Think self-scanning is the summit of supermarket gizmos? Think again. -- "From self-scan checkouts at grocery stores to electronic information kiosks at retail chains, businesses are making technology an ever more central part of the overall shopping experience. IBM, which is investing heavily in shopping computerization, reports that shoppers from different countries across the board are increasingly open to using new in-store technologies. The company says that super-shoppers have become empowered by their ability to access data online, and this ability translates into an extremely knowledgeable consumer base, with specific customer-service needs."
The prevailing narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of relentless scale. Bigger models, bigger clusters, bigger budgets. The assumption, largely unchallenged until recently, was that raw parameter count translated directly into competitive advantage. New research from Omdia suggests it's time to retire that assumption. According to the latest market study by Omdia, parameter growth in frontier AI models has slowed to around 5 percent annually since 2021, a stark contrast to the more than hundredfold expansion seen between 2019 and 2021. Enterprise AI Market Development For executives who have been making infrastructure and investment decisions based on the assumption that AI would keep demanding ever-larger, ever-more-expensive hardware, this finding deserves serious attention. The race to the top of the model size leaderboard has, at least for now, plateaued. Crucially, Omdia's analysts are not reading this as an AI winter. Alexander Harrowell, senior pri...