Final week a leaked memo reported to have been written by Luke Sernau, a senior engineer at Google, stated out loud what many in Silicon Valley will need to have been whispering for weeks: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Massive Tech’s grip on AI.
New open-source giant language fashions—options to Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT that researchers and app builders can examine, construct on, and modify—are dropping like sweet from a piñata. These are smaller, cheaper variations of the best-in-class AI fashions created by the massive companies that (virtually) match them in efficiency—they usually’re shared free of charge.
In some ways, that’s factor. AI will not thrive if only a few mega-rich firms get to gatekeep this know-how or resolve how it’s used. However this open-source increase is precarious, and if Massive Tech decides to close up store, a boomtown may change into a backwater. Learn the total story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
That wasn’t Google I/O — it was Google AI
All the pieces about life within the AI period is a bit complicated and bizarre. Nowhere has this been extra obvious than at Google I/O, the corporate’s annual convention showcasing what it’s been engaged on—and this yr’s present was all about AI.
When Google CEO Sundar Pichai stepped on stage earlier this week, he launched straight into the methods AI is in all the things the corporate does now, making it fairly clear that AI itself now could be the core product, or at the very least, the spine of it.
Mat Honan, our editor in chief, went to look at the Massive Google AI Present. Regardless of the impressive-looking demos, finally he left with a deep sense of unease. Learn his story to search out out why.