Lage Raho : Staying Grounded in the Ever-Evolving World of AI
Despite a frenzy and all sorts of reactions to DeepSeek’s achievement, I believe everything is normal and along expected lines:
1. What made anyone think that disruption will not happen? Maybe it was not from an expected source and in the immediate term, but that’s fine. If you’ve read Innovators Dilemma, you know what I am talking about.
2. The US definitely has the $$$ and the lead in most things IT and that includes by a wide range, when it comes to AI. But what does that really mean? The US itself is not a closed garden. Most of the incumbents have released their papers and approaches in the open. Everyone including the incumbents have benefited from that. Collaboration works better for everyone, so no surprises here.
3. Its a bit surprising to see that most people think that optimization and clever use of hardware, software techniques to achieve a multiple with lower resources was not going to happen. Look back at just 3 decades and you will see how purpose-built, low-cost hardware to build out networks swung the tide during the internet boom. All is well here too.
4. Less said about the financial markets, the better. The big players will continue to make money on a swing either way. As an individual, stay long and trust your instinct. No change in my opinion.
5. Foundational models on their own will not cut it for a product that solves a problem and needs to be scaled to 1000s of users. Similarly if you’ve done enterprise work, you know that you need a development stack and a deployment environment that you can run and manage, with your team. Nothing has changed here at all.
6. Tech Influencers are rightly getting excited with all the happenings and I am happy that they are, wether authentic or not. They help us see the things from various angles. They have always done that with the flavor of the week/month. No change here too.
7. The advice to dive in and keep building is golden and continues to ring true with every new technology, tool, framework, process that comes our way. We are always getting started.
And as they say लगे रहो (Lage Raho) (Carry On)…
