If you’re over 35, you were around when the internet took over the world. Sounds dramatic, but think of your life before the internet, and think of it after.
How did you find out how to get somewhere?
How did you choose where to eat?
How many pictures did you take on vacation?
How did you keep in touch with family?
How did you find a job?
How did you research information on a specific topic?
How did you spend your free time?
What did you watch on TV?
How did you find a job?
If your answer is, “I did everything differently,” you’ll understand what we’re about to go through with the practical application of AI.
People either vastly overestimate or vastly underestimate the impact that AI will have on everything that we do. Some people shrug it off like another NFT or crypto tech trend. Others think it will find humanity unnecessary and will eliminate us Terminator-style.
What I think will happen is the realization of everything we ever wanted from the “web.”
The truth is that we’ve been waiting and wanting AI since the start of the internet, and long, long before. Just look at any old scifi book, movie, or TV show.
In most cases, “the future” included the ability to ask a machine to do something, and having it do it. You may say, “we have Alexa,” but for anyone who has yelled at Alexa for being a useless piece of trash, you’ll realize that that product isn’t what I’m talking about.
The Internet Hasn’t Made Our Lives Easier
As with most pieces of tech, we created the internet to make our lives easier. Do you feel like your life has been easier since the internet came around?
In some ways, yes it is. Getting places is easier. Connecting with people is easier. Keeping in touch is easier. Finding new hobbies, interests, and entertainment is easier.
Even so, in a lot of ways, the internet has made our lives more complicated, difficult, and confusing.
Why “Search” Hurt the Internet
Overexposure to information and the sheer amount of information we have access to is astounding. Never in the history of mankind have so many people had access to so much.
You can find answers to anything you want… too many answers actually.
So many answers that you can’t tell which one is the right one. So many providers of data that there is no way you could possibly vet their qualifications.
So many calculations driving the flow of information with so little knowledge about how those calculations were made, who made them, and what their real intention was in the first place.
Our access to information has expanded, but our ability to consume the information hasn’t.
It’s like being given access to a cave full of gold and treasure, but only having a potato sack to carry it out with.
What could make our lives easier? What could give us what we wanted and expected with the internet in the first place?
AI could… and will.
Why AI is the Realization of Our Internet Dreams
AI has been a science fiction dream for centuries. Intelligent machines that could do things that humans can’t, or more likely, don’t want to do.
Believe it or not, that’s what we thought we were getting with the internet. We wanted an intelligent machine to provide answers that we couldn’t come up with ourselves. We wanted things to be simpler… but that’s not what we got.
What we got was a key.
A key to an enormous warehouse full of people, robots, and things. When we open the warehouse and walk inside, we’re exposed to all of it.
Every person who wants our attention. Every piece of information that may or may not be useful. Every robot that has been programmed to guide us to a certain spot, to buy certain things, to become certain people.
There’s no path in this warehouse… there’s something much worse.
You see, this warehouse was made in the same fashion as an Ikea, and like Ikea, the “path” is intentionally confusing, convoluted, and riddled with traps.
You can’t find what you want on Google. What you can find is what Google wants you to find.
Just picture the last Google search you did. How did it go? Did you type in the phrase and immediately get an answer, or did you search again… and again… and again. Did you find “sort-of” answers after reviewing a forum on one link, a YouTube vid on another, and an advertisement-riddled article on another? Did you become so frustrated that you gave up the search altogether?
I believe the growth and continued success of social media is a result of the failure of search engines. I believe the “privatization” of followings through email marketing and private forums like Discord and Slack are because we’re so freaking sick of searching for the right information.
Not to worry though… AI is going to make everything ALL better different.
This article series is intended to give an outline of how the next revolution in data consumption through content may progress. Some of the theories will be wrong (of course), but that is the nature of predicting the future.
