Many people have asked if I am excited about Generative AI, and if so, why I am not blogging about it more. First, I don’t like to blog unless I have something specific, unique, or interesting to share. I’d hate to be an echo chamber. Second, of course I am excited, but I have been excited about ML (or AI as y’all like to call it) for a long time.
I coded my first rules-based game engine in the late (nineteen)nineties. In 1998, I helped ideate and design one of the first match engines for people seeking a partner (never took the offer to launch it, as I wanted to finish college). In 2001, I implemented the world’s first learning memory management system in a Java Virtual Machine (JRockit). I have been in ML a long time and seen new innovation every decade that has taken us to something like Generative AI even being possible today:
Hardware innovation on the chip and interconnectivity level, bringing down compute times to realistic levels
Cloud computing and distributed data processing frameworks, making it affordable for any organization to do model training and graduating ML out of the research labs
Tooling and open source library explosion, accelerating skills around the globe
An established API economy and realized ML production ROIs, making the adoption of ML innovation in enterprises 10x easier
So of course I am excited about Generative AI, as I have been for every step of the ML evolution over the last decades.
My excitement about Generative AI is twofold:
The efficiencies that can be achieved - the co-pilot storm that has already started is not to be taken lightly. Lot’s more will be done faster, quicker - and with less thinking involved. And with that also more mistakes will be made, unfortunately. There will be an aftermath, before quality and trustworthiness has caught up with human’s current over-belief where AI is at, as a result of the ChatGPT hype. This is another opportunity for innovation!
The potential to re-imagine user experience - anything from gaming experiences, trying to book a travel, or website traversal - it all is about to change. I’m just waiting for the first wave of simple content generation tools to subside, to see the more interesting and complex solutions and platform startups for the next gen experiences to pop up! 🙂
The new experiences of Generative AI holds examples such as, but not limited to:
Being able to experience support calls in the language I am most comfortable with, as the language will be detected and dynamically applied in real time
Not just finding a richer answer to a question, but also related answers, and immediately from that experience trigger a number of actions without changing my context
Going through a virtual experience, as if I were visiting your company lobby, and meet various key people in your organization - as if they were really there - while helping share your vision and guiding me to the next milestone of interaction and relationship
Consuming content as a dynamically generated experience, tailored to my at-the-moment needs and desires
Getting custom products exactly the way I want them, through a collaborative and re-imaginative experience, hosted or guided by the provider
Experiencing new movies with old or passed away actors, at any age of their career (btw an idea I noted down in January 2000, but the technology wasn’t there yet - now it is!)
Reading new children's story books every night, dynamically co-generated by you and your child
I will be most excited about all the ancient enterprise websites going away and being replaced with dynamic, interactive, and creatively engaging experiences. What do you look forward to re-imagining with Generative AI?