Reading an article in Wired, the link will be in the comments. It’s fascinating to see how people from the past envisioned 2024.
In 2002, Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired, attended a small party organized by Google, which at that time had not yet gone public and was solely engaged in search technologies. At this event, he struck up a conversation with Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, who later, in 2011, became the CEO of the company (and left the position in 2015).
Kelly asked Page a question that seemed sensible at the time:
— Larry, I still don’t understand. There are so many companies doing search. Free web search? Where is this going?
At that time, Google had not yet implemented its advertising sales scheme through auctions and had not made major acquisitions like YouTube. Many, including Kelly, doubted that Google would last long.
Page then replied:
— Oh, actually, we are making AI!
Years later, when Google had acquired 14 companies working in the fields of AI and robotics, Kelly often reflected back on that conversation. At first glance, it might seem that Google uses its AI resources to improve search, because search then generated 80% of the company’s revenue. However, Kelly wrote in his 2014 article that the opposite is true: Google uses search to enhance its AI.
Every time a user enters a query, clicks on a link or creates a link on the internet, they train Google’s AI. For example, by searching for “Easter bunny images and selecting the most appropriate one, a person teaches the system what an Easter bunny looks like. As of 10 years ago, when the article was written, 1.2 billion users made 12.1 billion queries daily, continuously training AI.
Interestingly, in that 2914 article Kelly was confident that by 2024, Google would create AI and it would gradually become the main product.
Well, here we are in 2024, and as of today 82% still comes from the same advertising. But still, 2024 became the year of AI and Google is among the key players (along with a dozen others).
Interestingly, the Larry-predicted formula from the article – add AI to everything indiscriminately and you get a new startup – worked out
“…In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI…”
He writes in 2024 that for AI, progress in three areas is critical:
1) GPU/parallel computation for training models
2) Big Data for training models
3) Algorithms that we have yet to conceive
“… This perfect storm of parallel computation, bigger data, and deeper algorithms generated the 60-years-in-the-making overnight success of AI.”
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 