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Today’s artificial intelligence systems are akin to the dial-up internet of yesteryear, according to the CEO of one AI startup, who said the space is in need of a reality check.

Sachin Duggal, co-founder, and CEO of Builder.ai, told CNBC Friday that we’ve only just begun to imagine what’s possible with AI.

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“We’re only in the AOL world of AI still,” Duggal told CNBC in an interview. “There is this perception we’re in the fiber optic world of AI. We’re far from it.”

“It’s not just LLMs [large language models] and ChatGPT, though that seems to be the epicenter of how people think about it,” he added.

Hype around AI has hit a fever pitch over the past few months on the back of excitement about ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot.

Venture capitalists are throwing big money at startups developing AI tools in the hope that this represents as significant a shift for the digital economy as the invention of the iPhone.

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ChatGPT has amassed more than 100 million users since its Nov. 2022 release, according to investment bank UBS, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer apps of all time.

“AOL made the internet easily understandable for folks. BlackBerry made messaging understandable,” said Duggal. “At one point it was the most popular device, and people were queuing up to get the phone. It was the Apple of its era.”

“What you’re seeing now is a momentum where something that people didn’t understand and was very esoteric has now become a little more personal,” he added.

But, he added that the technology is surrounded by hype. “It’s got people freaked out for no reason.”

ChatGPT has impressed many with its ability to produce humanlike responses to user prompts powered by large language models trained on massive amounts of data.

However, it has also proven ineffective at some tasks, such as solving math problems. The chatbot also has a limited understanding of context — especially sarcasm and humor.

Duggal said that knowledge graphs — data models that connect relationships between different concepts, entities and events — show a greater degree of accuracy and understanding of context than large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.

“An LLM is simply telling you what it thinks the next word is with a high degree of probability, whereas a knowledge graph is actually able to compose pattern relationships that it knows, and how things work out. So it’s not just predicting what’s next,” he said.

WATCH: A.I. is allowing a more creative part of human nature to kick in: Builder.ai CEO

A.I. is allowing a more creative part of human nature to kick in: Builder.ai CEO

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Michael Dell says ‘at some point there’ll be too many’ AI data centers, but not yet

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Michael Dell says 'at some point there'll be too many' AI data centers, but not yet

Dell CEO Michael Dell: AI demand is very solid

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said Tuesday that while demand for computing power is “tremendous,” the production of artificial intelligence data centers will eventually top out.

“I’m sure at some point there’ll be too many of these things built, but we don’t see any signs of that,” Dell said on “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

The hardware maker’s server networking business grew 58% last year and was up 69% last quarter, Dell said. As large language models have evolved to more multimodal and multi-agent systems, the demand for AI processing power and capacity has continued to be strong.

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Dell’s AI servers are powered by Nvidia‘s Blackwell Ultra chips. The company then sells its devices to customers like cloud service provider CoreWeave and xAI, Elon Musk’s startup.

Dell shares rose over 3% Tuesday after increasing its expected long-term revenue and profit growth in an analyst meeting.

The computer maker raised its expected annual revenue growth to 7% to 9%, up from its previous target of 3% to 4%, with diluted earnings per share now expected to be 15% higher, up from its previous 8% target.

The company reported strong second-quarter earnings in August, and said it planned to ship $20 billion worth of AI servers in fiscal 2026. That is double what it sold last year.

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OpenAI’s Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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OpenAI's Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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The Motion Picture Association on Monday urged OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” against its new video creation model Sora 2, which is being used to produce content that it says is infringing on copyrighted media.

Following the Sora app’s rollout last week, users have been swarming the platform with AI-generated clips featuring characters from popular shows and brands.

“Since Sora 2’s release, videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service and across social media,” MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman clarified in a blog post that the company will give rightsholders “more granular control” over how their characters are used.

But Rivkin said that OpenAI “must acknowledge it remains their responsibility – not rightsholders’ – to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service,” and that “well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Concerns erupted immediately after Sora videos were created last week featuring everything from James Bond playing poker with Altman to body cam footage of cartoon character Mario evading the police.

Although OpenAI previously held an opt-out system, which placed the burden on studios to request that characters not appear on Sora, Altman’s follow-up blog post said the platform was changing to an opt-in model, suggesting that Sora would not allow the usage of copyrighted characters without permission.

However, Altman noted that the company may not be able to prevent all IP from being misused.

“There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn’t, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration,” Altman wrote.

Copyright concerns have emerged as a major issue during the generative AI boom.

Disney and Universal sued AI image creator Midjourney in June, alleging that the company used and distributed AI-generated characters from their films and disregarded requests to stop. Disney also sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Character.AI in September, warning the company to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.

WATCH: OpenAI’s Sora 2 sparks AI ‘slop’ backlash

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says ‘valuations in AI are at a bubble’

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says 'valuations in AI are at a bubble'

Orlando Bravo: AI valuations are in a bubble

Thoma Bravo co-founder Orlando Bravo said that valuations for artificial intelligence companies are “at a bubble,” comparing it to the dotcom era.

But one key difference in the market now, he said, is that large companies with “healthy balance sheets” are financing AI businesses.

Bravo’s private equity firm boasts more than $181 billion in assets under management as of June, and focuses on buying and selling enterprise tech companies, with a significant chunk of its portfolio invested in cybersecurity.

Bravo told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday that investors can’t value a $50 million annual recurring revenue company at $10 billion.

“That company is going to have to produce a billion dollars in free cash flow to double an investor’s money, ultimately,” he said. “Even if the product is right, even if the market’s right, that’s a tall order, managerially.”

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OpenAI recently finalized a secondary share sale that would value the ChatGPT-maker at $500 billion. The company is projected to make $13 billion in revenue for 2025.

Nvidia recently said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, in part, to help the ChatGPT maker lease its chips and build out supercomputing facilities in the coming years.

Other public companies have soared on AI promises, with Palantir’s market cap climbing to $437 billion, putting it among the 20 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S., and AppLovin now worth $213 billion.

Even early-stage valuations are massive in AI, with Thinking Machines Lab notching a $12 billion valuation on a $2 billion seed round.

Despite the inflated numbers, Bravo emphasized that there’s a “big difference” between the dotcom collapse and the current landscape of AI.

“Now you have some really big companies and some big balance sheets and healthy balance sheets financing this activity, which is different than what happened roughly 25 years ago,” he said.

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