What does a leaked Google memo reveal about the future of AI?

THEY HAVEAPIAIAIGPTLLMAILLMLLMAI changed the world by writing software. But techy types are also known for composing lengthy memos in prose, the most famous of which have marked turning points in computing. Think of Bill Gates’s “Internet tidal wave” memo of 1995, which reoriented Microsoft towards the web; or Jeff Bezos’s “ mandate” memo of 2002, which opened up Amazon’s digital infrastructure, paving the way for modern cloud computing. Now techies are abuzz about another memo, this time leaked from within Google, titled “We have no moat”. Its unknown author details the astonishing progress being made in —and challenges some long-held assumptions about the balance of power in this fast-moving industry. burst into the public consciousness with the launch in late 2022 of , a chatbot powered by a “large language model” () made by Open, a startup closely linked to Microsoft. Its success prompted Google and other tech firms to release their own -powered . Such systems can generate text and hold realistic conversations because they have been trained using trillions of words taken from the internet. Training a large takes months and costs tens of millions of dollars. This led to concerns that would be dominated by a few deep-pocketed firms.