"History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future."
- Robert Penn Warren
If you’re like me, you think of history as a sort of blueprint of what we can expect for the future. Not that we’re doomed to repeat it, but as humans, we tend to respond similarly to stimuli as our ancestors have.
With the recent launch of Otto AI, and with AI in general gaining traction as a major industry interrupter, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how this era of innovation reminds me of a not-so-distant transformative era in our industry – the introduction of the Internet to the masses.
With AI set to be “as big as the Internet,” according to a recent The Times UK article, what are some similarities (and differences) between the human and industrial responses to these two transformative technologies? Are we viewing AI with the same apprehension, or perhaps with the same rose-colored glasses, that with which we first saw the Internet? Will our initial caution and excitement help predict how users will evolve as they way think about, access, and adopt AI in the future?
Revolutionary inventions: 1997 and now
I was only a couple of years out of college when I began working in the insurance industry and first heard rumblings of this new thing called “the Internet”. At the time, businesses were testing the waters and checking out the invention’s never-before-seen technical capabilities. Although the Internet wasn’t yet front and center in our day-to-day jobs, it’s use in the working world was fast approaching.
Fast forward to today and we’re staring at AI with familiar vigor and velocity. Let’s put on our history hats and compare these transformative game-changing innovations.
Internet The Early Days | Artificial Intelligence Open AI's ChatGPT | |
Innovation's Arrival | • Early traces of the Internet started in the early 80s when the first protocol (TPC/IP) was established. It took less than a decade for the Internet to take hold with industry-wide adoption well underway by the early 90s. (Interesting factoid: Only 42% of Americans had used a computer by 1990!) Expansion in the late 90s was even more pronounced with rollouts of industry behemoth websites such as Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, and who can forget the dancing baby, that was one of the first viral videos. Boosting Internet speeds, with the introduction of broadband in the 2000s, increased Internet usage to 55 million users in a few short years. | • Machine learning and language models were first introduced in the 1950s in which the developers of the first technology could model the probability of a word given some previous words. Fast forward over 60 years and we saw the introduction of OpenAI’s first generative pre-trained, or GPT, model in 2018 which was initially developed as an AI-based language model for natural language processing. With more significant industry roll-outs as recent as 2022 and this year, we’ve yet to tally the number of users, but it’s fair to say AI is now beyond the ideation phase. In fact, ChatGPT alone reached 100 million users in January 2023, just two months after its release allowing it to claim itself the title of Fastest-Growing Consumer App in History. |
Key Technology Drivers | • Communication, information sharing, and research | • Automation, data analysis, and decision-making |
Early Mainstream Adopters | • Military and Universities | • Researchers and Developers |
Early Concerns
| • It's going to take away our jobs.
• It will open doors to corruption.
•
Security is at risk.
| • It's going to take away our jobs.
• It will open doors to corruption.
•
Everyone will plagiarize.
|
Surfing the internet, 90's Style!
Surfing’s too much work.
Let’s chat instead!
Is the dawn of AI the same as the birth of the Internet?
With AI coming at us fast and furiously, for those of us around at the dawn of the Internet 30 years ago, does it feel the same? Do we share excitement and trepidation over this new tech revolution like we did for the Internet? Why, yes. Yes, we do. But, here’s the overwhelming concept to wrap your brain around – AI has the potential to be even bigger and more powerful than the Internet!
While we’re on the cusp of the AI revolution, it will be interesting to see how humans, both in business and society react to, adopt, and grow professionally and personally from integrating AI into the mainstream. Perhaps, it’s only a matter of months before AI is as second-hand to us now as the Internet was 30 years ago. And perhaps we’re ready to springboard into embracing AI and seeing where it can take us. Time will tell.
Want to kick the proverbial AI tires? Automox’s own Otto AI is here! Take on scripting like a pro with Automox’s simple and intuitive AI-powered assistant.
Start your free trial now.
Get started with Automox in no time.
By submitting this form you agree to our Master Services Agreement and Privacy Policy
