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AI is approaching an open-source inflection point

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Small language models and open source are transforming AI

Free and Open Source Business Intelligence Tools Logz
Free and Open Source Business Intelligence Tools Logz

SLMs also sharpen customization. These models can be finely tuned for specific tasks and industry domains, yielding specialized applications that produce measurable business outcomes. Whether in customer support, financial analysis, or healthcare diagnostics, these leaner models prove their effectiveness.

The open source community has been a driving force behind the advancement and adoption of SLMs. Meta’s new iteration, Llama 3.1, offers a range of sizes that deliver robust capabilities without excessive resource demands. Other models, such as Stanford’s Alpaca and Stability AI’s StableLM, demonstrate that the performance of smaller models rivals or surpasses that of their larger counterparts, especially in domain-specific applications.

Cloud platforms and tools from Hugging Face, IBM’s Watsonx.ai, and others are making these models more accessible and reducing entry barriers for enterprises of all sizes. This democratization of AI capabilities is a game-changer. More organizations can incorporate advanced AI without relying on proprietary, often prohibitively expensive solutions.

How Women Business Owners Are Using Artificial Intelligence

Free and Open Source Business Intelligence Tools Logz
Free and Open Source Business Intelligence Tools Logz

Written by Lesa Seibert, NAWBO National Board Secretary, member of NAWBO Kentucky and CEO of Mightily

The intersection of artificial intelligence and public policy has been at the forefront this past year since President Biden issued an executive order on AI that provides entrepreneurs with access to technical assistance and resources, among other things. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer followed up the executive order with a series of AI Insight Forums to discuss the intersection of AI and innovation, workforce and intellectual property issues. As the governance of AI continues to take shape in the U.S. and around the globe, it is essential that policymakers take into account its benefits to women business owners.

getty

AI is emerging as a powerful tool to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs. From enabling informed decisions to streamlining business operations, AI is proving to be a game-changer for women entrepreneurs in terms of running and growing their businesses. Indeed, a survey by Constant Contact found 91 percent of respondents said AI has made their companies more successful, and more than a quarter (28%) of those respondents expected it to save them at least $5,000 over the next year.

Best Open Source Tools Data Teams Love (Updated)
Best Open Source Tools Data Teams Love (Updated)

Women business owners have historically faced a unique set of challenges, including limited access to capital, markets and opportunity. For example, a survey commissioned by NAWBO in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks found almost half of respondents said extra funding would have the greatest impact on their business today, if they could get it.

But AI has the potential to disrupt these barriers and open up new pathways to success. Women business owners can use AI-powered tools to save time and money, an invaluable commodity when juggling a business and family life. AI can streamline and automate basic tasks such as inventory management, invoicing, social media, financial management, and marketing, leaving women business owners with more resources to focus on growing their businesses. Tools like Notion allow women business owners to centralize all their work in one place, manage projects and optimize processes. Others like Planful help women business owners run certain financial aspects of their business, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing.

One of NAWBO’s top priorities is ensuring that women business owners both have access to and are knowledgeable about tools to grow successful businesses, including AI. During our 2024 NAWBO Days event in Washington, DC in June, we asked NAWBO members to raise their hands if they were using AI, and nearly every hand in the room went up. This tells us it’s no longer a matter of will they use AI, but how will they use it, and how can we ensure that they can continue to leverage it for their businesses as AI continues to evolve?

Women are already using AI to streamline and enhance productivity in their daily operations. While AI presents an opportunity to reduce the hiring squeeze, there is also the risk of worker displacement. AI must be implemented alongside workforce training/reskilling to ensure that workers can remain competitive in the labor market. NAWBO members have consistently ranked recruiting and hiring skilled workers as a top challenge they face.

AI platforms are also helping women business owners make informed business decisions with data-driven insights. AI is capable of quickly analyzing large sets of data and identifying patterns that a human might miss. Women business owners can use this capability to optimize inventory, price products, or identify customer preferences—all without the need for deep technical expertise.

