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“The best characterization of the AI Environment is that it’s a War Zone”
If you’ve been following the dramatic changes taking place in Space right now you’ll know that there is a Weaponized Race going on currently dominated by the global countries who can afford the budgets: US, China, Russia, India and Japan. It’s inevitable because no country can afford to miss out. It’s also inevitable that in this Shark Following Pool an ever increasing range of support players are attracted into it.
AI is no different, no major Tech Company can afford to miss out; only Tech Giants can afford the astronomical LLM Fees; and their weaponization is causing the AI sub-player family to rapidly expand. Here’s a taste of how this monumental AI game is being played out:
The Top Tier
MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
Microsoft are the Pioneers, backing OpenAI and leading the pack. That pack is rapidly trying and aggressively pushing to catch up: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla (and Nvidia) with Anthropic as the newcomer. And apart from the US, other competitor countries are supporting their own leaders: for example, Ernie in China.
Is it different this time?
Yes. In the Last Tech Boom, Meta and Google, for example, bought up hundreds of smaller companies. But Search, Meta and Smart Phones aren’t a threat to each individual Tech Player – so it is different at the Top End this time because they are all in and doing it for themselves.
The Middle Tiers
BIG START UPS
Beneath the upper echelon, there are newcomers like Anthropic who want to join them and have recently raised billions just to fund the initial phase of growth. Just to train a Chatbot on a database costs millions.
MODEL SPECIALISTS
Then, importantly, there are the second level players who are eschewing the LLM approach in favour of a focused approach to solving specific data problems: for example Isomorphic Labs are focused on Pharma breakthroughs (to radically reduce research time) and Umicore on new Mineral Breakthroughs for the same reason.
BIG USERS DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES
Also there are large Service Companies doing it for themselves so they don’t have to rely on the Magnificent Seven and their equivalents. For example, Deloitte have built their own internal chatbot for employees; and Allen & Overy have built a Contract Negotiation Tool internally as well.
The Lower Tiers
SIDE HUSTLERS
Then there are the Side Hustlers filling out the GIG Economy. These are often developed by individual experts in a particular field, for example, creating a set of prompts for personal development or SEO or Marketing. These have become so important and newsworthy that well known business publications such as Forbes regularly present reviews on their use.
AI APP DEVELOPERS
And, every day there are new AI functional solutions being brought to the market – both by big players- such as Salesforce and CRM or a mass of smaller players with solutions for the A-Z of business: whether it is analytics, design, sales, business plan writing or website development.
NICHE TECH PLAYERS
Typically in a Tech Boom, the niche players follow the trend and it is no different this time. So specialist AI solutions are emerging to fill the gaps left behind the stampede of Bigger Players. For example, together.ai offers decentralized cloud services to reduce the cost and speed of training and deploying generative AI models.
Are things really going to change?
Yes. It would be naïve to think the Magnificent 7 are simultaneously spending billions of dollars for no good reason; nor that Stock Market valuations are going up without an AI impetus; nor that the majority of Forecasters have all got it wrong; or that the Service Provider stampede have all got it wrong.
Let’s take three examples: one from the top line; the other from the bottom line; and the final one from the risk side.
First, your mobile phone. Samsung have already announced they are releasing an AI phone later this year; and Apple have been scrambling to do the same with a major mobile breakthrough to bypass the computing power stranglehold caused by LLM’s.
Second, your Apps. Anything routine and a utility like the Weather/ Holiday/ Financial Information/ or Traffic. You are going to have your own Personal Assistant to handle these: you won’t be going to an App store to download them and start clicking to get what you want. A Chatbot will do all that for you: it’s already happening.
Third, but a word of warning: Scams are going to be much easier and much more prolific. Anti Scam Software Engineers will be at a premium! The elections in the US and the UK will be test beds for Fake News and Images and how society copes with it to avoid the (skewing) of democracy. Your competitors may also be thinking the same way!
Find Out More
You can learn more about any of the AI Players by using an AI chatbot.
For example, if you want to find out about the latest AI developments from Microsoft you just prompt Google’s Bard, which continually draws information from the internet to have the latest information, to get the answer: “Summarise the latest AI developments from Microsoft”.
