The race to AI supremacy

Illustration: TBS

Occasionally, a new form of technology grabs the attention of the entire world. The hype, in public conversations across the continents, is nowadays all about generative artificial intelligence (AI). 

AI has become the latest obsession for big tech and subsequently, the competition between different AI research centres is heating up. Judging by the mood in Silicon Valley and its counterparts, the AI race that seemingly began with ChatGPT is on the path to becoming an all-out war.

To take on ChatGPT, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai publicly introduced Bard — a brand new conversational AI — this week. This AI will be available for use to the general public in phases, primarily with a lighter version, Pichai wrote in a blog post on Google. While no specific date has been given, this software, dubbed by Pichai as "a companion to search", will be available "in the coming weeks and months."  

LaMDA, a proprietary language learning model developed by Google, forms the foundation for Bard. Interestingly, one programmer who worked on LaMDA said that he considered it to be "sentient" because of how human-like conversations this AI was able to produce. Then Google, obviously, fired him claiming that his suggestion was ridiculous.

Before we could digest the news about the potential of AI meshed in a search engine, Microsoft revealed an improved version of its Edge web browser and Bing search engine, underpinned by ChatGPT. 

In the meantime, Google's market worth slumped by $100 billion as a result of false information provided by its chatbot Bard in a promotional video. This fuelled concerns that Microsoft is gaining the upper hand on Alphabet in terms of incorporating AI.

With the new Bing powered by ChatGPT and Google's Bard, a new era of AI battle for search engines is about to begin. 

The threat that Google faces from Microsoft's collaboration with ChatGPT is existential unless the former comes up with an answer rapidly in this ever-changing world of tech. 

And perhaps Google felt that too, which led to its hurried and embarrassing unveiling of Bard. For the first time in a very long time, people could even dream of dethroning Google from the monopoly as a search engine leader.

Microsoft and Google's competition has become apparent to us. But other companies are not probably too far. For instance, during a conference this week, Mark Zuckerberg referred to generative AI as "an extremely exciting new area." 

The CEO of Meta stated that customers could anticipate the firm "launching a number of different things this year" in the field of conversational AI. According to Zuckerberg, Meta intends to integrate the new technology in nearly all of its products, including photographs, videos, avatars, and 3D products.

He added that the AI will enable content producers to generate more using all of Meta's applications. Additionally, marketers might use generative AI to help with writing material for their sponsored posts or producing graphics and videos. Zuckerberg said: "One of my goals for Meta is to build on our research to become a leader in generative AI."

AI will also play a significant role in Apple's future, a company where usually hardware like the iPhone and Macbook have long dominated. Apple's CEO Tim Cook responded on Thursday to a question regarding the company's AI plans by stating that the technology is already being used to power features like automobile collision prevention in the iPhone and Apple Watch. And that shortly, AI would be used throughout all of Apple's devices and services.

The frenzy has been translated into other fields too. Take for instance, the Chinese AI stocks. Stocks of some Chinese AI companies have climbed sharply in what analysts call speculative wagers on this game-changing technology. To be sure, ChatGPT is still inaccessible from China. But Chinese investors are driving up the shares of AI companies like Hanwang Technology, TRS Information Technology, Cloudwalk Technology, etc., states a Reuters report.

There is no sign, however, that these AI firms are about to release a product on par with ChatGPT. In China, the closest is probably search engine behemoth Baidu. 

A few days ago, it announced that by March this year, its "Ernie bot" will be released. The product, very much like ChatGPT, is in its last stage of beta testing. Likewise, the company's share prices rose by more than 15% a day after the news broke out.

As stocks go up in China, billions are poured into AI labs in the US. ChatGPT is backed by tech giant Microsoft. According to a New York Times report, the company has already invested $3 billion in OpenAI. 

And on 23 January, Microsoft disclosed that it would pump another $10 billion in a "multiyear, multibillion-dollar" investment to the maker of ChatGPT. This investment demonstrates the importance and relevance of such kinds of AI labs not just for the future of Microsoft but also for its rivalry with other major tech firms like Google, Meta, and Apple.

It is still too premature to conclude how much of this early buzz is justified. ChatGPT, Bard and other similar competitors are probably going to transform how we interact with the internet, and with all technologies in a broad sense. 

But a transformation is already taking shape in how Silicon Valley in general views innovation in tech. In the valley, the likes of OpenAI, Meta AI and Google Research combine the computing power of big tech and the minds of the best computer scientists.

Scientific and technological development comes from research and development. But for the last couple of decades, American corporations have focused more on development rather than research. 

Now AI research laboratories backed by big tech corporations are once more making some loud noises. The competition is not limited to big tech only. Startups like Anthropic, Character AI, and Stability AI have created their versions of ChatGPT-like products.

Stability AI has been developing as an open-source model that transforms text into images. The startup is mainly supported by universities and nonprofits for its operations — both in terms of processing power and brain power. 

In the meantime, internet giant Google also recently disclosed a $300 million investment in Anthropic. This company is one of the many examples of startups affiliated with big tech. On the other hand, government-sponsored organisations have the strongest presence in China including the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI).

But because the technology is being introduced to the market at such a dizzying pace, serious ethical and moral concerns have also been raised. 

Beena Ammanath, who serves as the executive director of the Global Deloitte AI Institute, claimed that "we are reliving the social media era."

"The challenge with new language models is that they blend fact and fiction. It spreads misinformation effectively. It cannot understand the content. So it can spout out completely logical-sounding content, but incorrect. And it delivers it with complete confidence," she told CNN. 

This is exactly the kind of thing CNET committed to last month. The news outlet used an AI tool in writing several of its articles. But ultimately, when internet sleuths caught the news outlet, CNET had to acknowledge it, justifying that it was part of an experiment. But the media outlet said that it would stop using AI-generated content following a significant outcry.