watsonx.ai

 I attended the Information AI Summit in San Francisco, where I had the opportunity to connect with and hear from amazing leaders in the AI space.

Here’s the 7 bets we all should make:

1. Stay Agnostic - Avoid the risk of proprietary lock-in by remaining flexible with your choice of LLM providers.

2. Build Unique Value - Add value beyond the models with frontier data procurement, post-training phases, and fine-tuning that develops your IP. It’s about Day 2 to Day 100+—continuously improving, evaluating, and building smarter, probabilistic software.

3. From Cost to Innovation - As LLMs plateau in raw progress, the focus shifts to making AI applicable/

4. Higher-Level Services - Developers are seeking high-level services on top of models. The competitive edge lies in delivering rapid innovation, a faster product roadmap, and quicker time to market.

5. The Future of Models - Smaller, more data-efficient models are outperforming the larger ones, driving significant cost savings. Open models are catching up, offering flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The real battle is not just in size but in how well your stack is optimized.

6. Enterprise Lessons - Large models might shine in POCs, but production demands careful optimization. It’s not just about scale; it’s about smarter, more cost-effective deployment.

7. Your Competitive Edge - Your data is your secret weapon. Build custom models that leverage your unique assets, incrementally adding knowledge to outperform larger competitors at a fraction of the cost.

The real opportunity in AI lies in the Application Layer.

In the end, it’s about creating applications that don’t just work — they continuously evolve, adding real-world value in ways we’ve only begun to explore.

I would to get your thoughts on the above.