Arthur Clark might well be right in arguing that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that certainly would seem to apply to artificial intelligence in general.
That is the general line of reasoning behind Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, saying “in the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.”
That explains the high capital investment being made in generative AI, for example. But is also is worth noting that “it won’t happen all at once,” as Altman cautions.
Outcomes attributable to generative artificial intelligence are likely to take a few years to register, if past experience with popular and successful apps is any indicator.
AOL, the first mass market internet access provider, was founded in 1989. Mosaic, the first visual browser, did not arrive until 1993. But widespread internet commercialization did not begin until about 1995.
The point is that if we date the start of the consumer internet experience from 1989 (with slow dial-up access at about 56 kbps (no broadband access), it took about nine years for Google to be founded.
Consider that Google was founded in 1998, but did not start to see search volume ramp up until about 2000 or so (500,000 daily searches). By 2004 daily search volume was up to about 200 million.
Not until 2010 did annual searches reach the one billion mark.
Google revenue ($400 million) was not significant until perhaps 2002.
Likewise, Facebook was launched in 2004. By 2008 Facebook had reached 100 million monthly active users. So from the inception of AOL’s dial-up internet access service, Facebook took 11 years. The point is that even the most-popular of internet experiences (search, social media, e-commerce) took up to a decade to reach significant adoption by consumers.
We do not know whether generative artificial intelligence will grow slower, at the same rate, or faster than did the internet and its lead consumer applications. But if GenAI produces important outcomes, it still might take a decade for industry-leading and transformative use cases, firms and apps to emerge, and longer to achieve leadership and ubiquity.
As the old adage suggests, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Generative AI is taking its first steps. But skeptics who already lament demonstrated outcomes ignore history. No matter how ultimately important, we are yet some ways from recognizing the profound transformations GenAI and AI in a broader sense might produce.
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Perhaps quietly, generative artificial intelligence is going to show return on investment in software development. Some of that gain occurs when coders can use GenAI to check their code. Perhaps the greatest upside comes when code development can be automated.
Separately, GenAI is a potential disruptor of existing software firms.
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