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OpenAI may be losing its lead in AI for the first time since the GPT-2 release in 2019.
Will Google retake the AI throne with Gemini before 2023 ends?
The AI race is at a tipping point.
The Information scooped yesterday that in mid-2023 OpenAI had to stop working on a new model, codenamed Arrakis, that would presumably make ChatGPT run more efficiently.
This was the company’s main ongoing development after finishing GPT-4 in the summer of 2022.
Why did they stop? Because the model didn’t work as expected. In a space where a gap of a few months is the difference between being the leader or not, this was an important setback for OpenAI.
The young startup is more than fine — this isn’t a life-or-death situation. It’s making $1.3 billion in ARR, has been releasing new juicy models like GPT-4 vision, DALL-E 3, etc., and has more aces up the sleeve for the DevDay conference on November 6th.
But this “failure” (I guess we can say that if we compare it with the flawless 4-year run it’s had so far!) may allow Google to surpass OpenAI with Gemini, which is posited to beat GPT-4.
If that happens, we can take away two insights from all this:
Nothing is certain about the future of AI. No one knows which steps are safer or more promising on our way toward AGI. OpenAI’s “aura of invincibility” as The Information puts it, was an outlier feature that lasted much more than anyone expected. AGI is somewhere ahead of us, awaiting patiently, but the path there is full of obstacles we must overcome. OpenAI couldn’t get its next release on time and that’s both illuminating and humbling.
Leading the AI race is a double-edged sword. OpenAI is seen by everyone as the favorite candidate. If it doesn’t manage to overcome this hurdle and maintain its leadership or release soon something much better than GPT-4, people will cease to praise it so fervently. They claimed Google dead after ChatGPT was announced — who knows if now they will predict OpenAI’s death. OpenAI will have to solve its technical problems with the model, its business pressures with Microsoft, and its social complaints with the general public.
What do you think, will OpenAI keep or lose its leadership before 2023 ends?
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