The USA Leaders
10 December 2024
San Jose – The hype around artificial intelligence (AI) has soared to dizzying heights, but as 2025 looms, something unexpected seems to be happening—a slowdown. Industry leaders like Google CEO Sundar Pichai are signaling that we may be entering a pause, a moment where the breakneck speed of AI innovation falters. The AI progress slowdown rings a bell for many in a positive and negative manner.
So, is this a glitch, or just a strategic breather before the next leap forward?
Why the AI Progress Slowdown?
At a recent event, Pichai shared his prediction that AI’s development will decelerate in 2025, suggesting that the “low-hanging fruit” of breakthroughs is almost exhausted. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoes similar sentiments. But here’s the nuance: It’s not that progress is stopping; it’s that the next frontier demands a lot more muscle—more innovation, more computing power, and more investment.
For years, AI has felt like a freight train of endless progress. But there are signs of fatigue. Companies are noticing diminishing returns from scaling up their models. For instance, training GPT-4 required around 25,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs, with estimated training costs surpassing $100 million. OpenAI’s unreleased Orion model reportedly fell short of expectations despite similar levels of investment.
The question on everyone’s mind: How much more juice can we squeeze out of current tech before we need a radical breakthrough?
The Cost of Moving Forward
The road ahead is expensive. AI models like GPT-4 already demand staggering amounts of resources. Training these models is estimated to consume tens of gigawatt-hours of electricity—equivalent to powering thousands of homes for a year. Pushing further could require millions of GPUs and infrastructure that dwarfs anything we’ve seen before.
The price tag? Some experts project that training the next generation of AI models could cost upwards of $1 billion.
To cope, companies are exploring post-training optimizations, like OpenAI’s o1-preview, which aims to improve efficiency without fresh, resource-intensive training. But these efforts are tweaks, not game-changers.
A Plateau, or Just the Calm Before the Storm?
Not everyone is convinced we’re hitting a wall. AI research has a history of progress surges followed by lulls. Consider this: It took 33 months to move from GPT-3 to GPT-4. Similarly, advances in hardware efficiency have historically lagged behind software innovations.
The 2024 debut of NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture promises a 30% increase in AI processing power compared to the previous generation. Is this slowdown merely the industry catching its breath?
But a pause could also be strategic. Ethical frameworks and regulatory bodies are struggling to keep pace with AI’s rapid evolution. The European Union’s proposed AI Act and the Biden Administration’s recent executive order on AI safety underscore the urgency for guardrails. A slowdown might give society—and lawmakers—a much-needed chance to catch up.
The Growing Divide: AI Leaders vs. AI Laggards
Here’s the thing: If AI innovation slows, not everyone feels the pinch equally. The gap between AI adopters and non-adopters threatens to widen dramatically. According to a 2023 McKinsey Global Survey, 56% of companies have adopted AI in at least one function, but smaller businesses often lag behind due to costs and lack of expertise.
Meanwhile, countries like the United States and China are pouring billions into AI, with the U.S. government pledging $3 billion for AI research in 2024 alone. Developing nations, however, face infrastructure gaps that prevent them from competing on this scale.
What’s Next?
AI’s journey isn’t over; it’s evolving. The AI progress slowdown isn’t a shutdown. Think of it as a power nap before the next marathon of progress. The future of AI might not be a straight sprint. It could be a series of bursts—each one reshaping the world a little more.
Whether this pause lasts months or years, one thing remains certain: AI’s potential is too vast, too transformative, to be permanently stalled. This is a moment for recalibration, for asking tough questions, and maybe, just maybe, for catching our collective breath.
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