One key question observers have about generative artificial intelligence is how long it might take before usage reaches “mass adoption.” That obviously requires creating benchmarks, and we often use “years” and “percentage of population” as metrics.
So we might measure time from the founding of a firm and any of its products reaching 10-percent usage by consumers, and then perhaps 50-percent usage, on the way to creating graphs showing either growth rates or adoption.
“Adoption” then is tricky to the extent that we have to define what “usage” actually means. As always, is it daily or monthly users? Are they regular users? And if so, what numbers do we use for those thresholds? Also, in many cases we have to make assumptions about the percentage of such users in specific countries, since availability or usage often is not the same everywhere.
For consumer products, many researchers seem to agree that a 10-percent level of adoption encompasses the early adopters and tends to be the trigger for widening adoption beyond the “tech enthusiast” stage. Most of us would be comfortable with the notion that 50-percent adoption is a reasonable enough definition of “mass adoption,” or “commonly and regularly used,” even if it is not true that “everybody uses it.”
So, using company founding; 10-percent and 50-percent adoption levels, many popular consumer products and services took two to eight years to reach 10-percent adoption, and perhaps seven to 26 years to reach 50-percent use.
Though it is unclear whether generative AI is more like YouTube or more like Amazon e-commerce, and assuming we date the start of the product to 2023 (ChatGPT),
The caveats are that we do not yet have a good feel for how to define “regular use” or adoption. Much of the early ChatGPT use might have been “sampling,” where people used it just to get a feel for it, but might not have followed up with regular use. That caveat notwithstanding, it does seem that generative AI is being adopted faster than most earlier popular internet services.
In fact, combining usage of several popular or early services, GenAI is being adopted faster than any of the popular internet consumer apps.
Again, the caveat is that it is unclear what percentage of those estimated users are “regular and habitual” users, and what percentage are samplers who do not use the tools regularly.
For that matter, even the estimates of internet consumer app usage might be on the high side, as well.
Google search by 2000 handled 100 million searches per day. Assuming many were U.S.-based and accounting for repeat users, it likely hit 28 million monthly users (10 percent of U.S.) by 2001 (three years).
Amazon e-commerce had 20 million customers by 2000, mostly in the United States, and probably reached 28 million users (10 percent) by 2001 or 2002.
Facebook reached 12 million users by 2006, mostly in the United States and probably reached the 10-percent level by late 2007 after opening to the public.
Uber likely hit 33 million users 10 percent) by 2015 (six years), assuming U.S.-centric early growth.
Airbnb probably hit 33 million users (10 percent) by 2015.
YouTube grew to the 10-percent level in about two years.
The point is that, even if generative is as popular as we think, and might by some measures already reached the 10-percent level of use, it still could take up to seven years (if it follows the YouTube growth curve) to reach 50-percent usage by U.S. users. Professional and business users, as well as students, are likely to drive much of the early usage.
No comments:
Post a Comment