AI – Beyond the Hype

This newsletter is just a snapshot of this month's Future Now report – covering all things generative AI. If you want to learn more and get access to all the report's innovations (including some exclusive First Look solutions), explore a Springwise membership today.

It all seemed so world shaking. In November 2022, ChatGPT shocked the world with its versatility and eerily human-like responses to almost any question. Do you still remember the first time you used it and what you thought?

The rise

‘That’ ChatGPT moment fired the starting gun on an extraordinary period of focus on generative artificial intelligence – a category of technologies that includes the large language models that power Open AI’s flagship consumer product and its competitors. Since then, McKinsey?has estimated ?that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy – each year. Hopes and fears for the technology have been so acute that the world’s dignitaries have rubbed shoulders with tech executives at high-level AI summits at the UK’s Bletchley Park and (virtually) in Seoul.

The fall?

Fast forward to today, however, and it has already become fashionable to see the whole thing as one big hype bubble – and with some cause. In July, The Economist highlighted that despite the AI mania, the technology has had ‘almost no economic impact.’ And, at the end of July, stock markets fell sharply as investors?unloaded shares in AI-heavy tech firms, partly driven by?unease about the extraordinary levels of capital expenditure these businesses have committed to as they keep pace in the AI race.?

The planetary impact of the accelerating expansion of power-thirsty data centres, which underpin AI, has also added to the souring mood, with Google and Microsoft reporting increases in emissions ?as a result of AI infrastructure.?

The long term

Is this scepticism ultimately warranted? Betting against AI over the long term would be foolish, especially as the story we are seeing today has played out before. In 1987, economist Robert Solow?quipped ?that the computer age was everywhere except for the productivity statistics, foreshadowing, almost exactly, some of the arguments of today’s AI bears. And in May 2024, when the tide of sentiment had already begun to turn, Goldman Sachs?research ?found that AI was showing very positive signs of eventually boosting productivity and GDP.

For most people generative AI has been synonymous with chatbots – but there is more to the technology. Take a look below to discover some other innovative ways the tech is being used for good.?

The innovations

A generative AI search engine for advanced materials?

The world will require a range of new technologies and materials to tackle climate change. However, traditional testing processes can be time-consuming, expensive, and wasteful when things don’t go to plan. Now, CuspAI is applying generative AI to the problem, with its search engine that allows users to request and evaluate the properties of existing and new materials on demand – users could request a material that selectively binds carbon dioxide under specified conditions for example. The platform then uses generative AI, deep learning, and molecular simulation to generate, evaluate, and optimise potential molecular structures that meet those exact criteria.?Read more

‘AI scientists’ that run their own research

In Japan, Sakana AI has recently introduced its ‘AI Scientist’, which allows large language models (LLMs) to independently perform machine learning research and speed up the entire process. The AI Scientist automates the whole research lifecycle – it can generate research ideas, execute experiments, summarise experimental results, and present findings in a full scientific manuscript. The system can even automate the peer review process to review the papers generated, write feedback, and develop ways to further improve results. While the AI Scientist demonstrates a strong ability to innovate on top of well-established ideas, such as diffusion modelling, it’s still yet to be seen whether it can also come up with novel, paradigm-shifting ideas.?Read more ?

Speech-to-text tech for doctors in Africa

Healthcare systems across Africa are often particularly overstretched, with doctors in these countries frequently seeing far more patients each day than is typical for clinicians in other areas of the world. Voice-to-text apps can help to ease the pressure, but existing technologies often aren’t designed with African dialects and accents in mind. Now, Nigerian health technology company Intron Health has built a solution. The Transcribe app helps doctors complete clinical notes up to seven times faster than if they were typing, and has been built to accurately translate real-time speech and healthcare terms for more than 200 African accents.?Read more

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