This podcast episode covers Mary Meeker's AI Trends report, delving into the unprecedented pace and scope of change currently being catalysed by Artificial Intelligence. We'll uncover why this revolution is ramping up materially faster than even the early days of the Internet, profoundly impacting everything from technology to finance, society, and geopolitics.
Join us to explore the staggering financial dynamics of AI. While AI model training costs are "extraordinarily high and rising fast", reaching into the billions of dollars for frontier models, the cost of actually using these models – known as inference – is plummeting at an astounding rate, with some costs falling by 99.7% over just two years. This seemingly paradoxical trend is fuelling an explosion in AI adoption and usage across consumers, developers, enterprises, and governments globally. You'll learn how major tech companies are investing tens of billions annually in CapEx to build "AI factories".
We also confront the intense global competition for AI leadership, particularly between the USA and China, where "AI leadership could beget geopolitical leadership". Discover how open-source AI models are rapidly closing the performance gap with proprietary systems, challenging traditional monetization models and fostering a "race to the top" for some, and a "race to the bottom" for others.
Finally, we examine the real and rapid evolution of work, as AI agents are increasingly designed to "do work" rather than merely respond to prompts. We'll discuss how companies like Shopify and Duolingo are embracing an "AI-first" approach, and how this shift means "you're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI". Moreover, find out how AI is transforming the physical world, from autonomous vehicles to agricultural modernisation, and how the next wave of Internet users might experience an AI-native, agent-driven online world from the get-go. It's "gametime for AI," and it's only "getting more intense".
