Are We Nearing the End of ML Modeling?

Josh Tobin, the co-founder and CEO of machine learning tool provider Gantry, didn't want to believe it at first. But Tobin, who previously worked as a research scientist at OpenAI, eventually came to the conclusion that it was true: The end of traditional ML modeling is upon us. The idea that you didn't need to train a machine learning model anymore and can get better results by just using off-the-shelf models without any tuning on your own custom data seemed wrong to Tobin, who spent years learning how to build these systems. When he first heard of the idea after starting his ML tool business Gantry, which he co-founded in 2021 with fellow OpenAI alum Vicky Cheung, he didn't want to believe it. "The first four or five times I heard that, my thinking was like, okay, these companies just don't know what they're doing," Tobin said.