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文章来源：《经济学人》Feb 25th 2023 期 Business 栏目
Investors are going nuts for ChatGPT-ish artificial intelligence
投资者为类似ChatGPT的人工智能疯狂
Intelligence services
智能服务
Even Elon Musk wants his own AI chatbot
连埃隆·马斯克都想拥有自己的人工智能聊天机器人
Feb 28th 2023
Since ChatGPT was launched in November, a new mini-industry has mushroomed that has defied the broader slump in tech. Not a week goes by without someone unveiling a “generative” artificial intelligence (ai) underpinned by “foundation” models—the large and complex algorithms that give ChatGPT and other ais like it their intelligence. On February 24th Meta, Facebook’s parent company, released a model called llama. This week it was reported that Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and Twitter, wants to create an ai that would be less “woke” than ChatGPT. One catalogue, maintained by Ben Tossell, a British tech entrepreneur, and shared in a newsletter, has recently grown to include, among others, Ask Seneca (which answers questions based on the writings of the stoic philosopher), Pickaxe (which analyses your own documents), and Issac Editor (which helps students write academic papers).
自去年11月ChatGPT推出以来，一个新的微型产业如雨后春笋般涌现，它不受科技行业整体低迷的影响。几乎每个星期都有人推出一种以“基础”模型为基础的“生成式”人工智能，这种大型而复杂的算法赋予 ChatGPT 和其他类似的 AI 以智能。2月24日，Facebook的母公司Meta发布了一款名为美洲驼（LLaMA）的模型。本周有报道称，特斯拉和推特的亿万富翁老板埃隆·马斯克想要创造一种比ChatGPT更“清醒”的人工智能。由英国科技企业家本•托塞尔维护并在一份newsletter中分享的目录，最近已经包括Ask Seneca(根据斯多克派哲学家的著作回答问题)、Pickaxe(分析你自己的文档)和Issac Editor(帮助学生写学术论文)等。
ChatGPT and its fellow chatbots may be much talked about (and talked to: ChatGPT may now have more than 100m users). But Mr Tossell’s newsletter hints that the real action in generative ai is increasingly in all manner of less chatty services enabled by foundation models.
ChatGPT和它的同伴聊天机器人可能被谈论得很多(被谈论:ChatGPT现在可能有超过1亿用户)。但托塞尔先生的newsletter暗示，生成式人工智能的真正作用越来越多地体现在由基础模型实现的各种不那么健谈的服务上。
Each model is trained on reams of text, images, sound files or any other heap of data. This allows them to interpret, react to and create statements in natural language, as well as art, music and any other type of content you find on the internet. Even as the venture-capital (vc) industry nurses a giant hangover after the recent tech crash put paid to a bubbly couple of years, entrepreneurs experimenting with generative ai have no trouble attracting investments. In January it was reported that Microsoft poured another $10bn in OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, on top of an earlier investment of $1bn. A spreadsheet maintained by Pete Flint at nfx, a vc firm, now lists 539 generative-ai startups. Not counting OpenAI, they have so far collectively raised more than $11bn in capital (see chart). Mike Volpi of Index Ventures, another vc firm, calls it a “Cambrian explosion”.
每个模型都在大量文本、图像、声音文件或任何其他数据上训练。这使得他们能够用自然语言，以及艺术、音乐和你在互联网上找到的任何其他类型的内容来解释、反应和创建语句。尽管风投行业在最近的科技股股灾结束了几年的泡沫之后，正经历着巨大的后遗症，但是尝试生成式人工智能的企业家们仍能毫不费力吸引投资。今年1月，有报道称，微软在早些时候投资10亿美元的基础上，又向ChatGPT背后的初创公司OpenAI投资了100亿美元。风投公司nfx的皮特•弗林特维护的一份电子表格列出了539家生成型人工智能初创公司。不包括OpenAI在内，它们迄今共筹集了超过110亿美元的资本(见图表)。另一家风投公司Index Ventures的迈克•沃尔皮称其为“寒武纪大爆发”。
Several factors are driving it. Though foundation models have been around for some time, Mr Volpi explains that it took a consumer-facing service such as ChatGPT to capture the world’s—and investors’—imagination. This happened just as venture capitalists disappointed by the cryptocurrency crash and the empty metaverse were on the lookout for the next big thing. In addition, even more than web browsers and smartphones before them, foundation models make it easy to build new services and applications on top of them. “You can open your laptop, get an account and start interacting with the model,” says Steve Loughlin of Accel, yet another vc firm.
