Google launched Bard AI, it’s own chatbot to rival Microsoft and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
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Tech investors are desirous to hear how much industry leaders are bolstering profitability now that they are in cost-cutting mode.
But there’s one area where in addition they wish to see hefty investments: artificial intelligence.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta all reported quarterly results this week, updating Wall Street on their efforts to enhance efficiency as economic concerns mount. With regards to AI and the newest boom in so-called large language models (LLMs) that power products like ChatGPT, the mega-cap tech corporations cannot afford to get left behind.
Generative AI programs use increasing amounts of knowledge and processing power to supply outputs that appear to be they were made by a human — a block of text, a snippet of code, or a computer-generated image. They require specialized supercomputers that are not low-cost.
On their earnings calls this week, tech CEOs talked at length concerning the potential for AI, whether or not they’re constructing their very own models or rapidly integrating it into products. The common theme was their emphasis on the massive sums of cash they’ll be spending to construct and run these applications.
Here’s what executives from Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta told analysts:
Alphabet
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc.
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Pichai said on Tuesday’s earnings call that the corporate was making “good progress” towards its AI goals.
“We’ll proceed to include generative AI advances to make search higher in a thoughtful and deliberate way,” Pichai said.
He said Google is using AI to enhance the conversion rate of ads and reduce the quantity of “toxic text” that goes into AI models. The corporate can also be combining two primary AI teams, Brain and DeepMind.
Pichai said that along with using its own homegrown chips to power its models, it’s using processors from Nvidia, which makes the overwhelming majority of graphics chips used to coach and deploy cutting-edge AI.
Microsoft
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during an interview in Redmond, Washington, on March 15, 2023.
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Microsoft is using OpenAI’s GPT technology in its Bing search engine, Office, and Teams teleconferencing system.
CEO Satya Nadella says that AI will eventually drive revenue growth and is already sparking increased uptake in the corporate’s apps. Bing, for instance, has seen downloads quadruple since Microsoft added a chatbot, he said. Microsoft has generated over 200 million images through its Bing integration.
Nadella warned that a major amount of capital will probably be required to construct out the large datacenters needed to run AI applications.
“We’ll proceed to speculate in our cloud infrastructure, particularly AI-related spend, as we scale to the growing demand driven by customer transformation,” Nadella said. “And we expect the resulting revenue to grow over time.”
Amazon
Andy Jassy on stage on the 2022 Latest York Times DealBook on November 30, 2022 in Latest York City.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy gave an unusually lengthy response on Thursday to an analyst’s query concerning the company’s generative AI plans.
Jassy said Amazon is constructing its own LLMs, and designing data-center chips for machine learning, emphasizing that the market is very large.
“These large language models, generative AI capability, has been around for some time. But frankly, the models weren’t that compelling until about six to nine months ago,” Jassy said. “They’ve gotten a lot greater and so a lot better so far more quickly that it really presents a remarkable opportunity to rework virtually every customer experience that exists.”
Jassy also said Amazon’s size would allow it to develop into considered one of a handful of corporations constructing LLMs, which might take lots of of computers running for weeks, overseen by expensive machine learning engineers.
“There will probably be a small variety of corporations that want to speculate that money and time and we will probably be considered one of them at Amazon,” Jassy said.
Unlike Microsoft and Google, Amazon’s focus is selling access to the technology through its Amazon Web Services division. Nonetheless, Jassy said Amazon will work on some applications, equivalent to programs to assist engineers write code.
“Each considered one of our businesses inside Amazon are constructing on top of huge language models to reinvent our customer experience,” Jassy said. That features voice assistant Alexa, he said.
Meta
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, in July 2021.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images
But he wanted investors to know that Meta can spend money on metaverse technologies while concurrently putting tons of resources into AI, which he called a “key theme” for his company.
Zuckerberg said that while the corporate has used machine learning to deliver recommendations and power products like Facebook’s news feed or ad systems, a latest primary area of focus is generative foundation models.
“It has been a fairly amazing 12 months of progress on this front, and the work happening now could be going to affect each considered one of our apps and services,” Zuckerberg said.
He said the corporate would work on a wide range of products using the technology, including chat experiences in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, tools for making images for posts on Facebook and Instagram, and eventually programs that would spit out entire videos from short descriptions.
An idea he’s particularly enthusiastic about is “AI agents,” which frequently check with AI programs that may perform goals.
“There’s a possibility to introduce AI agents to billions of individuals in ways in which will probably be useful and meaningful,” Zuckerberg said. One possibility for an AI agent can be to handle customer support for businesses, Meta has said.
Zuckerberg discussed the corporate’s big investments to construct out its datacenters for AI applications. He said the technology was the “primary driver” of Meta’s growth in capital expenditures over the past few years.
“At this point we are not any longer behind in constructing out our AI infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said.
That doesn’t suggest Meta is completed buying graphics processors. Zuckerberg said the corporate would wish to “proceed investing,” but would achieve this after it launches its generative AI products and gets a greater grasp on the resources required.
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