One conversation gaining traction in Silicon Valley these days is how the advancement of Generative AI models is slowing down. Deirdre Bosa takes a look at the matter in CNBC’s TechCheck, revealing how rapid genAI advancements are now showing signs of deceleration. She notes how the quality of improvement in OpenAI’s upcoming model, Orion, is expected to be smaller than the leap from ChatGPT-3 to ChatGPT-4. This smaller advancement is largely due to a limited supply of training data, a key factor that could significantly affect how investors view AI companies.
READ ALSO: 15 AI News That Should Not Be Ignored and 10 Trending AI Stocks on Latest Analyst Ratings and News
Nevertheless, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has boasted on X that ChatGPT is now the eighth-biggest website in the world by traffic. As of October, ChatGPT had 3.7 billion visits, versus Perplexity’s 91 million visits, and Google Gemini’s 292 million visits. Nevertheless, the plateau in technology advancement doesn’t necessarily mean a slowdown. For instance, Mark Zuckerberg proposes that there is a lot of opportunity to build consumer enterprise applications on top of the existing technology.
While that is certainly an option, Reuters has reported that artificial intelligence companies are seeking a new path to smarter AI due to the plateau. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of AI labs Safe Superintelligence (SSI) and OpenAI, told Reuters recently that scaling up pre-training for AI models, which involves using large amounts of unlabeled data to learn language patterns, has reached a plateau.
“The 2010s were the age of scaling, now we’re back in the age of wonder and discovery once again. Everyone is looking for the next thing. Scaling the right thing matters more now than ever”.
-Sutskever
In light of this, researchers are now looking at a technique called “time testing compute” for improving models during the “inference” phase when such models are being used. The technique will allow the model to test different options instead of giving a single answer. The implications of the technique are far-fetched, having the potential to change the competitive landscape for AI hardware.
Recent AI Developments
Fortune predicts that GenAI funding is going to decelerate this year. However, it also believes that the industry’s recent breakthroughs are among the most profound technological advancements of our time. Regardless of the slowdown in GenAI models, artificial intelligence continues to be a breakthrough in many industries today.
In its first, an artificial intelligence company will be helping publishers rather than attempting to steal its work. While AI isn’t much appreciated in journalism because it seemingly uses journalist work to feed chatbot’s data demands and in turn diverts lesser traffic to the publisher, one startup, founded by Twitter engineers, believes that AI could be a valuable player in the media industry instead. Particle, an AI newsreader, will help readers better understand the news with the help of AI technology, offering more than just a summary.
In other developments, Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, says it will begin experimenting with ads this week.
“Ad programs like this help us generate revenue to share with our publisher partners. Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. Advertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream.”
– Perplexity wrote in a post on its blog.
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15. Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT)
Market Capitalization: $1.55 billion
Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) is a technology company that provides customer engagement solutions worldwide. Having launched its AI business software platform in 2023, the company focuses on AI-powered analytics and customer engagement solutions.
On November 11, Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) announced that a top telecommunications company raked in $10.5 million in annual savings by leveraging the Verint Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) to power their contact center telephony self-service. Each year, the said telecommunications company receives over seven million calls on topics such as billing, payment, and tech support. The use of Verint AI-powered IVA allowed it to handle half of these calls without live agents, including 80% of billing-related calls. In total, Verint’s solution enables the company to contain 3.5 million calls, avoiding the need to transfer to live agents and helping save $10.5 million annually.
“Verint IVA is built on industry-leading conversational AI that trains on an organization’s unique engagement data. This means the Verint AI-powered bots continuously improve and provide consumers with relevant, accurate responses, even within environments of higher conversational complexity or specificity to the business. With Verint’s leadership in AI-powered self-service bots, organizations are reporting strong AI business outcomes after replacing their legacy telephony-driven IVR systems.”
– Verint’s Heather Richards, vice president, Go-to-Market Strategy.
14. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN)
Market Capitalization: $2.71 billion
SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) is a voice artificial intelligence platform offering voice AI solutions to businesses. The company is emerging as a leader in conversational AI with more than 200 enterprise brands employing its AI agents across a growing number of verticals.
SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) reported its third-quarter financial results on November 12, 2024. The company reported a revenue of $25.1 million, beating the consensus estimate of $23.02 million. It reported an adjusted loss of six cents per share, outperforming analyst estimates of a loss of seven cents per share. According to CEO and Co-Founder, Keyvan Mohajer, this quarter has been the most successful for the company as it takes on and expands into “important new verticals” such as healthcare, finance, and insurance. This growth is further exemplified through its strategic acquisition of Amelia, a global leader in enterprise AI agent software. Conversational artificial intelligence has been leading the company’s scale and market enthusiasm, allowing it to capitalize on emerging opportunities across industries. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance for the upcoming year, now projecting between $155 million and $175 million, up from the previous estimate of $150 million.
“We believe that voice is the ‘killer app’ for applied generative AI. Thanks to our best-in-class technology, mastery of complex vertical integrations, and proprietary AI software, SoundHound is ideally positioned to capitalize on this huge and growing opportunity.”
Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and Co-Founder, SoundHound AI
