Little guys need big friends to get their AI system going

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Hewlett-Packard to Google, the tales of bootstrapped companies that have turned into giants have inspired generations of entrepreneurs. But the huge amounts of money and computing power needed for startups trying to make a go of it with today’s hottest technology, the artificial intelligence used in chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard, may be making those inspirational tales a thing of the past. In 2019, Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst left Google to create an AI startup called Cohere that could compete with their former employer.

Several months later, they went back to Google and asked if it would sell them the enormous computing power they would need to build their own AI technology. After Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, personally approved the arrangement, the tech giant gave them what they wanted. Building a groundbreaking AI startup is difficult without getting the support of “the hyperscalers,” which control the vast data centers capable of running AI systems.

And that has put the industry’s giants in the driver’s seat — again — for what many expect to be the most important shift for the tech industry in decades. Spanning thousands of specialised computer chips, these machines are essential to improving and expanding the skills of ChatGPT and similar technologies. As the industry races to match GPT-4, entrepreneurs, investors and pundits are debating who will be the eventual winners.

Most agree that OpenAI is leading the field. But a small group of other companies are building similar technology. The tech giants are in a strong position because they have the vast resources needed to push these systems further than anyone.