A leaked memo from a Google employee makes a bold claim that's taking hold in Silicon Valley and beyond: Big Tech's advantage in artificial intelligence is shrinking quickly.
The memo, published Thursday on the website for the tech research firm SemiAnalysis, soon became a top story on AI forums, including the popular HackerNews message board and Reddit's /r/MachineLearning community, which has more than 2.6 million members, and sparked commentary from some of the biggest names in AI. A Google spokesperson confirmed the memo was authentic but said it was the opinion of one senior employee, not necessarily the company as a whole. "We've done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI," the memo said. "But the uncomfortable truth is, we aren't positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI." "I'm talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us," it continued. "While our models still hold a slight edge in terms of quality, the gap is closing astonishingly quickly." Tech companies spent years developing AI in a behind-the-scenes arms race, only to see OpenAI burst onto the scene with the release of ChatGPT. Other generative AI systems, which can create content based on a user's prompt, have skyrocketed in popularity and quality. OpenAI announced a massive deal with Google competitor Microsoft in January. In response, Google rushed to release its counterpart program, Bard. And while those companies are working to integrate AI into many parts of their existing businesses, that doesn't mean the technology will further solidify their grip on the tech industry. The Google employee wrote that both Google and Microsoft have neglected the growing community of programmers and companies that rely on publicly available…