In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence in 2024, large model technology has seen revolutionary breakthroughs. With the emergence of OpenAI's Sora and several tech giants launching heavyweight products, the market monopoly of GPT-4 has not only been disrupted, but there have also been dual breakthroughs in performance and pricing.
This year, competition in the AI arena has been exceptionally fierce, with 18 companies intensively releasing over 70 models, many of which surpass the performance of GPT-4. Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro has pioneered a new era of multimodal interaction with its groundbreaking long text processing and video understanding capabilities. Meanwhile, products like the Claude 3 series and Meta's Llama 3.3 have gained popularity among users for their outstanding performance, especially Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which has demonstrated remarkable strength in various evaluations.
Image Source Note: Image generated by AI, image authorized by service provider Midjourney
The reduction of technical barriers is another significant breakthrough this year. Models at the GPT-4 level, which previously required substantial computational power, can now run on standard laptops. For instance, Qwen 2.5-Coder-32B runs smoothly on an M2 MacBook Pro, providing unprecedented convenience for developers and everyday users.
In terms of pricing, intensified market competition has led to a significant decrease in service costs. Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash, priced at only $0.075 per million tokens, not only reflects the fierce market competition but also benefits from a substantial improvement in model efficiency. At the same time, the energy consumption per call has been greatly reduced, easing the environmental burden while providing efficient services.
The development of large models in 2024 showcases dual breakthroughs in performance enhancement and cost reduction, expanding application boundaries and allowing ordinary users to access top-tier AI technology at a low threshold. This series of advancements indicates that AI technology is entering a more open and inclusive new era.
