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Large models, whether they are language models or visual models, are designed to process massive amounts of data using deep learning techniques. These models are trained on vast datasets and can learn to recognize patterns and make predictions with incredible accuracy. Large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-3 and Google's BERT, are capable of generating natural language text, answering questions, and even translating between languages. Large visual models, such as OpenAI's CLIP and Google's Vision Transformer, can recognize objects and scenes in images and videos with remarkable precision. By combining these language and visual models, researchers hope to create more advanced AI systems that can understand the world in a more human-like way. However, these models also raise concerns about data bias, computational resources, and the potential for misuse, and researchers are actively working to address these issues. Overall, large models are at the forefront of the field of AI and hold great promise for the development of more advanced, intelligent machines.  

The Digital Era 

The 21st century was marked by a significant increase in the volume, velocity, and variety of data being generated and collected. With the rise of digital technologies and the Internet, data began to be generated at an unprecedented scale and speed, from a wide range of sources including social media, sensors, and transactional systems. Let’s us remind you of some of them: 

• The growth of the Internet: The Internet rapidly grew in size and popularity during the 1990s, creating vast amounts of data that could be analyzed for insights. 
• The proliferation of digital devices: The widespread use of smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices has created a massive amount of data from sensors, location tracking, and user interactions. 
• The growth of social media: Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have created enormous amounts of data through user-generated content, such as posts, comments, and likes. 
• The rise of e-commerce: Online shopping and e-commerce platforms generate large amounts of data on consumer behavior, preferences, and transactions 

These and other trends led to a significant increase in the amount of data being generated and collected and created a need for new technologies and approaches to manage and analyze this data. This led to the development of big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, and NoSQL databases, as well as new techniques for data processing and analysis, including machine learning and deep learning. Actually, the rise of big data was a key driver of the development of deep learning techniques, as traditional machine learning approaches were often unable to effectively analyze and extract insights from large and complex data sets. 

Deep learning algorithms, which use artificial neural networks with multiple layers, were able to overcome these limitations by learning from vast amounts of data and recognizing complex patterns and relationships within that data. This enabled the development of powerful models capable of processing a wide range of data types, including text, images, and audio. As these models became more sophisticated and capable of handling larger and more complex data sets, they gave rise to a new era of AI and machine learning, with applications in fields such as natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics. Overall, the development of deep learning has been a major breakthrough in the field of AI, and it has opened up new possibilities for data analysis, automation, and decision-making across a wide range of industries and applications. 

A synergy of Big, Deep, Large 

Large languages and visual models, such as GPT3/GTP4 and CLIP, are special because they are capable of processing and understanding large amounts of complex data, including text, images, and other forms of information. These models use deep learning techniques to analyze and learn from vast amounts of data, allowing them to recognize patterns, make predictions, and generate high-quality outputs. One of the key advantages of large language models is their ability to generate natural language text that closely resembles human writing. These models can produce coherent and convincing written passages on a wide range of topics, making them useful for applications such as language translation, content creation, and chatbots. Similarly, large visual models are capable of recognizing and categorizing images with remarkable accuracy. They can identify objects, scenes, and even emotions depicted in images, and can generate detailed descriptions of what they see. The unique capabilities of these models have many practical applications in fields such as natural language processing, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, and they have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology and process information. 

The combination of large language and large visual models can provide several synergies that can be leveraged in a variety of applications. These synergies include: 

• Improved multimodal understanding: Large language models are excellent at processing text data, while large visual models are excellent at processing image and video data. When these models are combined, they can create a more comprehensive understanding of the context in which the data is presented. This can lead to more accurate predictions and better decision-making. 

• Improved recommendation systems: By combining large language and visual models, it is possible to create more accurate and personalized recommendation systems. For example, in e-commerce, a model could use image recognition to understand a customer's preferences based on their previous purchases or product views, and then use language processing to recommend products that are most relevant to the customer's preferences. 
• Enhanced chatbots and virtual assistants: Combining large language and visual models can improve the accuracy and naturalness of chatbots and virtual assistants. For example, a virtual assistant could use image recognition to understand the context of a user's request, and then use language processing to provide a more accurate and relevant response. 
• Improved search functionality: By combining large language and visual models, it is possible to create more accurate and comprehensive search functionality. For example, a search engine could use image recognition to understand the content of an image, and then use language processing to provide more relevant search results based on the image's content. 
• Enhanced content creation: Combining large language and visual models can also enhance content creation, such as in video editing or advertising. For example, a video editing tool could use image recognition to identify objects in a video, and then use language processing to generate captions or other text overlays based on the content of the video. 
• More efficient training: Large language and visual models can be trained separately and then combined, which can be more efficient than training a single large model from scratch. This is because training a large model from scratch can be computationally intensive and time-consuming while training smaller models and then combining them can be faster and more efficient. 

Overall, the combination of large language and visual models can lead to more accurate, efficient, and comprehensive data processing and analysis, and can be leveraged in a wide range of applications, from natural language processing to computer vision and robotics. 

