AI Year in Review 2023

27/12/2023 11:09:29 (GMT)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st century. In 2023, AI continued to make significant strides in various fields, including healthcare, education, creative arts, and political discourse. Here at Quanovo we believe the following have been at the forefront of AI discussion and development over the past year.

Generative AI

The year saw remarkable progress in large language models, such as GPT-4, which enabled generative AI to emerge as the most prominent and impactful story of the year. These models showcased impressive abilities in domains ranging from healthcare and education to creative arts and political discourse. Using these techniques this year has seen models match or surpass human performance in some intricate tasks, such as answering complex medical exam questions, generating persuasive political messages, and even choreographing human dance animations to match diverse pieces of music.

Open Source and Ownership

The year was marked by Open-source AI becoming a critical driver of innovation in the field, enabling researchers and developers to build on each other's work and create new applications. However, the year also saw debates around licensing and intellectual property, with some companies seeking to restrict access to their AI models. Numerous legal arguments were heard by courts in nations around the world on this topic with decisions being made in favour of both sides. This tension between openness and proprietary control is likely to continue in the coming years and will undoubtably shape the future of AI funding and development.

Climate

In 2023, AI-powered climate modelling made significant strides in improving the speed, accuracy, and accessibility of weather forecasting and other climate applications IBM and NASA collaborated to build an AI foundation model for weather and climate, which can help scientists estimate the extent of past floods and wildfires, map urban heat islands, track reforestation, and predict hurricanes, droughts, and other extreme events. The model is based on a general base of knowledge that can perform many tasks with additional training and task-specific examples. Other potential applications include helping climate experts infer high-resolution information from low-res data and identify conditions conducive to wildfires.
In addition, researchers from around the world proposed developing models with a moderately high resolution (tens of kilometers), providing a stronger scientific foundation for parameterizations of smaller-scale processes, using machine learning to fill in the gaps. The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also recognized that AI-driven technologies offer previously unheard-of capabilities to process enormous volumes of data, extract insightful knowledge, and improve predictive models.

These are just a few of the significant AI advancements achieved in 2023. AI is rapidly evolving and has the potential to revolutinize many industries. It will be exciting to see what the future holds for AI in 2024. Here at Quanovo we believe that the coming year will see the biggest impact to AI will likely come from further advancements to Generative AI as the technology continues to gain popularity amongst the wider public and is integrated more closely in tools that people use both in their jobs and in their everyday lives.