有几个因素在推动这一趋势。尽管基础模式已经存在了一段时间，沃尔皮先生解释说，只有像ChatGPT这样面向消费者的服务才能抓住世界和投资者的想象力。这发生在风险资本家对加密货币崩溃和空洞的元世界感到失望的时候，他们正在寻找下一个大事件。此外，与之前的web浏览器和智能手机相比，基础模型更容易在其之上构建新的服务和应用程序。另一家风险投资公司Accel的史蒂夫•洛克林说:“你可以打开笔记本电脑，注册一个账户，然后开始与模型互动。”
The question for venture capitalists is which generative-ai platforms will make the big bucks. For now, this is the subject of much head-scratching in tech circles. “Based on the available data, it’s just not clear if there will be a long-term, winner-take-all dynamic in generative ai,” wrote Martin Casado and colleagues at Andreessen Horowitz, one more vc firm, in a recent blog post. Many startups offer me-too ideas, many of which are a feature rather than a product. In time even the resource-intensive foundation models could end up as a low-margin commodity: although proprietary models such as OpenAI’s gpt-3.5, which powers ChatGPT, are still leading, some open-source ones are not far behind.
风险资本家面临的问题是，哪些生成式人工智能平台能赚大钱。目前，这在科技界是一个令人费解的话题。另一家风投公司安德森•霍洛维茨的马丁•卡萨多及其同事在最近的一篇博客文章中写道:“根据现有数据，目前还不清楚生成式人工智能领域是否会出现长期的赢家通吃的局面。” 许多创业公司提供模仿的想法，其中许多是一个功能而不是产品。随着时间的推移，即使是资源密集型的基础模型也可能最终成为低利润的商品:尽管商用模型，如OpenAI的gpt-3.5(支持ChatGPT)仍然处于领先地位，一些开源模型也不甘落后。
Another source of uncertainty is the legal minefield onto which generative ai is tiptoeing. Foundation models often get things wrong. And they can go off the rails. The chatbot which Microsoft is developing based on OpenAI’s models for its Bing search engine has insulted more than one user and professed its love to at least one other (Sydney, as Microsoft’s chatbot is called, has since been reined in). Generative-ai platforms may not enjoy the legal protection from liability that shields social media. Some copyright holders of web-based content on which existing models are being trained willy-nilly, without asking permission or paying compensation, are already up in arms. Getty Images, a repository of photographs, and individual artists have already filed lawsuits against ai art-generators such as Stable Diffusion. News organisations whose articles are plundered for information may do the same.
【1】willy-nilly 不管愿意与否；随意地另一个不确定性的来源是生成式人工智能正在小心翼翼地涉足其中的法律雷区。基础模型经常出错。他们可能会失控。微软基于OpenAI的模型为必应搜索引擎开发的聊天机器人已经侮辱了不止一个用户，并至少向一个用户示爱了(微软的聊天机器人被称为Sydney，此后一直受到约束)。生成人工智能平台可能无法享受保护社交媒体的免受法律责任的保护。一些网络内容的版权持有者已经对此表示了强烈的抗议，现有的模型正在根据这些内容进行随意训练，而没有征求许可或支付补偿。图片库Getty Images和个别艺术家已经对Stable Diffusion等人工智能艺术生成器提起诉讼。新闻机构的文章被掠夺以获取信息，它们可能也会这样做。
OpenAI is already trying to manage expectations, downplaying the launch later this year of gpt-4, the highly anticipated new version of the foundation model behind ChatGPT. That is unlikely to temper vc types’ appetite for generative ai. For more risk-averse investors, the safest bet at the moment is on the providers of the ample processing power needed to train and run foundation models. The share price of Nvidia, which designs chips useful for ai applications, is up by 60% so far this year. Cloud-computing services and data-centre landlords are rubbing their hands, too. Whichever ai platform comes out top, you can’t go wrong selling picks and shovels in a gold rush. ■
OpenAI已经在试图管理预期，低调处理今年晚些时候推出的gpt-4，这是ChatGPT背后的基础模型备受期待的新版本。这不大可能抑制风投对生成式人工智能的兴趣。对于更加厌恶风险的投资者来说，目前最安全的赌注是提供训练和运行基础模型所需的足够处理能力的提供商。为人工智能应用设计芯片的英伟达的股价今年迄今上涨了60%。云计算服务和数据中心的房东也在摩拳擦掌。无论哪个人工智能平台脱颖而出，在淘金热中出售镐和铲子都不会错。■ |
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发表于 2023-3-18 16:59:41