GAI or not GAI 

It is difficult to predict whether the development of large models will eventually lead to the creation of general artificial intelligence (GAI), as GAI is a highly complex and theoretical concept that remains the subject of much debate and speculation in the field of artificial intelligence. While large models have made significant advances in areas such as natural language processing, image recognition, and robotics, they are still limited by their training data and programming and are not yet capable of true generalization or autonomous learning. Furthermore, the creation of GAI would require breakthroughs in several areas of AI research, including unsupervised learning, reasoning, and decision-making. While large models are a step in the right direction, they are still far from achieving the level of intelligence and adaptability necessary for GAI. In short, while the development of large models is an important step towards more advanced forms of artificial intelligence, it is still uncertain whether they will ultimately lead to the creation of general artificial intelligence. 

Challenges 

Data bias is a significant concern in large models, as these models are trained on massive datasets that can contain biased or discriminatory data. Data bias occurs when the data used to train a model does not represent the diversity of the real-world population, resulting in the model producing biased or discriminatory outputs. For example, if a large language model is trained on text data that is biased against a particular gender or ethnicity, the model may produce biased or discriminatory language when generating text or making predictions. Similarly, if a large visual model is trained on image data that is biased against certain groups, the model may produce biased or discriminatory outputs when performing tasks such as object recognition or image captioning. Data bias can have serious consequences, as it can perpetuate and even amplify existing social and economic inequalities. It is therefore crucial to identify and mitigate data bias in large models, both during training and during deployment. 

One way to mitigate data bias is to ensure that the datasets used to train large models are diverse and representative of the real-world population. This can be achieved through careful dataset curation and augmentation, as well as through the use of fairness metrics and techniques during model training and evaluation. In addition, it is important to regularly monitor and audit large models for bias and to take corrective action when necessary. This can involve retraining the model on more diverse data or using post-processing techniques to correct biased outputs. Overall, data bias is a significant concern in large models, and it is crucial to take proactive measures to identify and mitigate bias in order to ensure that these models are fair and equitable.  

Ethics Side 

The decision by OpenAI to give exclusive commercial rights to Microsoft for its large language model GPT-3 has generated some debate within the AI community. On one hand, it can be argued that partnering with a large tech company like Microsoft can provide the resources and funding necessary to further advance AI research and development. Additionally, Microsoft has committed to using GPT-3 in a responsible and ethical way and has pledged to invest in the development of AI that is aligned with OpenAI's mission. On the other hand, some have raised concerns about the potential for Microsoft to monopolize access to GPT-3 and other advanced AI technologies, which could limit innovation and create power imbalances in the tech industry. Additionally, some have argued that OpenAI's decision to grant exclusive commercial rights to Microsoft goes against its stated mission of advancing AI in a safe and beneficial way, as it may prioritize commercial interests over societal benefits. Ultimately, whether OpenAI's decision to give exclusive commercial rights to Microsoft is "ok" or not depends on one's perspective and values. While there are valid concerns about the potential risks and drawbacks of such a partnership, there are also potential benefits and opportunities that could arise from working with a large tech company like Microsoft. It is up to the AI community and society as a whole to closely monitor the impact of this partnership and ensure that AI is developed and deployed in a way that is safe, beneficial, and equitable for all. 

Market Share 

Each of these models has its own strengths and weaknesses, and they can be used for a variety of natural language processing tasks such as language translation, text generation, question answering, and more. As an AI language model, ChatGPT is considered one of the most advanced and effective language models currently available. However, there are other models that have been developed that can outperform ChatGPT on certain tasks, depending on the specific metrics being used to evaluate performance. For example, some models have achieved higher scores on benchmark natural language processing tasks such as GLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) or SuperGLUE, which evaluate a model's ability to understand and reason about natural language text. These models include: 

• GShard-GPT3, a large-scale language model developed by Google that achieved state-of-the-art performance on several NLP benchmarks 
• T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer), also developed by Google, which has achieved strong performance on a wide range of NLP tasks 
• GPT-Neo, a community-driven project that aims to develop large-scale language models that are similar to GPT-3, but are more accessible and can be trained on a wider range of hardware 

It is worth noting, however, that performance on these benchmarks is just one aspect of a language model's overall capabilities, and that ChatGPT and other models may outperform these models on other tasks or in real-world applications. Additionally, the field of AI is constantly evolving, and new models are being developed all the time that may push the boundaries of what is possible.

Useful Links 

1. What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
2. OpenAI's GPT-3: https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-unleashed/ 
3. Google's BERT: https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/open-sourcing-bert-state-of-art-pre.html 
4. Facebook's RoBERTa: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/roberta-an-optimized-method-for-pretraining-self-supervised-nlp-systems/ 
5. Google's T5: https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/02/exploring-transfer-learning-with-t5.html 
6. OpenAI's CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training): https://openai.com/blog/clip/ 
7. Microsoft's Turing-NLG: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/microsoft-announces-turing-nlg-state-of-the-art-model-for-natural-language-generation/
8. Hugging Face's Transformer Library: https://huggingface.co/transformers/

 
 
Ihar Rubanau is Senior Data Scientist at Sigma Software Group