Business

For all the millions of words that have been devoted to the capabilities of LLMs, the economics and ergonomics of these systems seem to me to be under-discussed. In much the same way that technology changes - from records to CDs to streaming - have been a dominant factor in the evolution of popular music, prosaic matters such as cost structures will have a substantial influence on the development and impact of AI. While it is still early days for LLMs, there are already signs that economic factors are impacting everything from product design and technology choice to adoption and even regulation.

As the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to evolve, the term “chatbot” has become synonymous with a new era of digital interactions. What was once a seemingly futuristic concept is now an integral part of our everyday lives. However, it is the Machine Learning models underlying them - Large Language Models (LLMs) - that are the true powers in these waters.

The term “AI” has at least three entirely different meanings in the modern business context, and any particular business leader usually has only one of these meanings in mind when they use the term. Not only is it common for participants in a discussion to have different interpretations of the term “AI”, but most will be unaware that this terminological confusion exists, leaving leaders in both public and private sector organisations poorly equipped to discuss one of the most important technologies of our time.