Additionally, women business owners are utilizing AI platforms to navigate global markets. Language translation, cultural insights and market analysis provided by AI are helping women business owners tap into international opportunities that were once difficult to access. For example, research has shown eBay’s machine translation service to have increased exports on the platform by 10.9 percent. Importantly, the International Trade Commission has found small businesses that export have higher total revenue growth and outperform those that do not.

The dismantling of traditional barriers, alongside the adoption of entrepreneur-supportive practices such as open-source programming, has carved out fresh opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Open-source programming is provided at no cost by a range of organizations including corporations, nonprofit entities and governmental bodies. This approach empowers women entrepreneurs to develop innovative products, add value and address contemporary challenges through their distinct viewpoints. For instance, the female-led startup Evidently AI, hailing from San Francisco, is at the forefront of this movement, creating an open-source tool designed to assess, identify and rectify problems within machine learning models.

In conclusion, AI is playing a pivotal role in empowering women business owners by enhancing decision-making, offering resourceful solutions and unlocking new possibilities. It is incumbent upon policymakers to nurture this trajectory by extending training, resources and bolstering the support ecosystem for women embarking on the path of AI integration in business.

Photo courtesy of Karianne Munstedt

Lesa Seibert is the 2024-2025 NAWBO National Board Secretary and CEO of Mightily. Mightily, founded in 2013 and based in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the region’s preeminent digital-first branding and advertising agencies and provides full-service support to local, regional and global brands in the areas of web development and technology, branding and creative services and media buying, strategy and ongoing management. She is a speaker on the topics of branding, marketing, business strategy and economic development.

Small language models and open source are transforming AI

SLMs also sharpen customization. These models can be finely tuned for specific tasks and industry domains, yielding specialized applications that produce measurable business outcomes. Whether in customer support, financial analysis, or healthcare diagnostics, these leaner models prove their effectiveness.

The open source community has been a driving force behind the advancement and adoption of SLMs. Meta’s new iteration, Llama 3.1, offers a range of sizes that deliver robust capabilities without excessive resource demands. Other models, such as Stanford’s Alpaca and Stability AI’s StableLM, demonstrate that the performance of smaller models rivals or surpasses that of their larger counterparts, especially in domain-specific applications.

Cloud platforms and tools from Hugging Face, IBM’s Watsonx.ai, and others are making these models more accessible and reducing entry barriers for enterprises of all sizes. This democratization of AI capabilities is a game-changer. More organizations can incorporate advanced AI without relying on proprietary, often prohibitively expensive solutions.

How Women Business Owners Are Using Artificial Intelligence

Written by Lesa Seibert, NAWBO National Board Secretary, member of NAWBO Kentucky and CEO of Mightily

The intersection of artificial intelligence and public policy has been at the forefront this past year since President Biden issued an executive order on AI that provides entrepreneurs with access to technical assistance and resources, among other things. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer followed up the executive order with a series of AI Insight Forums to discuss the intersection of AI and innovation, workforce and intellectual property issues. As the governance of AI continues to take shape in the U.S. and around the globe, it is essential that policymakers take into account its benefits to women business owners.

getty

AI is emerging as a powerful tool to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs. From enabling informed decisions to streamlining business operations, AI is proving to be a game-changer for women entrepreneurs in terms of running and growing their businesses. Indeed, a survey by Constant Contact found 91 percent of respondents said AI has made their companies more successful, and more than a quarter (28%) of those respondents expected it to save them at least $5,000 over the next year.

Women business owners have historically faced a unique set of challenges, including limited access to capital, markets and opportunity. For example, a survey commissioned by NAWBO in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks found almost half of respondents said extra funding would have the greatest impact on their business today, if they could get it.

But AI has the potential to disrupt these barriers and open up new pathways to success. Women business owners can use AI-powered tools to save time and money, an invaluable commodity when juggling a business and family life. AI can streamline and automate basic tasks such as inventory management, invoicing, social media, financial management, and marketing, leaving women business owners with more resources to focus on growing their businesses. Tools like Notion allow women business owners to centralize all their work in one place, manage projects and optimize processes. Others like Planful help women business owners run certain financial aspects of their business, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing.

