Use Cases for Foundation Models and Key Benefits (but don’t give up your decision tree yet!)

In our 1.1 episode about the paradigm shift from data-centric to task-centric machine learning (ML), we’ve mentioned that task-centric ML focuses on using foundation models to perform a wide range of tasks efficiently and with fewer training examples. In the comment section, Vu Ha, startups’ advisor at AI2 Incubator and Semantic Scholar’s first engineer, pointed out that he first mentioned the term task-centric in October 2021, way ahead of time!

In that article, he proposed the following visualization of task-centric ML:

Now, let's dig deeper into the world of foundation models and find out what makes them such game-changers. We also take a look at the cases when traditional ML is still the king.

Basics first: what are foundation models?

Let’s dive a little deeper

Foundation models, a term that comes to us from the Stanford University, “to underscore their critically central yet incomplete character”, have altered the trajectory of ML by lowering the barrier of entry for building complex AI systems. They've proven especially adept at one thing: versatility. Unlike the niche specialization of earlier models, these computational behemoths are surprisingly flexible and agile across an array of tasks.

These models employ…