It turns out that I’ve been writing about Generative AI without even realizing there was something called Generative AI, such as articles about the robot artist Ai-Da, the AI image creator DALL-E, or patent protection for AI inventors. Generative AI refers to AI that strives not just to process and synthesize data but to actually be creative. It’s starting to both become more widespread and to attract serious attention from investors.
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| Credit: AWP Life |
James Currier of investment firm NFX sees “Generative Tech” as the next big thing: “If crypto hadn’t happened, we’d probably be calling THIS Web3.” He distinguishes Generative AI from Generative Tech as:
Some have called it “Generative AI,” but AI is only half of the equation. AI models are the enabling base layers of the stack. The top layers will be thousands of applications. Generative Tech is about what will actually touch us – what you can do with AI as a partner.
He predicts Generative Tech will generate “trillions
of dollars of value.” I’m hoping that
healthcare is paying attention.
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Let’s start with OpenAI and its DALL-E 2. DALL-E 2 got much attention earlier in the
year with its startlingly unique images, and now is more broadly available, with
more than 1.5 million users. The Wall
Street Journal calls
its images “amazing – and terrifying.”
OpenAI is overseen by a non-profit company, and its
mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,”
presumably meant to draw the distinction from AI developed by for-profit
companies (such as DeepMind, which is owned by Alphabet). Its charter explicitly states that it seeks
that AI/AGI “is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI
or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power.” Its “primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.”
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| Credit: OpenAI |
Microsoft invested $1b in 2019 (in return for OpenAI
using Azure as its cloud partner and giving Microsoft priority in brining new
technologies to market), and The Wall Street Journal now reports
that the companies are in “advanced talks” for a new round of funding. OpenAI is
valued at nearly $20b.
Then there’s Stability AI, which just announced a $101 million funding round that values the company at $1b. It bills itself as “the world's first community-driven, open-source artificial intelligence (AI) company,” with a slogan “AI by the people, for the people.” Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO, states:
Stability AI puts the power back into the hands of developer communities and opens the door for ground-breaking new applications. An independent entity in this space supporting these communities can create real value and change.
Its competitors to DALL-E are Stable Diffusion,
released in August, “a powerful, free and open-source text-to-image generator”
that already has been licensed by 200,000 developers, and DreamStudio, its
consumer-facing image product that has a million registered users.
A New York Times article
noted that Stable Diffusion has limited safety filters, which has made it
popular among artists and has led to some, shall we say, objectionable images. Mr. Mostaque is undeterred, telling the NYT:
“We trust people, and we trust
the community, as opposed to having a centralized, unelected entity controlling
the most powerful technology in the world.”
He made
a similar point to TechCrunch: “Nobody has any voting
rights except our employees — no billionaires, big funds, governments or anyone
else with control of the company or the communities we support. We’re
completely independent.”
Credit: Stability AI
Still another Generative AI company, Jasper, also scored a funding round last week,
with the $125 million round valuing
it at $1.5b. Jasper bills itself as
an “AI Content Platform,” including both generating text and text-to-images. Interestingly, it uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 to power
the platform.
Jasper CEO Dave Rogenmoser says:
“Generative AI represents a major breakthrough in creative potential, but it's
still inaccessible and intimidating to many. Jasper is working to bring AI to
the masses and teach people how to leverage it responsibly so that businesses
and individuals can better convey their ideas.”
I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Anthropic,
which has raised close to $800 million, or MidJourney, which boosts 3 million
users taking advantage of image generator on its Discord server. Anthropic is set up as a public benefit
corporation, and is “working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI
systems,” while MidJourney describes itself as “a small self-funded team
focused on design, human infrastructure, and AI.” I’m sure there are others.
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Joanna Stern, writing
in the WSJ, marvels: “The
stuff once found in AI research labs is now making it into our homes and offices…For
decades, we’ve been hearing AI is going to change how we interact with
computers and the world. These tools may be the first time most of us recognize
it in action.”
There’s already much concern about the “black box” of
AI – we may not know how or why AI comes up with things – and the implicit
biases that may be built it (e.g., most healthcare data sets will include the results
of the inequities in our current healthcare system). Stability AI’s Mr. Mostaque told NYT:
“Ultimately, transparency, not
top-down control, is what will keep generative A.I. from becoming a dangerous
force,” and I hope he’s right – but I’m not sure he is.
I love the idea of “democratizing” AI, putting it in
our homes and offices. I like the idea
that some of this is happening through non-profits, like OpenAI. I’m highly intrigued that some of it is open
source, like Stability AI. And I’m wondering
what the impetus in healthcare will be to bring it to our care and to our daily
lives.
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| Credit: Pixabay |
If Mr. Currier is remotely right that Generative Tech
will unleash trillions of dollars in value, healthcare is not going to be
untouched. I’d love to see a collection
of our healthcare giants – health systems, health plans, pharma, etc. – pool their
data for use by a non-profit focused on AI for healthcare. I’d like that AI not just be better supportive
tools for clinicians, but also to be creative, up to and including “AI
physicians,” whatever they may be. And I
think it’d be cool if much of this work could be open source and aimed at the
masses.
Mr. Currier predicts:
“In the next 10 years, we will expect software to collaborate with us.
It will be the new normal. Steve Jobs said in 1980 that the Apple personal
computer was a bicycle for the human mind. You might say that Generative Tech
is a rocketship for the human mind.”
Buckle up: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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