Artificial intelligence is evolving in seemingly contradictory directions because it’s simultaneously:

Feared ¹
Celebrated ²

Expensive ³
Inexpensive ⁴

Specialized ⁵
General ⁶

Larger ⁷
Smaller ⁸

Isolated ⁹
Connected ¹⁰

Regulated ¹¹
Open ¹²

Structured ¹³
Creative ¹⁴

Perhaps, one day, AI will even be a lens through which we understand the beauty of intelligence. Or not? Predicting the future turns out to be pretty hard, but technological progress is incredibly exciting nonetheless.

Footnotes

1. the new nuclear, hopefully with an outcome where society actually benefits this time
2. early, but still a remarkable human achievement, and built from sand (silicon) no less
3. the frontier model arms race isn't slowing
4. for inference, the user hopes
5. routers + fine-tuned agents? My drug discovery AI might ask my toxicology, CMC, and preclinical AIs for molecule feedback while my commercial AI evaluates the market and my clinical and regulatory AIs work on a clinical development plan. But we're a long way off.
6. multimodal. For example, I can't draw, but was able to illustrate a children's book from natural language using generative AI.
7. well, it is the first L
8. to run on smartphones? Edge something something?
9. with proprietary data
10. to the physical world. Ray-Bans anyone?
11. regulatory capture needs regulation...
12. source, I hope
13. may we one day get correctly structured JSON consistently
14. AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol, Move 37, for example

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This work by Derek Croote is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0