A: Open-source AI refers to artificial intelligence models and software that are made available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute.

Q: Who is Meta's Llama model?

A: Meta's Llama model is an open-source AI model developed by Meta that can be used for a variety of tasks, including language translation and text generation.

Q: What is the difference between closed and open-source AI?

A: Closed AI refers to artificial intelligence models and software that are proprietary and controlled by a single company, while open-source AI is made available for anyone to use and modify.

More Topics :