Global AI Conclave: We are working on smaller AI models with 7-20 billion parameters, says Zoho's Sridhar Vembu

Zoho is working on smaller artificial intelligence (AI) models that are based on 7 billion to 20 billion parameters to solve specific domain problems for its customers, the company's founder, Sridhar Vembu, said on December 16.

"We have found that the smaller models are better for domain-specific problems. That's why we are not doing the 500 billion parameter models as of now... we also want to own our own graphics processing units (GPU) infrastructure as that is cheaper in the long term," Vembu said at the CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol Global AI Conclave.

"There are two forms of capital. Brain capital is the bigger one. If that is solved, financial capital will come. It's not that $50 million or $100 million can't be found in Bengaluru. Now, AMD is also coming with AI chips. We are working with them. The supply chain issues of chips will be resolved," he added.

Vembu also said that 20 percent of the work in software development is creative and 80 percent is data bookkeeping.

"That 80 percent could be automated. That is the low-hanging fruit," he said.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) giant Zoho recently unveiled a suite of 13 generative AI extensions and integrations for its applications, powered by ChatGPT. Zoho is further enhancing its AI capabilities by blending third-party intelligence into Zia, its own secure cloud-based AI engine.

In June 2023, Zoho announced that it is building its own large language model (LLM), similar to OpenAI's GPT and Google's PaLM 2 models. The project is being overseen by Vembu and is being worked on by the company's R&D team in India.

LLMs are a type of AI model specifically designed to understand natural language. They can process and generate text, allowing them to be used for various tasks such as language translation, summarisation, and question-answering.

Vembu has also been advocating for the implementation of an AI policy in India. In May 2023, Vembu, along with Rajiv Kumar, former vice chairman of Niti Aayog, and Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSPIRT Foundation, submitted a proposal to the central government.

The primary objective of this proposal is to establish an AI policy that prioritizes openness and transparency.

Palo Alto Networks presents the CNBC-TV18 Moneycontrol Global AI Conclave, in collaboration with EY as the Knowledge Partner and Google, Yotta Infrastructure, and Reliance Industries Limited as Associate Partners, with Townhall serving as the Technology Partner.