One of NAWBO’s top priorities is ensuring that women business owners both have access to and are knowledgeable about tools to grow successful businesses, including AI. During our 2024 NAWBO Days event in Washington, DC in June, we asked NAWBO members to raise their hands if they were using AI, and nearly every hand in the room went up. This tells us it’s no longer a matter of will they use AI, but how will they use it, and how can we ensure that they can continue to leverage it for their businesses as AI continues to evolve?

Women are already using AI to streamline and enhance productivity in their daily operations. While AI presents an opportunity to reduce the hiring squeeze, there is also the risk of worker displacement. AI must be implemented alongside workforce training/reskilling to ensure that workers can remain competitive in the labor market. NAWBO members have consistently ranked recruiting and hiring skilled workers as a top challenge they face.

AI platforms are also helping women business owners make informed business decisions with data-driven insights. AI is capable of quickly analyzing large sets of data and identifying patterns that a human might miss. Women business owners can use this capability to optimize inventory, price products, or identify customer preferences—all without the need for deep technical expertise.

Additionally, women business owners are utilizing AI platforms to navigate global markets. Language translation, cultural insights and market analysis provided by AI are helping women business owners tap into international opportunities that were once difficult to access. For example, research has shown eBay’s machine translation service to have increased exports on the platform by 10.9 percent. Importantly, the International Trade Commission has found small businesses that export have higher total revenue growth and outperform those that do not.

The dismantling of traditional barriers, alongside the adoption of entrepreneur-supportive practices such as open-source programming, has carved out fresh opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Open-source programming is provided at no cost by a range of organizations including corporations, nonprofit entities and governmental bodies. This approach empowers women entrepreneurs to develop innovative products, add value and address contemporary challenges through their distinct viewpoints. For instance, the female-led startup Evidently AI, hailing from San Francisco, is at the forefront of this movement, creating an open-source tool designed to assess, identify and rectify problems within machine learning models.

In conclusion, AI is playing a pivotal role in empowering women business owners by enhancing decision-making, offering resourceful solutions and unlocking new possibilities. It is incumbent upon policymakers to nurture this trajectory by extending training, resources and bolstering the support ecosystem for women embarking on the path of AI integration in business.

Photo courtesy of Karianne Munstedt

Lesa Seibert is the 2024-2025 NAWBO National Board Secretary and CEO of Mightily. Mightily, founded in 2013 and based in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the region’s preeminent digital-first branding and advertising agencies and provides full-service support to local, regional and global brands in the areas of web development and technology, branding and creative services and media buying, strategy and ongoing management. She is a speaker on the topics of branding, marketing, business strategy and economic development.

How Women Business Owners Are Using Artificial Intelligence

Written by Lesa Seibert, NAWBO National Board Secretary, member of NAWBO Kentucky and CEO of Mightily

The intersection of artificial intelligence and public policy has been at the forefront this past year since President Biden issued an executive order on AI that provides entrepreneurs with access to technical assistance and resources, among other things. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer followed up the executive order with a series of AI Insight Forums to discuss the intersection of AI and innovation, workforce and intellectual property issues. As the governance of AI continues to take shape in the U.S. and around the globe, it is essential that policymakers take into account its benefits to women business owners.

getty

AI is emerging as a powerful tool to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs. From enabling informed decisions to streamlining business operations, AI is proving to be a game-changer for women entrepreneurs in terms of running and growing their businesses. Indeed, a survey by Constant Contact found 91 percent of respondents said AI has made their companies more successful, and more than a quarter (28%) of those respondents expected it to save them at least $5,000 over the next year.

Women business owners have historically faced a unique set of challenges, including limited access to capital, markets and opportunity. For example, a survey commissioned by NAWBO in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks found almost half of respondents said extra funding would have the greatest impact on their business today, if they could get it.

