Google’s Cloud AI lead on the three frontiers of model capability

Michael Gerstenhaber, a Google Cloud VP overseeing Vertex (a platform for deploying enterprise AI), describes how AI models are advancing along three distinct frontiers: raw intelligence (accuracy and capability), response time (latency, or how quickly the model answers), and cost-efficiency (whether a model can run reliably at massive, unpredictable scale). Different use cases prioritize these frontiers differently—for example, code generation prioritizes intelligence even if it takes time, customer support prioritizes speed within a latency budget, and large-scale content moderation prioritizes cost-effectiveness at infinite scale.