At the recently held RTE2024 Real-Time Internet Conference, industry leaders conducted an in-depth analysis of trends in the AI sector. With OpenAI significantly reducing its API call costs and increasing price competition in the Chinese market, generative AI is driving industry changes at an unprecedented pace.
Zhao Bin, founder and CEO of Agora, highlighted that the focus of technological development over the next 10 to 20 years will be enhancing the capabilities of large models at the endpoint. This transformation is expected to unfold across four main areas:
1. Endpoint devices will evolve into AI PCs and AI Phones.
2. Software development will shift from “Software with AI” to “AI Native Software.”
3. Cloud services will fully support model training and inference.
4. Human-computer interaction will prioritize natural language dialogue.
A recent report from McKinsey predicts that the global generative AI market will grow from $67 billion in 2023 to $1.3 trillion by 2032, boasting a staggering compound annual growth rate of 42%. In light of this growth, Agora has announced a partnership with the unicorn model company MiniMax to develop China’s first Real-Time API.
In terms of cost reduction in technology, there are optimistic forecasts. Jia Yangqing, founder of Lepton AI, anticipates that AI inference costs could drop to one-tenth of current levels within a year. Furthermore, advancements in model compression technologies have made the performance of smaller models nearly comparable to large ones, positioning the “open-source + fine-tuning” approach as the mainstream choice for enterprise applications.
However, industry experts also caution about potential risks associated with AI development. Wang Tiezhen, an engineer at Hugging Face, noted that while concerns about AI replacing humans may be premature, negative impacts are already evident in certain areas, such as video falsification affecting society and the mental health of young people. These challenges, however, also present opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship.
MiniMax partner Wei Wei expressed optimism about the potential applications of multimodal AI in the creative industries. He believes that as multimodal technologies mature, AI will significantly enhance efficiency in areas such as text, speech, music, and video, driving upgrades in related industries.