But AI has the potential to disrupt these barriers and open up new pathways to success. Women business owners can use AI-powered tools to save time and money, an invaluable commodity when juggling a business and family life. AI can streamline and automate basic tasks such as inventory management, invoicing, social media, financial management, and marketing, leaving women business owners with more resources to focus on growing their businesses. Tools like Notion allow women business owners to centralize all their work in one place, manage projects and optimize processes. Others like Planful help women business owners run certain financial aspects of their business, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing.

One of NAWBO’s top priorities is ensuring that women business owners both have access to and are knowledgeable about tools to grow successful businesses, including AI. During our 2024 NAWBO Days event in Washington, DC in June, we asked NAWBO members to raise their hands if they were using AI, and nearly every hand in the room went up. This tells us it’s no longer a matter of will they use AI, but how will they use it, and how can we ensure that they can continue to leverage it for their businesses as AI continues to evolve?

Women are already using AI to streamline and enhance productivity in their daily operations. While AI presents an opportunity to reduce the hiring squeeze, there is also the risk of worker displacement. AI must be implemented alongside workforce training/reskilling to ensure that workers can remain competitive in the labor market. NAWBO members have consistently ranked recruiting and hiring skilled workers as a top challenge they face.

AI platforms are also helping women business owners make informed business decisions with data-driven insights. AI is capable of quickly analyzing large sets of data and identifying patterns that a human might miss. Women business owners can use this capability to optimize inventory, price products, or identify customer preferences—all without the need for deep technical expertise.

Additionally, women business owners are utilizing AI platforms to navigate global markets. Language translation, cultural insights and market analysis provided by AI are helping women business owners tap into international opportunities that were once difficult to access. For example, research has shown eBay’s machine translation service to have increased exports on the platform by 10.9 percent. Importantly, the International Trade Commission has found small businesses that export have higher total revenue growth and outperform those that do not.

The dismantling of traditional barriers, alongside the adoption of entrepreneur-supportive practices such as open-source programming, has carved out fresh opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Open-source programming is provided at no cost by a range of organizations including corporations, nonprofit entities and governmental bodies. This approach empowers women entrepreneurs to develop innovative products, add value and address contemporary challenges through their distinct viewpoints. For instance, the female-led startup Evidently AI, hailing from San Francisco, is at the forefront of this movement, creating an open-source tool designed to assess, identify and rectify problems within machine learning models.

In conclusion, AI is playing a pivotal role in empowering women business owners by enhancing decision-making, offering resourceful solutions and unlocking new possibilities. It is incumbent upon policymakers to nurture this trajectory by extending training, resources and bolstering the support ecosystem for women embarking on the path of AI integration in business.

Photo courtesy of Karianne Munstedt

Lesa Seibert is the 2024-2025 NAWBO National Board Secretary and CEO of Mightily. Mightily, founded in 2013 and based in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the region’s preeminent digital-first branding and advertising agencies and provides full-service support to local, regional and global brands in the areas of web development and technology, branding and creative services and media buying, strategy and ongoing management. She is a speaker on the topics of branding, marketing, business strategy and economic development.

Small language models and open source are transforming AI

SLMs also sharpen customization. These models can be finely tuned for specific tasks and industry domains, yielding specialized applications that produce measurable business outcomes. Whether in customer support, financial analysis, or healthcare diagnostics, these leaner models prove their effectiveness.

The open source community has been a driving force behind the advancement and adoption of SLMs. Meta’s new iteration, Llama 3.1, offers a range of sizes that deliver robust capabilities without excessive resource demands. Other models, such as Stanford’s Alpaca and Stability AI’s StableLM, demonstrate that the performance of smaller models rivals or surpasses that of their larger counterparts, especially in domain-specific applications.

Cloud platforms and tools from Hugging Face, IBM’s Watsonx.ai, and others are making these models more accessible and reducing entry barriers for enterprises of all sizes. This democratization of AI capabilities is a game-changer. More organizations can incorporate advanced AI without relying on proprietary, often prohibitively expensive solutions.

