Biggest GenAI Regret Ever

Infosys could have been the Microsoft of IT consulting, but fate had other plans. In 2015, as OpenAI set sail as a non-profit organisation, Infosys, along with Elon Musk, AWS, YC Research, and others, donated $1 billion to the newly-minted AI company.?

However, despite its early involvement, Infosys may now harbour regrets in the rapidly evolving generative AI landscape. This sentiment has also been underscored by the recent lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against the company.?

The previously undisclosed donation to OpenAI occurred during Vishal Sikka’s tenure as the leader of Infosys. His recognition of OpenAI’s potential at an early stage and the willingness to embrace it justify his status as a far-sighted visionary.?

However, in August 2017, Sikka stepped down from his role as the managing director and chief executive at Infosys. And with his departure, the initiative to integrate OpenAI’s technology into Infosys came to an abrupt halt.?

OpenAI moved on from being a non-profit organisation to a for-profit entity with a capped return in 2019. Then, there was the billion-dollar investment from Microsoft, for which Musk recently took OpenAI to court. Unfortunately, the original donors did not get any equity in the company after the Microsoft investment.?

The current CEO, Salil Parekh, confirmed that Infosys had backed OpenAI through a donation. However, regarding any potential future collaboration with the company, Parekh said that there were no intentions for investments or engagement as of now.

Infosys has been trying really hard to position itself in the generative AI race, but appears to be struggling. In December last year, the company reported the termination of a $1.5 billion deal by a global client. The announcement came a few months after India’s IT giant disclosed the signing of a $1.5 billion agreement with an unnamed global company in September the same year.?

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Fooling VCs with AI?

The recent Instoried debacle gives away the sense and nature of AI investments globally. The company started seven years ago with the motivation of adding empathy to users’ content and pitched the idea of AI. Cut to the present, there is almost no sign of the company. Sharmin Ali, the founder and CEO of Instoried, is reportedly miffed with the investors and is threatening to file a defamation lawsuit against them.?

The once-promising startup, which could have been riding the AI wave, is now nowhere to be found. But more importantly, it shows that VCs are starting to get AI right and the story serves as a wake-up call to the ones who still don’t.

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Coding in Natural Language?

A future where everyone is a coder is getting closer with each passing year – or month, maybe. In the latest podcast with Lex Fridman, when asked how much programming people would do in the next 5-10 years, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “A lot, but I think it’ll be in a very different shape.”?

Altman said that many have already started programming entirely in natural language. “No one programs by writing code…some people do. No one programs the pun cards anymore,” he quipped, adding that it would change the nature and skillset, not so much the predisposition of who we call programmers in the future.?

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GitHub Copilot vs StarCoder 2

Leandro von Werra, a machine learning engineer at Hugging Face and co-lead of the BigCode project, recently highlighted the benefits of StarCoder 2 for the developer community. He emphasised on its ability to enhance efficiency in application development while ensuring data and training transparency.?

Werra said StarCoder 2's free usage and added benefits make it appealing for developers and enterprises, especially compared to GitHub CoPilot. “For many companies, using GitHub CoPilot is tricky from a security perspective because it requires employing the endpoint that CoPilot uses, which is not retained in their environments.” he said.

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