Episode 81 - The "Fad" or "Future" Scale: AI

“Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic”… it’s a quote we’ve all heard countless times and these days is dangerously close to becoming overused if not outright tired… but even so, it remains one of my favorites because its founded in so much truth…

I remember the first time I put on an Oculus Rift developer kit and was suddenly transported to a far off world, it was nothing less than magic…

I also remember the first time I dialed into a local telephone number with a modem and was suddenly connected to a global network of computers, servers, and data just waiting to be absorbed… one very slowly loading page at a time… 

Those two examples were separated by a mere fifteen or so years, but they were both pivotal in my personal technological development as well as steps down a road that had led us to where we are today… a rapidly growing market of chat bots, “smart” assistants, and quote-unquote photographs containing ever-fewer glimpses of a scene “as it really was”… 

It’s certainly no question that the concept of AI is here to stay, that it is only going to continue developing, and for many, here-and-now, it’s nothing less than magical…

Type a prompt or two into a box, and get back sometimes awe-inspiring artwork… provide mountains of data, and generate reports, summaries, and presentation-grade material… ask for the perfect scrambled egg recipe and, well sadly, still get 7 conflicting recipes for ever-more-runny eggs…

So the question we’re here to ask today is, are we there yet? Has our AI-laced future truly arrived or are we barely in its infancy? Are we just two or three GPT iterations away from a post-scarcity paradise, or two or three steps down a road with miles still to go ahead? 

We’re launching what we think will be a tool we use more and more frequently, a measure or sorts to answer the question (for now) where exactly are we on the “Fad or Future” scale for AI?