The business model of GitHub Copilot

Since GPT-2, there has been much excitement around the applications of large language models. And in the past few years, we’ve seen LLMs used for many exciting tasks, such as writing articles, designing websites, creating images, and even writing code.

But as I have argued before, there’s a wide gap between showing a new technology do something cool and using the same technology to create a successful product with a workable business model.

Microsoft, I think, just launched the first real LLM product with the public release of GitHub Copilot last week. This is an application that has a strong product/market fit, has immense added value, is hard to beat, is cost-efficient, has very strong distribution channels, and can become a source of great profit.

GitHub Copilot’s release is a reminder of two things: First, LLMs are fascinating, but they are useful when applied to specific tasks as opposed to artificial general intelligence. And second, the nature of LLMs put large tech companies like Microsoft and Google at an unfair advantage to commercialize them—LLMs are not democratic.

Read the full article on TechTalks.

For more on AI business:

• A framework for enterprise AI adoption

• What Hugging Face and Microsoft’s collaboration means for applied AI

• DataRobot’s vision to democratize machine learning with no-code AI

• AI’s J-curve and upcoming productivity boom