Key Trends for the world of Generative AI in 2024 and beyond
2023 was a pivotal year in the world of Generative AI- a year that will forever be synonymous with the proliferation of LLMs into the mainstream.
The reaction towards LLMs ranged from curiosity, disbelief, amazement and apprehension depending on the audience that you polled. However indifference was not an emotion that was associated with LLMs.
The year began (or rather a few weeks before that) with the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI to the public . It proved to be a runaway success, hogging the attention of the tech world and general public and ultimately logged more than 200 million downloads in less than two months.
Soon after, the LLM space started getting crowded with offerings from Anthropic (Claude), Meta (Llama2, Code Llama ), Google (Bard) to name a few. The LLM space also saw many notable Open source contributions like GPT-NeoX-20B, Falcon, Dolly 2.0 to name a few.
In 2023 we also saw the evolution of product offerings that supplemented the LLM ecosystem. One such example was that of” PoE” (Platform of Exploration) by Quora, a service which allows users to chat with LLM offerings from different providers. Another such unique product offering was “NightShade”, a product that aims to “poison” AI models with corrupted data. NightShade was intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. There were also tools to benchmark LLMs (enter “Chatbot Arena).
LLMs made an “official” entry into the enterprise world with McKinsey introducing its own generative AI tool “Lili’ with the aim of helping McKinsey consultants with information retrieval and expert recommendations thereby increasing the efficiency and accuracy in consulting processes. Microsoft introduced “CopIlot” as an everyday AI companion on its suite of products.
In the midst of this, 2023 also saw “blockbuster” Generative AI offerings such as GPT-4, DALL-E, MidJourney, Grok by X to name a few.
LLMs also has their fair share of criticism with several calls to pause training of AI systems. Significant among this was the open letter published by Future of Life Institute signed by over 1000 industry experts including Elon Musk.
It is with this background, i put on my very “human” hat of crystal gazing as I predict the following trends for the world of Generative AI in 2024 and beyond:
- Reduction in “hype” around Generative AI: The first of my predictions for the year 2024 may seem counterintuitive to all that we have seen in 2023.
I believe 2024 and beyond will prove to be a litmus test for LLM companies whereby companies will need to move beyond the 2023 “hype” and tread on the difficult path from ideas to execution while juggling profitability and shareholder expectations. To this effect, we may see the following mini-trends:
- “Decommissioning” of free to use LLMs for general use
- Slower rate of innovation (at least by established players) with focus on improving profitability of existing LLM model investments
- More innovative pricing plans to for non-enterprise users and students
- Emergence of “mega” players in Generative AI: While there might be a relative “lull” in the generative AI space in the near time, we expect to see LLM offerings from some mega players such as Apple, AMD, NVDIA with the focus of introducing enhanced AI capabilities in their respective suite of products and services ecosystems.
- Evolution of hybrid workspaces within enterprises: This year McKinsey introduced “Lilli”, a generative AI tool for its employees with the intent of making them more productive. “ Lilli” is a platform that provides employees with a streamlined, impartial search and synthesis of the firm’s vast stores of knowledge to bring their best insights, quickly and efficiently, to clients. LIlli is positioned as a researcher, a time saver and an inspiration for the employees using it.
We expect other knowledge based companies to follow suit and introduce their own version of “Lilli” (and in doing some introduce hybrid workspaces where humans and AI tools co-exist) to help their employees be more effective and efficient in their daily tasks. We in fact believe that enterprise-grade generative AI tools aimed specifically at internal customers are likely to feature in the “AI Journeys” of most Fortune 500 companies.
- Democratization Of AI Development : One of the central themes in Generative AI in the coming years will be about helping a wider range of people contribute to AI design and development processes.. There will be increased focus on accessibility of AI models and the computational resources used to run them and opportunities for aspiring developers to upskill. In 2023, we saw steps in this direction primarily by PoE which announced a monetization program for bot creators with an intent to reward them for their enterprise and help offset their infrastructure costs of hosting an LLM based model. 2024 will see more concerted efforts in this space by major LLM players.
- Evolution of the LLM ecosystem: 2024 is likely to bring to fore companies that may not be necessarily LLM providers but rather be complementary to the LLM offerings. LLM Benchmarking tools, LLM fitment tools (industry and use case specific) etc. We can expect the LLM ecosystem to evolve further in 2024 and beyond.
- Consolidation within the Generative AI space: The coming year can see some consolidations and acquisitions in this space. In the past we have seen investments in LLMs companies such as OpenAI (by Microsoft) and Anthropic (by Amazon) to name a few. We have seen Amazon releasing its own generative AI-powered assistant Q in the recent past. We see a high probability of increased collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic and a distinct possibility of Anthropic merging with Amazon completely.
In conclusion, 2024 looks to be a remarkably important year in the history of LLMs. It may not have the same buzz as 2023 but we expect LLMs and generative AI tools to make a more meaningful impact across organizations and in the lives of people this year.
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Original article published by me here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/key-trends-world-generative-ai-2024-beyond-gautam-begde-ejjvc%3FtrackingId=oDLVbdyYSLiAv8AJb5BQkw%253D%253D/?trackingId=oDLVbdyYSLiAv8AJb5BQkw%3D%3D
