Companies are investing in AI now more than ever. In 2023, global corporate investment in Artificial Intelligence reached $189 billion, a 1,300% increase from 2013, according to Statista.
Allison Harbin, an AI analyst and former prompt engineer for Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, said the sudden craze in AI led her to transition from working as a writer and editor to working in AI.
“When ChatGPT came out, I saw the writing on the wall, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they’ve automated my job,’” Harbin said. “If you can’t beat them, join them. So I took the job at Gemini, and we were mostly former teachers and former academics. We were the humans in the loop for reinforcement learning.”
Students make up a significant portion of ChatGPT users, which has helped drive its growth. ChatGPT has over 200 million users as of August 2024, double its number from last fall, according to Reuters.
AI Club President and junior David Wu said he uses various AI tools to help with coding.
“Specifically for coding, I think GitHub copilot is very helpful, as it really helps you to write the redundant code much faster,” Wu said.
As AI has become more widespread, many companies have implemented it into their services. According to a National University article, 77% of companies are using or exploring using AI. Harbin said the most exciting part about more companies investing in AI is its potential impact on the working environment.
”(AI) is like this big gray space where we’re still not really sure what large language models are capable of,” Harbin said. “You get to be a part of figuring out how ChatGPT, for instance, can be used in a business, professional setting that saves money.”
Senior Sean Gustavson said many companies are increasing investments in AI due to its ability to increase productivity by automating tedious tasks and customer service.
“AI is billions and billions of dollars worth of investment,” Gustavson said. “We see large companies like Meta buying one specific computer part to put in a very large server to run a bunch of models, which they then release for free. Since this directly benefits the public and helps out everyone, it attracts significant interest and investment into their company.”
However, Harbin also said many companies investing in AI are doing so rashly without considering the logistics.
“These companies are definitely rushing into it,” Harbin said. “There’s going to be a bubble, and that bubble is going to burst when people realize that we have this technology, but we don’t know how to apply it in a work use-case where this solution is going to save the company money.”
Harbin said AI chatbots, while similar, should focus more on perfecting accuracy as opposed to rushing into implementing AI into services.
“I started on Gemini, and at my current position we use OpenAI’s 4o model,” Harbin said. “I’m using them in really different contexts, and to a degree, they’re the same, but I think the ones that I’m interested in are the ones that are more accurate and more dependable. The way that companies invest the most wisely in terms of workforce to train those models will get better outputs.”
Gustavson said over the past few years, AI has become a highly competitive and saturated industry.
“OpenAI, for a while, has been at the forefront of AI technology,” Gustavson said. “(But) I don’t think they necessarily have a moat (anymore). From 2022 to 2023, the moat OpenAI had was the billions to train these models: they had the leg up in funding cash. Now, as every big company from Google to Meta is pouring money into their AI research projects, it’s becoming a more level plane. We see new competitors like Anthropic outpace OpenAI’s top models in everyday tasks, and they’ve only been around for a few years.”
Ultimately, Gustavson said the rise of AI has changed how much many companies are valued. Companies like Nvidia, which sells computer chips, software and systems for industries like AI, have seen its stock grow exponentially. As of Nov. 1, Nvidia stock has increased 2,675% over the past five years. Meta, which launched its Meta AI in September 2023, has seen a 189% increase in stock price.
“Two years ago, the most profitable and most valuable companies were tech companies,” Gustavson said. “Right now, it’s still tech companies but also Nvidia and other AI-specializing companies. Nvidia, the company that basically provides the hardware for almost all AI inference training, is worth trillions of dollars. They were not worth this much before, but this is a gold rush, and Nvidia is selling the shovels.”