Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft are in discussions to invest in OpenAI maker of ChatGPT, exactly as it has become clear the company will face tougher competition than ever in the up-and-coming artificial-intelligence market. Much of that new competition is coming from startups that promise to undercut OpenAI's services with ones that could be cheaper to use, and also better at certain narrow tasks.
At least one tech giant sees promise in the new crop of AI startups. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook's parent, Meta Platforms, is positioning his company as a champion for the little guys, letting outside developers use Meta's cutting-edge AI model, Llama, free of charge. Google too recently released an open-source AI not nearly as competent as Meta's. In a letter this July, Zuckerberg wrote that this open-source way "will make it so more people can benefit from and be empowered by AI" without leaving all the power in the tech giants' hands.
Open sources are software that can be used commercially by virtually everyone. Among them is the Android operating system, which was developed by Google; but any manufacturer can use it in their mobile devices without making payments. That is quite a different approach from the more traditional, "closed" model, in which companies exert tight control over who can use their software. Microsoft requires computer manufacturers to pay a licensing fee to use its Windows operating system on their PCs. Apple does not license any of its operating systems for the iPhone or Mac operating system.
The latest proof of that investment is: Apple and Nvidia are in talks to join Microsoft investing in OpenAI's next financing round valuing the company at $100 billion. In the meantime, open-source AI is catching up with the big early movers, at least for everyday business applications that require consistent performance with minimal costs. Meta said Thursday that software developers and tinkerers have now downloaded some version of Llama nearly 350 million times, which is roughly 10 times this number from a year ago. It isn't possible to compare those numbers with ChatGPT, but OpenAI says the interspersed ChatGPT service now boasts 200 million weekly active users. For many daily applications, therefore, an artificial intelligence trained specifically to that end might be better and cheaper to run. That is according to Julien Launay of the startup Adaptive ML, which uses Llama to train small, customized artificial intelligences for companies. Those smaller AIs could be more easily customized by users than giant closed AIs like ChatGPT, he adds.
More generally, an OpenAI spokesman noted, open-source AI is probably right to existrunning on people's devices, the way new AI-enabled PCs and smart phones do. Thecompany welcomes competition for any of its services generally, he said, because it isconfident it is best positioned to deliver the capabilities, prices and performancesoftware developers are seeking.
All this competition from open-source AIs grows the pool of engineers who know howto use AIs, and growth in demand for OpenAI's services as well, says the OpenAI spokesman.
