The CEO and co-founder of automation software giant Appian said that money is not the deciding factor in success when racing to develop artificial intelligence (AI).
Matt Calkins, in an interview with CNBC, said that although Internet giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are investing billions of dollars in emerging technology, this is not an area that can “use money to make money”.
This comment refers to the high-value agreements that Microsoft and Amazon have just made with OpenAI and Anthropic.
The Windows manufacturing company has invested a total of 13 billion USD in OpenAI, an agreement that allows Microsoft to have a stake in the hottest AI startup today and bring the GPT language model to its cloud platform.
Similarly, Microsoft has an agreement with Mistral worth about 16 million USD of shares in the French-based AI company.
Meanwhile, Amazon just poured $4 billion into Anthropic, the company that owns the Claude AI system. Shareholders of this AI company also include search giant Google, with an investment of 2 billion USD.
Not every time you spend money, you will have success in the field of AI.
Agreements by Microsoft or Amazon are falling under the radar of UK authorities with concerns that they could reduce competition in the market.
However, Calkins said that, regardless of whether the above deals are investments or acquisitions that threaten healthy competition or not, there is always a “gap” in the AI field for innovators to show off their talents.
“This is a market for smart people. Having enough money to buy part or all of startups like Anthropic or Mistral is also impressive, but money is not everything in this market,” said CEO Appian. “If we only used money, giants like Google would have won a long time ago” – a reference to the DeepMind acquisition worth $500 million.
According to Appian’s founder, “there will be different AI algorithms for different purposes and they will be more or less valuable depending on how we use the data for training.”
With this perspective, the only way for AI systems to become truly intelligent and useful is to understand what users want in everyday tasks. “The best AI platform is the one the data is pushed into, not who can buy the biggest system.”
Data is the prerequisite
The AI race today is shifting to “how much data can be consumed” rather than how smart the system is.
Tech giants are “doing everything they can to get most of the data,” but the game will get tougher.
Currently, there are no strict laws preventing Big Tech from collecting AI training data, leading to privacy violations. The US government is still struggling with the federal process, while Europe has a more “favorable” start.
Explaining this, Calkins said it is partly because the government in the US has an overly “friendly” approach to technology businesses.
In March, the EU officially approved the AI Act – the first comprehensive set of rules governing the field of artificial intelligence.
Businesses need to be clear about how they can use AI safely and ensure things like protecting intellectual property and users’ personal privacy.
“We need a clear playing field and companies need to know what data they are allowed to use,” concluded Appian CEO.