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Understand The Technology Ecosystem

Generative AI has advanced rapidly due to increased data, improved training methods like the transformer architecture, and greater computational power allowing for parallel processing. This has led to the emergence of an AI technology ecosystem with various layers including hardware providers, cloud platforms, foundational AI models accessed through APIs, infrastructure optimization services, and applications that utilize these technologies. While generative AI holds promise, concerns remain around inaccurate predictions, data security, plagiarism, user spoofing, and the environmental impact of large model training.

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Gowtham Thalluri
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40 views3 pages

Understand The Technology Ecosystem

Generative AI has advanced rapidly due to increased data, improved training methods like the transformer architecture, and greater computational power allowing for parallel processing. This has led to the emergence of an AI technology ecosystem with various layers including hardware providers, cloud platforms, foundational AI models accessed through APIs, infrastructure optimization services, and applications that utilize these technologies. While generative AI holds promise, concerns remain around inaccurate predictions, data security, plagiarism, user spoofing, and the environmental impact of large model training.

Uploaded by

Gowtham Thalluri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Understand the Technology Ecosystem of Generative AI

Supercharging Generative AI Training


Generative AI has gained a lot of capabilities in what seems like a very short
amount of time. The incredibly fast pace of improvement is largely due to three big
factors. The first is the availability of huge amounts of training data. As
mentioned in the previous unit, the more than a billion web pages on the internet
are a great source of writing samples. But data is only good if you have a way to
use it. That’s where the second big change comes in: better training.

As you learn in Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals, researchers design neural


networks that use sophisticated math to train AI models. The architecture of neural
networks is a field of study that’s constantly progressing. In 2017, researchers at
Google published a game-changing paper about training large language models. They
proposed a new AI architecture called a transformer. As you can imagine, the
details of the research are pretty complicated. But to simplify (greatly), the new
architecture was capable of identifying important relationships between words, no
matter how far away they appear within a block of text. It could retain that
connection even after processing lots of words.

The new transformer architecture brings us to the third major factor in the rapid
advancement of generative AI: computational power. It takes a lot of processing
power to do the math behind AI model training. Historically, AI models are designed
in a way that requires a sequence of calculations, run one after the other. The
transformer architecture is different—it relies on many separate, concurrent
calculations.

So, one computer processor can do the first calculation while a different processor
does the second at the same time. That’s called parallel computing, and it greatly
reduces the time it takes to train a transformer. On top of that, in recent years
processors that can perform parallel computing have become much more powerful and
abundant.

These three factors of data, architecture, and computing have converged for just
the right conditions to train very capable large language models. One of the
biggest LLMs is the GPT language model, which stands for generative pre-trained
transformer. In other words, a model that’s already been trained that can be used
to generate text-related content

Emerging Ecosystem
Right now, there are already hundreds of sites on the internet where you can go to
get hands-on with generative AI. When you visit one of those sites, you’re at the
tip of a technology iceberg. And that technology can come from a lot of different
sources. Let’s investigate the tech stack that makes it possible to bring awesome
generative AI experiences to the masses.

At the bottom of the iceberg, we start with the compute hardware providers.
Training an LLM can take a staggering amount of computational power, even if you're
training a transformer. It also takes computing power to process requests to
actually use the model after it’s been trained. Technically you can train AI models
on any computing hardware, but processors that excel at parallel computing are
ideal. Today the biggest name in AI compute is Nvidia.
Next are the cloud platforms that allow developers to tap into the compute hardware
in a cloud deployment model. Devs can rent the appropriate amount of time for a
specific project, and the platforms can efficiently distribute requests for
computing time across a connected system. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle are
the main tech providers in this space.
AI models, including LLMs are the next layer. These models are carefully crafted
using research techniques and trained using a combination of public and privately
curated data. Developers can connect to LLMs through an application programming
interface (API), so they can harness the full power of NLP in their own
applications. The trained and accessible AI model is commonly referred to as a
foundational model. Because these models are accessed through an API, developers
can easily switch from one foundational model to another as needed. A few examples
of foundational models are GPT4, Claude, Stable Diffusion, and LLaMA.
The next layer is infrastructure optimization, which is all about providing tools
and services that make for more efficient and higher-quality model training. For
example, a service might offer perfectly curated data sets to train on. Another
might provide analytics to test the accuracy of generated content. It’s also at
this point where foundational models can be fine-tuned with specialized,
proprietary data to better meet the needs of a particular company. This is a busy
space in the AI ecosystem, with many companies offering a variety of optimization
services.
Finally, we find ourselves back at the tip of the iceberg: the applications.
Developers of all kinds can tap into optimization services and foundational models
for their apps. Already we see LLM-powered standalone tools, as well as plugins for
mainstream applications.
Diagram of AI tech stack

This thriving ecosystem of technology companies has grown at an incredible rate


just over the past few years. Some companies will specialize in one particular
segment. For example, one in the foundational model space may want to focus on
training new and better performing models to differentiate themselves. Other
companies will create solutions that span multiple layers of the tech stack,
creating their own proprietary LLM to use for their application.

Many businesses are just starting to get a handle on what AI can do for them. Given
the unprecedented demand for AI technology, there’s a huge amount of opportunity
for businesses to make their mark at several levels of the AI tech stack

Common Concerns About Generative AI


Generative AI is going to lead to many changes in how we interact with computers.
With any disruptive technology, it’s important to understand its limitations and
causes for concern. Here are a few of the main concerns with generative AI.

Hallucinations: Remember that generative AI is really another form of prediction,


and sometimes predictions are wrong. Predictions from generative AI that diverge
from an expected response, grounded in facts, are known as hallucinations. They
happen for a few reasons, like if the training data was incomplete or biased, or if
the model was not designed well. So with any AI generated text, take the time to
verify the content is factually correct.

Data security: Businesses can share proprietary data at two points in the
generative AI lifecycle. First, when fine-tuning a foundational model. Second, when
actually using the model to process a request with sensitive data. Companies that
offer AI services must demonstrate that trust is paramount and that data will
always be protected.
Plagiarism: LLMs and AI models for image generation are typically trained on
publicly available data. There’s the possibility that the model will learn a style
and replicate that style. Businesses developing foundational models must take steps
to add variation into the generated content. Also, they may need to curate the
training data to remove samples at the request of content creators.

User spoofing: It’s easier than ever to create a believable online profile,
complete with an AI generated picture. Fake users like this can interact with real
users (and other fake users), in a very realistic way. That makes it hard for
businesses to identify bot networks that promote their own bot content.

Sustainability: The computing power required to train AI models is immense, and the
processors doing the math require a lot of actual power to run. As models get
bigger, so do their carbon footprints. Fortunately, once a model is trained it
takes relatively little power to process requests. And, renewable energy is
expanding almost as fast as AI adoption!

In Summary
Generative AI is capable of assisting businesses and individuals alike with all
sorts of language-based tasks. The convergence of lots of data, clever AI
architecture, and huge amounts of computing power has supercharged generative AI
development and the growth of the AI ecosystem.

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