ChatGPT triggers the business war for Artificial Intelligence
Last December the alarms went off at the headquarters of Google. For the first time in more than a decade, the giant Internet He saw a threat looming over his search and digital advertising empire, the pillar of his billion-dollar business. The multinational activated its ‘red code’ and, according to what it revealed, ‘The New York Times‘, urgently called its founders, Larry Page and sergey brin, who returned to the offices three years after leaving their management positions. What aroused his fear was not the economic turbulence that has hit the sector, but the meteoric popularization of ChatGPT. Google then decided to grease its machinery to focus on the development of the Artificial intelligence (AI), the technology called to mark the decade and the new battlefield of the giants of the industry.
ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art chatbot trained with thousands of data that it extracts from Internet and programmed to generate text automatically. Although he makes mistakes, his ability to answer all kinds of questions, imitate literary styles, compose songs, program computer code, and even crack jokes has made him a worldwide phenomenon that has crossed the borders of the technological world. ChatGPT was launched in November and has now already reached 100 million monthly active usersbecoming the fastest growing consumer ‘app’ in history, according to a UBS study.
Behind this chatbot is Open AIa small Californian research laboratory founded in 2015 by sam altman, Elon Musk, reid hoffman, Peter Thiel and many other investors interested in developing the capabilities of a AI safe for humanity. So, that discipline was reserved for experts. However, seven years after the creation of advanced tools such as ChatGPT or the image generator Dall-E have popularized AI among the general public.
AI is called to shape the society of the future, to transform multiple industries and, therefore, in our lives. In the last two months it has been possible to see an unprecedented explosion in the sector. Not a day goes by without an innovative new project that uses the language model. GPT-3 –the largest ever created– to artificially generate synthetic texts, images, videos, songs or voices. In November, business analysis firm CB Insights he estimated at 250 AI start-ups.
Microsoft takes the lead
This massive adoption has made AI a great business opportunity. The popularization of its tools has made OpenAI foresees a turnover of 200 million dollars for this year and reach 1,000 million in 2024. In July 2019, Microsoft he had more eyesight than anyone and put $1 billion into the company, one of his best investments. Two weeks ago, the computer giant reinforced that alliance and invested another 10,000 million to gain control of 49%. After this operation, OpenAI has skyrocketed its valuation to 29,000 million, becoming one of the start-ups most valuable of the world.
“Move fast and break things.” Over the past decade, this dogma has propelled big tech companies to the top of the World economy. Now, Microsoft is following the same path to position itself as a leader in the emerging market for so-called generative AI. That is why it has announced that it will integrate the features of ChatGPT to products such as wordthe mail manager Outlook or your browser Bing. In addition, OpenAI has just launched a subscription plan of $20 per month for improvements in the use of its chatbot. With this, Microsoft seeks to make its investment profitable and obtain a competitive advantage to get ahead of the competition.
“The possibility of a search engine answering your questions with written text can be very interesting in many cases, and could mean a significant change in the way we conceive of our interaction with the web,” he explained in his Blog Enrique DansProfessor of Innovation and Technology at IE Business School.
Battle on four fronts
The acceleration of Microsoft has made the Google bosses nervous. And it is that the appearance of a system like ChatGPT capable of responding in an articulated way to the doubts of the users can suppose a threat for its seekera goose that lays the golden eggs that accounts for 90% of that market and has generated an advertising business of 149,000 million dollars.
The most curious thing is that it is Google who, until recently, led the generative AI market. The technological multinational led by sundar pichai has been developing for years LaMDAa language model introduced in May 2021 and which became known when a company engineer assured that he had “feelings”. According to experts, it could be even more powerful than the one behind ChatGPT. Google has built all sorts of advanced AI systems like MusicLM, capable of creating music through text, but has been more cautious, choosing not to open them up to the public.
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—Google AI (@GoogleAI) January 24, 2023
“OpenAI has not made a technological leap, but has dared to put its AI to viral use. They have taken the risk that it has undesirable effects to hang themselves the medal, while the largest companies have been more conservative. And with good reasons,” explains Anthony Ortiztechnology analyst and podcast co-author ‘stochastic monkeys‘. Google hasn’t been blind; you have chosen prudence not to damage your reputation with a tool that makes mistakes and can misinform.
Goalthe parent company of Facebook, developed AI behind closed doors for years. Last August, mark zuckerberg decided to open his chatbot to the public, blenderbot 3. Shortly after she began to rack up criticism for your mistakes, for spreading conspiracies and making racist comments. In November, the company withdrew its Galactica language model, intended for science, for replicating those same problems.
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Google did not want to expose itself to the same thing as Meta. However, OpenAI’s opportunism and audacity have torpedoed its strategy and forced a change of course. “Dragged by Microsoft and market expectations”, Google will launch more than 20 new AI products this 2023 and will test the integration of a chatbot like ChatGPT in its browser. “Narratives weigh heavily in the technology industry and the current one points to Google being left behind,” adds Ortiz.
We are attending a corporate war for mastery of AI and his promising business. A competitive escalation that will go further. The latest to sign up is Baidu, the Chinese search giant –also known as China’s Google–, which in March will launch a chatbot to integrate it into its search engine, according to progress ‘Bloomberg‘. The cake, as always, will be distributed by the largest companies in the world.
Source of data and images: elperiodico