3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks with Promising Applications

InvestorPlace – Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips

Artificial intelligence made headlines in 2024, with stocks in the space appreciating tremendously. Amid the growing adoption of technology, many companies are shelling out billions to advance their AI capabilities.

According to a recent report by CompTIA, 22% of companies aim to pursue AI integration across their products. The report also found that 33% of companies are working with some type of AI application to improve their service and product delivery.

By riding this wave, investors can be sure to see gains over the medium term. Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, which means these stocks hold great potential. Numerous technology applications are still being explored.

For instance, it could have use cases in defense, chatbots and data analysis. Consider these three companies if you want to invest in solid artificial intelligence stocks with great promise in returns. Let’s examine why these three stocks stand out.

Nvidia (NVDA)

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) started as a graphics card company. However, its chips quickly became popular in the artificial intelligence sector. Since then, the company has been working to produce faster and more efficient chips for the industry.

CEO Jensen Huang has played an important role in this transformation, making Nvidia the go-to company for the best artificial intelligence chips.

Thus far, Huang’s efforts have paid off and Nvidia has been the top artificial intelligence stock of 2024. Despite sliding by double digits in the past few weeks, NVDA is still up 116.42% year. Over the past 12 months, the stock has gained 129.52%.

Looking at the EPS, Nvidia has continued to maintain phenomenal growth. In the last quarterly results, it reported an EPS of $5.98, a 629% year-over-year increase.

Its current trailing 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 59.59 is relatively high. However, this high valuation is justifiable if it continues to maintain earnings growth.

Additionally, the company has a robust buyback program and pays out dividends. In its first quarter fiscal 2025 results, it announced it had increased payouts by 150% to 10 cents per share.

Over the past five years, NVDA has been one of the best-performing stocks, rising over 2500%.

The great stock performance, increased dividend payouts and the rising adoption of AI make Nvidia one of the best artificial intelligence stocks to own in August 2024.

Arista Networks (ANET)

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) is a leading software provider in the cloud computing and data center industries. The rise of artificial intelligence has been a huge boost for the company.

All artificial intelligence models require massive amounts of data, which is where Arista comes in. It is helping to create networks that can adapt to the changing needs of large language models and other artificial intelligence use cases.

Its stock performance has been quite robust. Year-to-date, it has gained 39.72% to $323.54 per share. In the past 12 months, its stock price has gained over 80%. If you had invested in ANET five years ago, you would have seen returns of almost 500% so far.

Its trailing 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 42.69 is quite high. However, the stock has also maintained robust earnings growth. Its diluted earnings per share have steadily been on the rise since 2020. As a result, its elevated valuation is justifiable.

Looking at its financial results, Arista saw revenue rise 15.9% in the second quarter of fiscal 2024 to $1.69 billion. It also reported a GAAP net income of $665.4 million compared to $491.9 million the previous year.

Based on its robust financial and stock performance, ANET is one of the main artificial intelligence stocks that should be in your portfolio in August 2024.

Meta Platforms (META)

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is a giant tech company best known for its social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook. The company is also one of the leading investors in artificial intelligence.

One of its well-known products to date is Llama 3.1, an open-source artificial intelligence model. In its second quarter fiscal 2024 results, Meta revealed it plans to spend up to $40 billion on research, with a good chunk of that going to artificial intelligence.

Despite the huge capital expenditure, Meta reported astronomical profits with net income of $13.47 billion compared to $7.79 billion the previous year.

Investors have reacted positively to this increased spending with META up 42.68% this year and its value rising by 56% over the last 12 months.

Based on its robust financial results and rising expenditures on artificial intelligence, Meta could be the go-to investment for artificial intelligence stocks. It shows great promise and has the financial capacity to develop technology to the next level.

On the date of publication, Joel Lim did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

On the date of publication, the responsible editor did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Joel Lim is a contributor at InvestorPlace.com and a finance content contractor who creates content for several companies like LTSE and Realtor, along with financial publications, including Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, Mises Institution and Foundation for Economic Education.

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