ChatGPT’s second birthday: What will gen AI (and the world) look like in another 2 years?

It’s been over two years since ChatGPT first appeared on November 30, 2022. At its launch, OpenAI viewed ChatGPT as a demonstration project designed for people to learn how to utilize the tool and its underlying GPT 3.5. Language Model (LLM).

The LLM is transformer architecture It was first introduced by Google in 2017. It uses self-attention mechanisms to process and produce human-like text across tasks such as natural language understanding. It was not just a successful demonstration project. OpenAI was more surprised than anyone by the rapid adoption of ChatGPT, which reached 100 million users within two months.

Although perhaps they shouldn’t have been so surprised. Futurist Kevin Kelly wired, advised In 2014, he said, “The business plan for the next 10,000 startups is easy to predict: Take X, add AI. This is the big thing, and it’s here now.”

Kelly said this a few years ago on ChatGPT. But this is exactly what happened. Equally noteworthy are his predictions in the same field wired An article titled “By 2024, Google’s main product will not be search but AI.” Whether this is true or not may be debated, but it may soon become true. Gemini is Google’s flagship AI chat product, but AI is permeating its search and probably all of its other products as well, including YouTube, TensorFlow, and Google Workspace’s AI capabilities.

Bot heard around the world

The AI ​​startup rush that Kelly predicted actually gained momentum after the launch of ChatGPT. You can call it the AI ​​big bang moment, or the bots heard around the world. And it has revitalized the field of generative AI, a broad category of LLMs for text and diffusion models for image creation. This reached a high point of hype, or what Gartner calls “peak expectations,” in 2023.

The excitement for 2023 may have faded, but only a little. by someone estimatethere are 70,000 AI companies around the world, an increase of 100% since 2017. This is a true Cambrian explosion of companies pursuing new uses for AI technology. Kelly’s 2014 foresight regarding AI startups proved prophetic.

Instead, huge amounts of venture capital investment continue to flow into startups looking to harness AI. new york times reported that investors poured in $27.1 billion was invested in U.S. AI startups in the second quarter of 2024 alone, “accounting for nearly half of all U.S. startup funding during this period.” Statista added: “In the first nine months of 2024, AI-related investments accounted for 33% of total investments in US-based VC-backed companies, up from 14% in 2020. , which is likely to increase further in the coming years.”The large potential market is attractive to both start-ups and established companies.

Recent Reuters Institute investigation of consumers said their personal use of ChatGPT was low in six countries, including the US and UK. Only 1% of people in Japan used ChatGPT every day, rising to 2% in France and the UK and 7% in the US. This slow spread can be attributed to the following points: There can be several factors, ranging from lack of awareness to concerns about the safety of personal information. Does this mean that the impact of AI is overestimated? That was hardly the case, as most survey respondents expected artificial intelligence to have a significant impact on all areas of society over the next five years.

The enterprise sector tells a completely different story. According to a report by industry analyst firm VentureBeat. GAI Insight predicts that 33% of enterprises will deploy Gen AI applications into production next year. Enterprises often have clearer use cases, such as improving customer service, automating workflows, and enhancing decision-making, which facilitates faster adoption than individual consumers. For example, the healthcare industry is using AI for note capture, and financial services are using the technology to enhance fraud detection. GAI further reported that Gen AI is a top 2025 budget priority for CIOs and CTOs.

What’s next? From the AI ​​generation to the dawn of superintelligence

The uneven adoption of generational AI raises questions about what lies ahead for adoption in 2025 and beyond. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have suggested that artificial general intelligence (AGI), or even superintelligence, could emerge within the next two to 10 years and reshape the world. Masu. AGI is considered the ability of AI to understand, learn, and perform any intellectual task that humans can perform, thereby emulating human cognitive abilities in a wide range of areas.

AGI Spark in 2025

as reported by varietyAltman said we could see the first glimpses of AGI as early as 2025. Perhaps he is talking about an AI agent where you can give an AI system a complex task and it autonomously uses a variety of tools to complete it.

For example, Anthropic recently announced that its developers will teach Claude chatbots to “use computers the same way humans do, including looking at the screen, moving the cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text.” We have introduced a computer usage function that can be directed. This feature allows developers to delegate tasks such as scheduling meetings, replying to emails, and analyzing data to Claude, allowing the bot to interact with the computer interface as if it were a human user.

In a demonstration, Anthropic showed how Claude can autonomously plan a day trip by interacting with a computer interface. This was an early glimpse of how AI agents could oversee complex tasks.

In September, salesforce said This “will usher in the third wave of the AI ​​revolution, helping businesses deploy AI agents alongside their human employees.” , we believe it will free people up to focus on more strategic priorities. These agents free up human employees to focus on innovation, complex problem solving, and customer relationship management.

With features like Anthropic’s computational capabilities and AI agent integrations from the likes of Salesforce, the emergence of AI agents is becoming one of the most anticipated innovations in the space. According to Gartner33% of enterprise software applications will include agent AI by 2028, up from less than 1% in 2024, and 15% of daily business decisions will be made autonomously.

While businesses stand to greatly benefit from agentic AI, the concept of “ambient intelligence” suggests an even broader transformation in which interconnected technologies seamlessly enhance everyday life.

In 2016, I Written on TechCrunch About ambient intelligence as “digital interconnectivity to produce information and services that improve our lives.” This is achieved through a dynamic combination of mobile computing platforms, cloud and big data, neural networks, and deep learning using graphics processing units (GPUs) to generate artificial intelligence (AI). ”

At the time, I said that crossing the boundaries needed to connect these technologies and provide seamless, transparent, and persistent experiences in context will take time. Eight years later, it’s safe to say that this vision is on the verge of becoming a reality.

Five levels of AGI

Based on OpenAI’s roadmap, the path to AGI includes AI agents (Level 3 out of 5) demonstrating major leaps toward autonomy and progressing through increasingly capable systems. Masu.

altman said The initial effects of these drugs are minimal. Ultimately, however, AGI will be “more powerful than people think.” This suggests that we can expect major changes soon that will require rapid social adjustment to ensure fair and ethical integration.

How will advances in AGI reshape industries, economies, the workforce, and our personal experiences with AI in the coming years? The near future driven by further advances in AI will be exciting and exciting. We can assume that it will be both turbulent and bring about both a breakthrough and a crisis.

Balancing progress and destruction

Breakthroughs could be made in areas such as AI-based drug discovery, precision agriculture, and practical humanoid robots. Breakthroughs promise transformative benefits, but the path forward is not without risks. Rapid adoption of AI could also cause significant disruption, especially job losses. This move could be significant, especially if economic conditions worsen. enter into recessionwhen a company is trying to maintain efficiency while reducing labor costs. If that happens, there could be a social backlash against AI, including large-scale protests.

As the AI ​​revolution evolves from generative tools to autonomous agents and beyond, humanity is on the cusp of a new era. Will these advances advance human potential or pose challenges that we are not yet prepared to face? Perhaps both. Over time, AI will not just become part of our tools, but will become seamlessly integrated into the fabric of life itself, becoming ambient and reshaping the way we work, connect with, and experience the world. It will be like this.

Gary Grossman is Vice President of Technology Practice. edelman He is also the global leader of the Edelman AI Center of Excellence.