Intel CEO suggests AI can help to create a one-person Unicorn
- Reference: 1712737746
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/10/intel_ceo_ai_automation/
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He described this as the age of AI functions, in which agents – think highly tuned, application-specific models – start to interact with other agents to complete tasks. "Literally entire departments become AI automated solutions," he envisioned. "Maybe we'll have the age of the first one-person, billion-dollar company." In StartupLand parlance, that's a "Unicorn".
Naturally, Gelsinger would prefer if the hardware used to train and run these AI agents and functions were created, or at the very least manufactured, by Intel. Throughout his roughly hundred-minute keynote address, he touched on everything from AI PCs capable of running models at home and Xeon 6 servers capable of running modestly sized chatbots like LLama2-70B, to the Habana team's flagship Gaudi3 accelerator. The latter, Intel [1]contends , is capable of going toe-to-toe with Nvidia's H100.
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Gelsinger is counting on widespread adoption of AI infrastructure and services to fuel Intel's future growth. "I simply call it: every company becomes an AI company and this becomes the driving force of this expanding semiconductor TAM [total addressable market] from about $600 billion to more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade," he predicted.
[3]
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And – as Gelsinger later pointed out – to sell its hardware and claim a meaningful share of the AI infrastructure market, Intel is going to have to deliver tangible business outcomes.
According to Accenture's chief AI officer Lan Guan, one of the technology's biggest obstacles is "ambiguous value realization."
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This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The AI accelerators used to train and run large language models – like those underpinning Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini – are incredibly expensive.
"Many clients are telling me it is really hard to realize value from their AI investments," Guan told Gelsinger on stage.
Because of this, the idea of replacing whole swaths of knowledge workers with AI is no doubt a tantalizing prospect for enterprises – and a terrifying one for workers.
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Intel is well aware of this. The x86 giant has already committed to training 30 million people to work with AI – either in their current role, or a new one – by 2030. And last week, the chip biz [7]joined other tech titans to form a consortium to determine which jobs are most likely to be initially eliminated by AI and which workers can be retrained.
[8]PC shipments up for first quarter thanks to AI, say analysts
[9]Google Cloud chief is really psyched about this AI thing
[10]Arm CEO warns AI's power appetite could devour 25% of US electricity by 2030
[11]Intel Gaudi's third and final hurrah is an AI accelerator built to best Nvidia's H100
The good news, according to Gelsinger, is these changes aren't going to happen overnight. It seems there's still a lot of work to be done before AI functions come for our jobs.
"We see this enterprise AI transformation happening right around us today, but we see it unfolding in three different stages," he opined.
The first he described as the "age of the AI copilot," in which smart assistants like those from Microsoft, Google, and others help to boost worker productivity. "We expect productivity improvements of maybe 25 percent from those kinds of capabilities," Gelsinger observed.
The next step, he predicted, will see the rise of AI agents which can handle more sophisticated tasks and automate entire workflows – like generating business reports. It will only be at that point when we can start stringing them together into AI functions, he concluded. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/intel_gaudi_ai_accelerator/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZhZjQa7PW82K8pazhEoMxwAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZhZjQa7PW82K8pazhEoMxwAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZhZjQa7PW82K8pazhEoMxwAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZhZjQa7PW82K8pazhEoMxwAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZhZjQa7PW82K8pazhEoMxwAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai_replacement_jobs/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/pc_shipments_canalys_idc/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/google_cloud_next_ai/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/ai_datacenters_unsustainable/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/intel_gaudi_ai_accelerator/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
There's a whole chunk missing: how will the economy work? Given that millions of people will be out of work, is the "Unicorn" model based on goods and services being provided for free or will people be given free money to spend? AIs aren't free; even discounting the development and learning costs, the power consumption is massive. If so few people are working then the tax take will drop so will the Unicorns pay all the tax? I really am at a loss to understand how they think this will work. We don't see the current crop of tech bros philanthropically sharing their rewards - indeed they are trying to increase/consolidate their wealth and power - so is there any reason to think that any of the AI "pioneers" are seeing a future where they share out the resulting wealth?
To me this feels just like the bloke who builds a boat in his garden without thinking about how to get it to the sea and when he'll have time to sail it. All the focus is on the boat at the moment.
Redistribution
The fall incomes from those made redundant will provide the return on capital for the Ai investment. A radical alternative would be for Gov's to make employing people less expensive by moving taxation to spending and not employment.
> To me this feels just like the bloke who builds a boat in his garden without thinking about how to get it to the sea and when he'll have time to sail it. All the focus is on the boat at the moment.
I think there's a story in some old books about a guy who did that in defiance of his neighbours' ridicule and it turned out alright when there was a bit of a downpour.
"Many clients are telling me it is really hard to realize value from their AI investments"
Ah, the sweet sound of dawning realizations that they've wasted lots of money on overhyped crap.
"entire departments become AI automated solutions"
Sounds like it's time to develop a consumer-centric AI to deal with the AI "call centres" that we will end up being "serviced" by.
Generating business reports with AI
Having had the misfortune of working with clients, I'm pretty certain that the constant flow "Could you change this" questions from somebody with too much self-importance and an MBA will be the thing that tips AIs over the edge into Destroy All Humans modes.