2023-05-15 08:00:00 ET
Summary
- There has been a cost explosion in AI caused by spiraling model size and Nvidia’s data center GPUs.
- Bucking the trend, and violating the old laws of model scaling, Google released “significantly smaller” language models that seem to perform very well, and much better than their larger predecessor.
- The opportunity here is to offer performant language model APIs at significantly lower server-side costs compared to what OpenAI is offering and make free open source alternatives look less attractive.
- Running this at scale on TPU v4 also highlights the cost benefits versus NVIDIA hardware to AI cloud customers.
- While Google has had a lot of problems in the past turning good technology into profitable products, this all adds up to a coherent AI strategy, which they have never had.
For further details see:
Google Stands AI Language Models On Their Head