The year 2023 will be remembered as the great generative AI gold rush. From my vantage point writing for leaders across the AI stack, from Neptune AI to Lakera, it’s clear the initial euphoria of the magic demo has given way to the harsh reality of production.
The universal challenge has shifted from “Can we build it?” to “Can we trust it?”
The established playbook for managing AI, known as MLOps, is proving insufficient for this new wave of technology.
We are witnessing a rapid shift towards a new discipline, often called LLM Ops, as new tools emerge daily to handle the unique challenges of language models.
Unlike traditional AI, these models are unpredictable, and our old methods can’t keep up. At the same time, a new security flaw called prompt injection has left these powerful systems dangerously exposed. We are building glass houses without locks, and the consequences of this fragility will be felt worldwide.
This is why the conversation must evolve. The defining feature of a successful AI product in 2024 will not be its power, but its predictability and safety.
This pivot from a model-centric world to a systems-centric one gives rise to a critical new discipline: AI Assurance.
This is not just a technical challenge. It is a global imperative. The solutions we engineer for AI assurance will have worldwide implications, shaping how industries from finance to healthcare deploy this technology responsibly.
There is no better place to spearhead this effort than the UK. With its proactive regulatory landscape, the nation is fostering the exact environment of innovation and responsibility needed to solve these issues.
This is precisely why I moved to the UK to pursue my Master’s degree. It was a strategic decision to position myself at the heart of the solution.
It allows me to learn from the world’s leading experts and dedicate my thesis to tackling the core challenges of building reliable and secure large language models (LLMs).
The future is not about building bigger models. It’s about building them right, and I came here to be at the forefront of that work.