When Open AI's GPT-3 model made its debut in May of 2020, its performance was widely considered to be the literal state of the art. Capable of generating text indiscernible from human-crafted prose, GPT-3 set a new standard in deep learning. Researchers from the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence announced on Tuesday the release of their own generative deep learning model, Wu Dao, a mammoth AI seemingly capable of doing everything GPT-3 can do, and more. First off, Wu Dao is flat out enormous. It's been trained on 1.75 trillion parameters (essentially, the model's self-selected coefficients) which is a full ten times larger than the 175 billion GPT-3 was trained on and 150 billion parameters larger than Google's Switch Transformers.

Talk of artificial intelligence goes almost inexorably to the very large. Companies, it is said, must embrace big data, along with future human-like AI, or be lost to history. But some tech leaders are going the other way: urging businesses to start thinking small. What's happening: This growing mantra speaks of the upside of narrow AI ambitions, and small data. But by small bore, they don't mean small results.

The road to human-level artificial intelligence is long and wildly uncertain. Most AI programs today are one-trick ponies. They can recognise faces, the sound of your voice, translate foreign languages, trade stocks and play chess. They may well have got the trick down pat, but one-trick ponies they remain. Google's DeepMind program, AlphaGo, can beat the best human players at Go, but it hasn't a clue how to play tiddlywinks, shove ha'penny, or tell one end of a horse from the other.

Sony (NYSE:SNE) launched its PS4 Slim this week with the PS4 Pro set to debut in November. These new models are set to dominate for the Christmas season and reinforce the company's lead over Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nintendo (OTCPK:NTDOY). Their Virtual Reality product will also be there to tempt the consumer for the holiday season. In particular this will appeal to the youth dynamic, the holy grail for marketing departments. The PS4 is a terrific profit center for Sony but it is not the only ace in the pack for the company.