Welcome to Ai decoded, Fast company‘S weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of ai. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.
Half of all llm usage is for written computer code
The tech industry insists that ai will “transform” how companies, both large and small, operate. Tech VCS and AI Founders predict that Major Business Functions will be rested, one by one, to be handled by ai agents. For a while, many speech function would be transformed first. It wasn’t customer service, legal, or marketing: it was software development. Generative AI’s First Killer App is coding. Tools like cursor and windsurf can now complete software projects with minimal input or oversight from human engineers.
Businesses are rushing to capitalize on the efficiency gains offered by ai coding. Naveen Rao, Chief AI Officer at Databricks, Estimates that Coding Accounts for Half of All Large Language Model Usage Today. A 2024 github survey found that over 97% of developers have used ai coding tools at work, with 30% to 40% of organizations actively encouraging their adoption. (Github, Owned by Microsoft, Created One of the First Such Tools, Copilot. Google Ceo Sundar Pichai Echoed That Sentiment, Noting more than 30% of new code at Google is ai-generated.
The Soaring Valuations of Ai Coding Startups UndersCore The Momentum. Anyspare’s cursor just raised $ 900 million at a $ 9 billion Valuation – Up from $ 2.5 billion earlier this year. Meanwhile, Openai Acquired Windsurf (Formerly Codeium) for $ 3 billion.
And the tools are improving fast. Openai’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, Explained in a Recent interview that just five months ago, The company’s best model ranked around one-millionth on a well-line benown benown benown benown benown benown benown benown benown benown benown Coders – not great, but still in the top two or three percent. Today, Openai’s Top Model, O3, Ranks as the 175th Best Competitive Coder in the World on that Same Test. The rapid leap in performance sugges an ai coding assistant could song only claim the number-one spot. “Forever after that point computers will be better than humans at written code,” He said.
One Reason for the Progress: AI Coding tools are Gaining Stronger Reasoning Abilites and Can Process MUCH More Information at Once. While models retain general knowledge from pretraining, they depend on Specific Project-Related Input-SUCH as a Software Description-Provided by a Human’s Time to live This information is stored in short-term memory, Known as a context window. Currently, State-of-the-tools can productively consider fewer than 100,000 tokens (units representing words and words parts) at Once. But that number is bound to go up.
Google Deepmind Research Scientist Nikolay Savinov said in a recent interview that ai coding tools will soon support 10 million-token context windows –nd Eventically, 100 million. With that kind of memory, an Ai tool meeting Amounts of Human Instruction and even Analyze Annial Company’s existing code for guidance on how to build and optimize new system. “I imagine that we will very song get to superhuman coding ai systems that will be totally unrivished, the new tool for every for every coder in the world,” Savinov said.
Accenture Research Shows AI ‘Reinvenss’ of Business Still far Away
A Large Percentage of that First Wave of AI Projects, Numerous Industry Sources Have Told Me, Ran INTO UnfoORESEEN Problems – SUCH As Messy or Incomplete Data, Missing Infrastation Systems, and a Lack of in-House Expertise –and Never Made It ITO PRODUCTION. Many of the projects that did go live failed to prove they were worth the time, money, or effort. One Ai Company Founder Told Me That, Based on His Conversations with C-Live Executives, He Believes The success rate of first-wave ai projects was less than 10%.
The Global Consulting Firm Accenture Recently Published Research on What Separaates The Winners from the rest of the pack. The Firm Emphasizes the Importance of “Thinking Big”. Making Significant Investments in AI and Cloud Infrastructure. Accenture Reefers to Companies that Meet these Criteria and see tangible results as “Front runners.”
Yet Accenture’s Data Shows that Such Companies are Still in the Minority. After surveying executives at Nearly 2,000 companies with more than $ 1 billion in revenue, the firm found that only one-third (34%) Had Made Made A Long-Term In AI System FoCus Focused on a core business function. “Accenture’s Research Revealed that a small Minority of Companies.. It also found that among thats surveyed, 15% are ready to “reinvent” themselves with ai, 43% are “programsing,” and another 43% are “Merely experimenting.”
Some companies may have been better ignoring the Early Ai Hype and Waiting for the models, tools, and infrastructure to mature. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for learning by doing – Even if the first attempt falls shorts.
Google is putting ai models to work to work to work to work to protect online and phone scams
Online and phone scams, some of them powered by generative ai tools, surged in 2024 and continue to risk. Now, Google is deplying some of its latest ai models to help protect users from these threats. One such model is gemini nano, a lightweight ai that can run directly on a user’s device.
Now, when a chrome user enhanced protection mode in safe browsing -the browser’s highest security setting – the nano model runs locally to scan web content for signs of fractions of fractions. It can recognize Common Scam Tactics, Such as Bad Actor Posing as Remote Technical Support Staff, A Tactic Google Says is Bestic google The model is also capable of detecting novel scams it hasn’t encounters Before.
Google says it plans to use the on-device ai scam protection in the browser on mobile android devices in the future, and to expand the detection to more types of scams. Google Alredy Uses on-Device Ai to Detect Scams in other mobile apps. The company recently began warning android users of possible scams within text messages and phone calls.
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