LLMs and How They'll Play a Big Part in the Startup Game

2023 has been a transformative year for artificial intelligence (AI), impacting all industries and sectors. One only needs to look at the incredible strides made by ChatGPT in recent months to understand how AI is revolutionising how we work and use these Large Language Models (LLMs). It's effectively taken the concepts explored by a handful in the past decade and made them mainstream! Microsoft's Twitter bot Tay is a perfect example of how far we've come in the past few years alone.

In this blog post, we'll explore LLMs in general and how they are changing the startup and venture-building landscape.

Large Language Models

For those thinking LLMs are incredibly intelligent, you're right, but also, you're probably missing the critical element! It's the data that make them so intelligent.

 Data really powers everything that we do.” — Jeff Weiner

LLMs, like ChatGPT, function by using neural networking to predict the next word in a massive dataset based on a given prompt. The next word prediction is made by using complex algorithms to learn language patterns and structure. For those interested in just understanding this concept at an entry level, check out this CGP Grey YouTube video. Having watched it years ago, I still feel it's one of the best videos explaining how LLMs work.

Entering the Dawn of Autonomous LLMs

Autonomous LLM controls, like the now infamous Auto-GPT, can pull data from the internet in real-time, unlike ChatGPT, which works off a dataset from September 2021. This ability to access up-to-date information allows LLMs to stay at the forefront of recent trends and events.

This development has opened Pandora's box for anyone with an idea. I've been using Auto-GPT to help me summarise local news each morning to save me time visiting news outlet websites. However, this is just rudimentary in the scale of its capability. In our focus areas at MakerX, it is now possible to prototype ideas, validate concepts, and even navigate common startups and venture-building pitfalls, such as go-to-market strategies, financing, and more.

Startups and LLMs; What is Possible Now?

From my interactions with autonomous LLMs, here are some roles that autonomous integration can now assist in the startup and venture-building space:

1. Social Media Manager: It can quickly help build your social media strategies, and soon, tools like Auto-GPT and the LLMs behind them will continue to improve, allowing the images and videos it creates to be at a quality where they will need little refinement. We're not far from LLMs making memes!
2. Marketing: I've been able to use ChatGPT already as a way to help build go-to-market strategies, challenging conventional thinking that often prevents ideas and startups from taking off in the first place. It's evident by just the sheer amount of integrations and 'other AIs' being created in this space that any idea can be quickly spun-up and ideated on.
3. Research: Auto-GPT makes it incredibly easy to research the validity of your idea or find out if someone else is already doing it or something similar. You can even pull from their forums and app feedback to identify your unique advantage points for selling your idea/app to the market.
4. Legal: Privacy policies and usage rights are often left until the last minute, but OpenAI and its integrations can now introspect your repository, analyse code and documentation, and create tailored legal terms on what it sees!

Conclusion

LLMs are making the journey into startups and venture building more accessible and manageable. As a larger audience now floods LLMs, we can expect to see a surge of innovative projects and ideas taking off. Observing how this technology develops and who will be the first to harness its full potential in the startup world will be fascinating.