Baidu’s CEO gave his glimpse into the future of AI and predicted the demise of 99% of AI companies.
At a conference packed with innovators and disruptors in the business world, Robin Li spoke about how the accuracy of LLMs has improved dramatically in the past 18 months.
However, he also predicted that there will be just a handful of companies left standing when the AI bubble inevitably bursts; but perhaps sees his company, buoyed by the popularity of its Ernie chatbot, as one of the potential survivors.
Honing the Accuracy
Li shared his view as to what the AI business landscape will look like in the coming decade with the audience at the Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference.
As reported by The Register, he said that the biggest change in recent years has been accuracy. Hallucinations are now hardly an issue at all.
This just in! View
the top business tech deals for 2024 👨💻
“The most significant change we’re seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models. I think over the past 18 months, that problem has pretty much been solved – meaning when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer.” – Robin Li, CEO of Baidu
Select Few Will Survive
Li suggested that while development will continue, the present volume of AI ventures is unsustainable. He likened what he believes will come to the dot.com bubble in the 1990s.
“Probably one percent of the companies will stand out and become huge and will create a lot of value or will create tremendous value for the people, for the society. And I think we are just going through this kind of process,” – Robin Li, CEO of Baidu
Other Jobs Safe… For Now
While those in the AI industry might now be feeling a little on edge, Li suggested that we are decades off from a time when there will be widespread job losses thanks to AI deployment.
Echoing statements he made at the VivaTech conference in Paris in May, Li insists we are 10 to 30 years away from AI being smarter than humans and, therefore, human jobs could be displaced. This is in contrast to the ever-optimistic Elon Musk, who says we are just two years off.
While Li is suggesting there won’t be seismic changes for a while, he did, however, encourage preparedness. “Companies, organizations, governments and ordinary people all need to prepare for that kind of paradigm shift,” he warned.