"Irresistible" AI Storylines Could Prove False

Some storylines seem inevitable and irresistible, either to journalists or screenwriters. And some irresistible storylines are “always wrong.”  

In the past, it has often been argued that the United States was behind, or falling behind, for use of mobile phones, smartphones, text messaging, broadband coverage, fiber to home, broadband speed or broadband price. But the “behind” storyline has proven incorrect, over time. 

To be sure, the U.S. market rarely ranks first on any “adoption or performance” metric, for a variety of reasons related to continental-sized land mass and highly rural density, among other things. 

So elections or industry standing are seen as “horse races.”  Be prepared for many surprises, as we have often seen “early leaders” falter in the computing industry. 

So artificial intelligence is viewed through the lens of a horse race or competition with a winner, a second-place finisher and many losers. So there is a “conventional wisdom” that OpenAI and Microsoft are leading, while others, such as Google, are behind, and a few, such as Apple, are “way behind.” You’d be very hard pressed to find a journalist, a financial analyst or perhaps even some within the generative AI model industry who would dispute the characterization. 

But it might also be worth noting that lots of long-gone firms were “in the lead” in the early days of the personal computer revolution. Many firms started early in the transition from character-based to multimedia web industries faltered, and many fell quickly. 

The point is that major technology transitions tend to be littered with failures, even among firms that seemed to lead, early on. Even in more prosaic industries, such as the use of mobile phones, whole countries often can be viewed as leaders or laggards in terms of consumer adoption. But such “leads” have proven to be quite temporary. 

Still, there is something different about AI. Prior transitions in computing often were led by small startups (some of which later attained scale). The current transition arguably is led by a mix of current computing leaders and some startups. That is quite different.