Trusted AI #005 - Our Average Future
What if Generative AI's legacy isn't utopia or dystopia, but just another technology that gets assimilated into society?
Over the years, several developments are proclaimed as “revolutionary.” Most turn out to…not be. Generative AI is currently being hyped as the next revolution, and dreaded by others as the potential coming of doom. What if the actual future is, well, neither?
Let’s turn the clock back 15 years and look at a trio of developments that were all proclaimed to be world-changing at one point or another, that ended up, well, not being.
A Communication “Revolution”
This technology, first developed in 2006 was hailed as a revolution that would completely change the way the world worked; a technological marvel that would greatly facilitate business operations worldwide. Of course, the new technology had many detractors. Several articles were published about those whose jobs were now obsolete, and there were fears of widespread unemployment.
The technology was Google Translate, and it’s in wide use today, but I don’t think anyone would call it society-altering. What happened?
The quality wasn’t there. While machine translation has gotten better over the years, it still struggles with translating idioms and specialized terminology. While you can obviously get a sense of a text by machine translation, professional quality work requires a professional translator.
The market evolved. It turns out there was a huge untapped market of businesses who wanted to use translation services but did without due to the cost. Those businesses flocked to machine translation, which created a huge new market for translation editors. It didn’t pay as much, but editing a translation was much faster than translating from scratch, meaning some translators ended up making more money, not less. Also, video content is increasingly required for businesses, and all that content has to be translated/subtitled as well.
A Media “Revolution”
This organization, founded in 2006, announced that they were going to herald “a new future in media.” Their “sophisticated technology” enabled them to present new trends just as they were starting, and expressed confidence that subscribers to their publication would always be the first to know what was hot. The organization grew rapidly and was valued at over a billion dollars less than ten years from its founding. Traditional journalists published articles about how this new algorithm was going to eliminate the journalism industry, and it contributed to the Hollywood writers’ strike in 2008.
The organization was Buzzfeed, and it’s since lost over 90% of its value; its stock is currently trading around 58 cents a share. In the end, the new future was just capitalization on a fad. What happened?
The quality wasn’t there. The original design of BuzzFeed was a technological aggregator that would help surface things that were trending. However, the staff quickly realized that they could quickly and easily create their own trending content by taking advantage of people’s Facebook habits, and then sell tons of ads against it. That worked until…
The market evolved. Advertisers realized that while there was tons of traffic, it wasn’t high quality. The amount there were willing to pay dropped significantly. At the same time, Facebook made changes to keep users on its platform instead of sending them offsite, cutting the #1 source of traffic just as revenues were falling. And yes, traditional journalism still exists.
A Financial “Revolution”
This technology, invented in 2008, was hailed as a revolution in commerce. It would eliminate a vast series of middlemen and enable much more efficient transactions. No longer would a vast string of regulatory barriers suck value away; people could just buy and sell stuff with no limits. It would completely disrupt society as we knew it.
The technology (obviously) was Bitcoin. What happened?
The quality wasn’t there. The technological shortcomings of Bitcoin didn’t scale to wide usage, meaning actually using it for transactions was fraught with peril. While a core group believed in the original vision, the majority of the ecosystem invested in it as a new “digital commodity.” That worked until…
The market evolved. The lack of regulations and controls made fraud rampant, and slow-to-engage regulators have finally had enough. Bitcoin will live on in some form, but that form likely will not be one involved in making payments in any meaningful way.
An AI Revolution?
So which one of these scenarios will Generative AI end up resembling in 15 years? I have no idea, and I don’t think anyone does. All I’m saying is that there’s a range of outcomes from “existential failure” on one end all the way to “utopian success” on the other…and the most likely outcome is somewhere in the middle. I can see a world where AI just makes it super easy and cheap to churn out constant 7/10 content in any field…and that’s not too far off from today’s digital storefront, honestly, except the digital storefront is filled with 3/10 stuff. If next decade’s toddlers end up watching decent AI-generated entertainment instead of Blippi and Cocomelon, I’ll take that future.
Casey Newton wrote a good piece for Platformer yesterday talking about his troubles with covering AI; in summary, if this field is as risky as claimed, are journalists contributing to the risk by their coverage? He concluded that he needed to keep up to date on the technology to best cover it. I have the same approach. I’d like to stay objective with regards to AI, and I hope to use my writing here to do the same.
Standard disclaimer: All views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. government or any of its components.