There is a growing concern in Silicon Valley that the progress around artificial intelligence is slowly “losing steam”. CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa explores whether AI progress is slowing, and what it means for the industry. Early signs of struggle are bubbling up in major tech names. As highlighted by Bosa, the first sign of things slowing down has been a lack of progression between models. OpenAI has led the pack in AI advancements, with each of the new models of ChatGPT exponentially better than the last.
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Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about today. OpenAI’s highly anticipated model Orion was expected to be a ground-breaking system bringing us closer to AGI. However, the initial vision is being scaled back.
“While Orion’s performance ended up exceeding that of prior models, the increase in quality was far smaller compared with the jump between GPT-3 and GPT-4, the last two flagship models the company released, according to some OpenAI employees who have used or tested Orion”.
-The Information
The same roadblocks have been happening to other AI models, such as that by Anthropic. Just like OpenAI, Anthropic is also witnessing a timetable slip for the release of its long-awaited Claude model called 3.5 Opus.
“The AGI bubble is bursting a little bit. It’s become clear that ‘different training approaches’ may be needed to make AI models work really well on a variety of tasks.”
-Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at AI startup Hugging Face, to Bloomberg.
Even some of the big tech giants aren’t enthusiastic about the progress AI has been making. Speaking during the New York Times annual DealBook summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Sundar Pichai stated how generative AI won’t be changing lives in 2025— at least, not more than it already has.
“I think the progress is going to get harder. When I look at [2025], the low-hanging fruit is gone. The hill is steeper … You’re definitely going to need deeper breakthroughs as we get to the next stage”.
– Sundar Pichai
However, if progress is plateauing, it has to do with scaling laws. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei states that the scaling laws are a misnomer. He emphasizes that while these patterns have historically guided AI development—suggesting that increasing data and computational power leads to improved AI capabilities—they are not guaranteed to continue indefinitely.
As such, AI companies have been turning to synthetic AI, i.e. data generated artificially. The Information reports that Orion was produced based on synthetic data. However, the problem has been that low-quality data, in turn, leads to low-quality performance. As such, with leading tech companies poised to unveil new models over the next eighteen months, their pace of progress—or lack thereof—has the potential to dramatically redefine the dynamics of the competition.
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12. Soluna Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SLNH)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 3
Soluna Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SLNH) is a developer of green data centers for intensive computing applications including Bitcoin mining and AI. On December 16, the company announced that its subsidiary, Soluna Cloud, has entered into a strategic partnership with Gynger, the leading embedded payments platform for technology. The partnership will allow renewable-powered high-performance computing to become more accessible. Customers would be able to adopt Soluna’s cutting-edge AI Cloud without paying huge upfront costs. Instead, these costs would be spread out using Gynger’s payment options.
“Our partnership with Gynger reflects our commitment to not only providing high-performance and environmentally sustainable computing solutions but also to ensuring our clients have flexible financial options to support their growth. Together, we’re removing financial barriers, allowing customers to access the technology they need to stay competitive”.
-John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna.
11. Cardio Diagnostics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CDIO)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 3
Cardio Diagnostics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CDIO) is an AI-driven precision cardiovascular medicine company that makes heart disease prevention more accessible, personalized, and precise. On December 16, the company announced that two of their tests had received final pricing determinations from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Effective January 1, 2025, Medicare contractors will be able to determine pricing for PrecisionCHD and Epi+Gen CHD tests based on actual cost data from Cardio Diagnostics. The approval allows these tests to be accessible to the Medicare population.
“Receiving this final determination is a crucial step for our innovative solutions to help improve the risk assessment, diagnosis, management and monitoring of coronary heart disease (CHD) for Medicare patients. This milestone brings us closer to addressing the significant unmet needs in cardiovascular care for the Medicare population, enabling clinicians to better personalize treatment strategies and ultimately improve patient outcomes”.
-Meesha Dogan, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Cardio Diagnostics.
