Hello and welcome to Eye on AI! In today's edition: OpenAI finally releases Sora and considers dropping the "AGI" clause in its Microsoft contract; Cerebras claims a reasoning breakthrough; and AI causes open source problems.
I’m writing from the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, where I am attending my first Brainstorm AI conference since joining Fortune in March.
It’s an interesting moment in generative AI, which burst into public view with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. No longer the shiny new thing sparkling with new possibilities that had tech-watchers oohing and ahhing at 2023 conferences, 2024 has proven to be a more nuanced AI era. Companies using AI are moving beyond FOMO to ROI—they are working on actually getting AI projects into production and questioning how quickly the seeds of generative AI can realistically bear fruit. Meanwhile, the startups and Big Tech companies developing AI models, tools, and infrastructure are fielding hard questions about the progress they are making, the environmental impacts of their work, and whether the billions invested in generative AI will ultimately pay off.
I felt this vibe shift at Brainstorm AI as I chatted with tech leaders at Brainstorm AI over coffee, lunch, and dinner. There is a cautious optimism about the potential of generative AI, but a sense of realism reigns: The companies that have gone all-in on generative AI now need to see results, and they are becoming more skeptical of hyped-up promises and predictions.
That was reflected in the on-stage conversations with AI leaders, as well. Here are some of the key themes and issues covered on Day 1:
Visa’s head of tech wants AI companies to focus less on pitch decks and more on code: As investors and adopters weather the wave of AI hype, Rajat Taneja, Visa’s head of technology, is asking founders to spend more time on their product than their pitch decks. He said that in a highly regulated sector, it’s key to cut through the buzz surrounding generative AI. His advice to emerging AI companies: “Move away from PowerPoint and go to code."
Stability AI’s new CEO, hired six months ago, says business growing by "triple digits" and no more debt: "We have now a clean balance sheet, no debt, nothing,” said Stability CEO Prem Akkaraju, who joined Stability about six months ago. Despite being a one-time AI industry darling as the creator of Stable Diffusion, a popular image generation tool, Stability AI had been roiled by chaotic management that caused investors to abandon the company and led to the departure of its founding CEO. The company was considering a sale.
Amazon’s top AI exec says industry concerns that LLMs hit a "wall" are overblown, and says Jeff Bezos "very involved" in AI efforts: Amazon’s head of AI brushed off concerns that AI foundation models have “hit a wall” in terms of how much improvement new releases are demonstrating over past versions. “Every time we come close to a wall, there’s a new dimension,” said Amazon SVP Rohit Prasad, who oversees the tech giant’s Artificial General Intelligence division. He was responding to a question about the current debate in AI circles over whether new versions of large language models aren't improving as much as they once did. Prasad argued that AI developers have repeatedly found ways to overcome technical barriers.
Health care executives are banking on AI to unburden doctors, make processes smoother, and save time: At Brainstorm AI, health care executives discussed the ways they expect the technology will transform the field. In their minds, this can mean freeing doctors from burdensome tasks, simplifying processes, and saving time—with the hope of reducing human error, and potentially reducing costs to consumers. “Anything we’re doing with AI that makes our care and clinical professionals’ jobs easy is my favorite,” said Tilak Mandadi, executive vice president of ventures and chief digital, data, analytics and technology officer at CVS Health. Mandadi pointed to the company’s implementation of AI-based case preparation that saves its healthcare professionals a substantial amount of time that can then be used to spend with their patients.
With that, here’s more AI news.
Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman
The rest of today's Eye on AI was written by David Meyer.
