Microsoft has decided to offer AI-on-the-cheap for businesses willing to settle for a little less than cutting-edge.
Specifically, the tech titan is peddling three new AI engines — from a new family of AI offerings dubbed Phi-3 — that are significantly less powerful than say ChatGPT-4 Turbo.
Even so, they often still get the job done.
Observes lead writer Karen Weise: “The smallest Phi-3 model can fit on a smartphone , so it can be used even if it’s not connected to the Internet.
“And it can run on the kinds of chips that power regular computers, rather than more expensive processors made by Nvidia.”
Adds Eric Boyd, a vice president at Microsoft: “I want my doctor to get things right.
“Other situations — where I am summarizing online user reviews — if it’s a little bit off, it’s not the end of the world.”
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*In-Depth Guide: Ooh La La: France’s Answer to ChatGPT: This piece offers an in-depth look into yet another AI engine looking to compete with ChatGPT — Mistral AI, based in France.
While somewhat less impressive than ChatGPT, the AI engine has still earned high marks for its “transparent, portable, customizable and cost-effective models that require fewer computational resources than other popular LLMs (AI engines),” according to writer Ellen Glover.
“With substantial backing from prominent investors like Microsoft and Andreessen Horowitz — and a reported valuation of $5 billion — Mistral is positioning itself to be a formidable competitor in the increasingly crowded generative AI market,” Glover adds.
*Less Popular Than Your Average Cat Video: Only 23% of U.S. Adults Have Tried ChatGPT: Nearly a year-and-a-half since ChatGPT first stunned the world, only 23% of U.S. adults have actually used it, according to a new study from Pew.
For many who track the tech closely — and see the emergence of ChatGPT and similar AI as a pivotal moment in the history of humanity — the meager adoption rate is tough to understand.
Not surprisingly, young adults under 30 are most enthusiastic about ChatGPT — 43% have tried ChatGPT.
Oldest adults, 65-and-up, are least interested in the tech — only 6% have tried the AI, according to Pew.
*Microsoft’s Sweet Deal: Unlimited Access to GPT-4 Turbo: Subscribers to Microsoft 365 — its office productivity suite — are enjoying unlimited access to AI engine GPT-4 Turbo.
It’s currently considered by many as the most advanced AI engine on the planet.
That pricing — at $6.66/month for a Microsoft 365 subscription — is a significant perk from Microsoft.
In comparison, ChatGPT Plus customers pay $20/month for limited access to GPT-4Turbo.
Essentially, ChatGPT customers are only allowed to query the AI 50 times at-a-clip. Then they’re forced to wait three hours before they can query the AI engine again.
*Top AI Grammar Tools: Because Commas Are Hard!: Orbis Research has released its list of the top grammar and spell checkers on the market.
Here’s the rundown, with links to each tool’s pricing page:
*Hubspot Morphs With New AI Makeover: Popular marketing tool Hubspot has gone all-in on AI.
The tool now offers AI-powered content creation and auto-repurposing of content to multiple social media and similar networks.
Users can also take advantage of an AI-powered feature that ensures everything you create with Hubspot is rendered in your brand voice.
Plus, Hubspot AI will also transform your text content into spoken-word podcasts.
*Zoom’s AI Makeover: Now Summarizing The Meetings That You Slept Through: Add Zoom to the list of major software companies revamping with AI.
With the remade Zoom, you’ll find:
~AI summaries of meetings
~AI message thread summaries
~AI sentence completion
*Newsweek Goes Full AI: Reporters That Boot-up in Seconds: Brushing aside fears of job loss, Newsweek has fully embraced AI and is looking to integrate the tech as deeply as possible into the magazine’s operations.
Says Jennifer Cunningham, executive editor, Newsweek: “I think that the difference between newsrooms that embrace AI and newsrooms that shun AI is really going to prove itself over the next several months and years.
“We have really embraced AI as an opportunity — and not some sort of boogeyman that’s lurking in the newsroom.”
We’ll see.
*Forget One-Size-Fits-All: Amazon Hosts Virtually Any AI Engine: Businesses looking to work with their favorite AI engine may want to check out Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock, which is happy to host virtually any AI engine on the market.
Amazon’s approach is markedly different from proprietary companies like ChatGPT-maker Open AI, which only offers its proprietary AI engine to customers.
Essentially: Giving companies the ability to add do-it-yourself models (AI engines) to Bedrock makes it easier for enterprise developers and data scientists to work together, according to Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI and data, Amazon Web Services.
*AI Big Picture: PCs Souped-Up With AI Chips Arrive: Businesses looking to save money by doing AI on a local PC — rather than in the cloud — now have a number of options.
Observes writer Isabelle Bousquette: “The biggest innovation in years has come for personal computers, as manufacturers integrate chips that enable them to run large-scale AI models (AI engines) directly on the device.
“But some CIOs remain unconvinced on whether the new devices are worth the cost.
“Some say they will make the investment first for just technical roles — like data scientists.
“Others say they will make the investment for even regular business users—but only when it’s already time for a refresh in the regular device replacement cycle.”
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.