This is an abridged version of an article published by BusinessDesk in June 2023

Artificial intelligence has already experienced the full range of praise and criticism – from Bill Gates’ belief that the advent of ChatGPT is as significant as the invention of the internet, to contentions from leading AI experts that it could make humans extinct.

The world is now watching AI’s next steps with some of the big questions being: how will AI be monetised, and what to make of Gates’ strong endorsement of AI’s ability to change the world after ChatGPT’s landmark arrival and impact. The key is that previous iterations of AI could read and write – but ChatGPT actually understands the content – and can generate it.

Milford Senior Analyst Daniel Wu is one of those closely watching AI’s progress in a ChatGPT world and, while he has no doubt of the significance AI will play in the future, one of his main messages is cautionary: it’s a long-term situation; don’t just get swept up in the hype.

“The benefits of generative AI will be felt over years, not quarters,” he says. There is plenty of room for development of the future business and consumer use of AI – but no clear view yet of who might be at the forefront. One potential problem is commoditisation: “The issue is the data; most of it is derived from the same pool of publicly available data, which could lead to rapid commoditisation of these large language models.”

There could be, Wu says, a group of AI providers essentially offering much the same products and services – producing “table stakes”, the business term for the minimum entry requirement for a product or service.

Proprietary data is thus a key part of the development of AI into premium applications, as opposed to the “low hanging fruit” and “easy wins” of widely available AI applications. Premium applications will likely be seen in AI taking over some routine tasks in businesses and consumer-facing developments such as enhanced bots which make the consumer experience more enjoyable. 

As for the worldwide headlines and warnings from experts like Geoffrey Hinton, regarded as one of the fathers of AI, that AI could make humans extinct, Wu says his feeling is that the target is actually regulators.

“By their very nature, regulators are naturally slow and tend to lag behind the rapid pace of technology advances. So ethical and existential considerations and issues around regulation of AI are some of the challenges facing AI and investing in the AI space. Regulators will need to pick up their pace in confronting these challenges.”

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