This text is taken from Courrier de l’ économique. Click here to subscribe.
Towards generative artificial intelligence (AI) that fits in your pocket. It’s the goal of the year in the techno world. A way of pulling down a technology that until now had been pushed upwards. And to sink a little deeper into what great thinkers call digital colonialism.
Tuesday is the annual conference that Google organizes for the benefit of programmers who create content and applications for its Android mobile platform. The 2024 edition of Google I/O (that’s its name) only lasts one day, but it will be a very busy one. It will also discuss the future of Android, Pixel phones and Tensor processors exclusive to Google. Above all and above all, we will see how all this will help the development of Gemini, Google’s family of artificial intelligence tools.
From one conference to another
Google I/O comes just a week after Apple unveiled new iPad tablets designed specifically to bring to life all the AI applications Apple says it’s been developing for at least seven years. Analysts may repeat that Apple is lagging behind in terms of AI, but the Cupertino company replies that its only fault is to prefer names like “machine learning”, “automation” and other “neural networks”, which are more niche, to this portmanteau term of AI which means almost everything and its opposite.
Still: Apple could unveil its own generative AI app, perhaps in the form of a Siri assistant on steroids, this summer or next fall at the latest.
In the meantime, from May 21 to May 23, it will be Microsoft’s turn to present its most recent hardware and software advances. Its Build 2024 conference will take place live from its offices in Redmond, in the beautiful Seattle suburb of Washington. Rumors are still shy about it, but we already know that the conference will have generative AI as its theme, in particular Copilot. Copilot is the generative AI application that Microsoft already integrates into its Windows system, and which exists independently on Android and the iPhone.
It’s not yet clear whether Microsoft will talk about MAI-1, an entirely new strain of AI created internally, independent of the partnership Microsoft has with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. However, we suspect that we will see new Surface devices powered by processors also designed internally by Microsoft, and that it will be a question of the evolution of Windows to adapt it to this new world in which the AI seems omnipresent.
All settlers!
In this world, the tech giants now design everything themselves: the hardware, down to the most miniature processors, the software that powers them, and the AI applications, presented as revolutionary, which come to life thanks to all that.
No offense to the Intel people of this world, this shift will not stop. Developing their own products and services serves the tech giants very well in two ways: it increases their profit margin in particular and their influence on society in general.
The example to follow for all these beautiful people is Apple. Its annual profit margin jumped from 25% to 40% when its iPhone appeared in 2007, and remained at that level until recently. Until the launch of its first in-house processors and the place they give to AI tools. Since then, its margin has only increased. It reached 47% this spring, and could improve further in coming quarters, according to analyst projections.
The impressive power of influence of these AIs needs no explanation: they will soon be able to reside in smartphones, which 6.8 billion humans consult almost 200 times every day — there will be 7.1 billion more late this year, the industry says.
These AIs will have access with incredible precision to massive data on the behavior of a majority of humans on the planet. They will analyze this information, interpret it, and reformulate it according to parameters which we know are biased, obviously to the advantage of the societies from which they come.
This is what University of Washington researcher Jason C. Young calls digital colonialism. The use of generative AI by the public, including governments and academics, adds a new dimension to Big Tech’s influence. “These AIs are becoming essential tools for producing knowledge. The companies that control them gain influence. »
In short, these tech giants could become the safeguards, not only of what we know, but of how future generations will learn it. This influence, Young concludes, will be such that it could dictate future public policies in a host of sectors: economy, health, politics, education, etc.
All this from your pants pocket!