Greetings from the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. It is breathtakingly beautiful up here. I'm taking a couple of days of PTO, but the news goes on…
Google has announced a new family of "open" AI models. The company The release includes two model sizes, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, each available in pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants.
Gemma models are not fully open source, but Google is making key technical details (such as model weights) publicly accessible. This lets developers build their own AI applications while still providing some control over the models' usage and distribution. In addition to the models, Google also announced its Responsible Generative AI Toolkit, which includes guidance and tools for creating safer AI applications.
We're still testing Gemma 2 2B and 7B, so I can't comment on Google's claims that Gemma 2 2B benchmarks about as well as GPT 3.5, but the specifics are less important than the trend. We are going to see very capable small models that will run well on smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Imagine how consumer behaviors will change in a world where AI can run locally (no network or cloud required) on any device restricted only by required outcomes (business rules). That's what's coming. The trend is clear.
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
P.S. Thank you all for the zillions of emails and texts I've received over the past few days regarding Google's ad, my post about , and my follow-up, .
In response to yesterday's blog, a friend (who is a retired robo-spammer) reached out to tell me I omitted the biggest reason anti-AI-spam laws and regulations won't be effective. Of the (which make up about 45% of all email traffic globally), only about 11.3% of these messages originate inside the U.S. Our rules and regulations may apply to bad actors around the globe, but we don't have effective ways to enforce them outside of our jurisdiction.
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
