"CRISPR gene editing technology is like an operating system that scientists can build biotech apps on" - an idea from 'The Code Breaker' by W. Isaacson that blew my mind.

CRISPR had an explosive impact on the biotech world as it offered a foundational tool that scientists/practitioners could use to bring their use-cases, or 'apps' to life. Be it to edit a gene to act as a diagnostic tool, to act as a mechanism for vaccines, or to edit out undesirable diseased genes. 'Bio-hackers' even had home-kits for gene editing!

The more ubiquitous and pervasive example that touches most humans - is how computer operating systems (OS) such as Unix-based Mac OSX, Windows, or the open-source Ubuntu OS distributions have made possible the computing devices and software that now act as an extension of our lives. (As an aside: Ubuntu philosophy)

The point I am getting to is that an Operating System acts as a platform, that unlocks the potential of human ingenuity by allowing the creation of applications (apps) on it.

In a similar way, Large Language Models (LLMs) have started resembling a platform on which other apps can be built. We are already witnessing the avalanche of new tools built atop ChatGPT and GPT-4 APIs. You can automate digital tasks with AutoGPT, code with Github Copilot, have personalised AI tutors at Khan Academy.

A nuance in this surge of LLM-powered AI apps is that these creations are built atop APIs to LLMs created by the few leading AI players, and most of them do not have actual access to the model (unless using open source models). Such mass-scale use of centralised ML models is unprecedented. Here's an Interesting twitter thread on whether LLM-owning companies will have a moat. The situation reminds me of the OS-business, and I wonder if OpenAI, etc will become the future Windows in the LLM space? Perhaps we'll also have customisable open source versions of LLMs that the community collectively maintains - much like the many flavours of Ubuntu. I hope so.