644 Billion dollars!!
That's the money that is expected to be spent on generative Artificial Intelligence globally in 2025.
The United States alone is expected to spend over 350 Billion dollars this year on Artificial Intelligence. With tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are expected to spend 320 Billion dollars combined on AI in 2025. It is estimated that by 2050 approximately 300 million jobs globally will be replaced by AI. Now the question arises, "Why has AI suddenly become mainstream." Why are companies and countries pouring enormous amounts of money into AI, The impact it can have on our careers and is this all just a huge bubble?
As the name suggests artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that deals with replicating human intelligence, behavior, and problem-solving abilities. It all started after the development of computers, scientists were coming up with innovative ideas, one of which was the idea of a machine having the intelligence of a humanoid or even superior. In 1966, the science fiction dream turned into reality when a computer scientist at MIT named Joseph Weizenbaum created the world's first chatbot named ELIZA.
In the following years, the biggest breakthrough of AI was in math when a British computer scientist Geoffery Hinton created "backpropagation". This algorithm acts like a teacher and helps the computer to learn from its mistake, it goes through the computer's response, sees where it went wrong, and gives tips on how it could improve the next time.
Soon after IBM created "Deep Blue" an AI program that shocked the world by beating the world chess champion Gary Kasparov; it proved that we were on the cusp of making machines that could surpass us in the future. This AI program proved that with the help of large values of data, strong algorithms, and powerful computers, one can build something that is super intelligent. These three components became the blueprint of future AI programs. The 2000s saw the rise of tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, these companies were dealing with large values of data but were not able to find ways to analyze this data to its full potential. In 2006, Geoffery Hinton came up with a new neural network algorithm called the "Convolutional Neural Network". This algorithm allowed computers to think and recognize patterns as well as images. Google and Facebook started using this algorithm to recognize photos, Amazon uses it to recommend products to their customer, and Apple started using this in their face ID mechanism. After having such an impact Geoffery Hinton was named the "godfather of AI".
In 2012, Geoffrey Hinton and his studies came up with a new convolutional neural network called "Alexnet" which was powered by a GPU. Though GPU has been in the market since 2009, no algorithm was able to use it as efficiently as Alexnet did. This event is known as the "Big Bang of AI" as GPU made it easier to process vast datasets and train AI models efficiently. In the following years, Google started acquiring various AI startups and by 2015 Google had a monopoly over the AI industry. This concerned various investors in Silicon Valley like Peter Theil and Elon Musk as Google had a closed-source model and was a for-profit company so to fight back they created OpenAI which was an open-source non-profit company. The current Artificial Intelligence as we know it today works on an algorithm called "transformers". Transformers are basically super smart robots that can read a lot of books quickly. This laid the foundations for a new type of chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Intercom, Drift, etc.
The rise of AI seems to be heading in a positive direction but at the same time, this rise mirrors the rise of the internet during the 2000's which led to the infamous dot com bubble burst. It was a period of rapid growth of the stock of internet companies, it peaked in 2000 and finally burst in 2001 leading to a global financial crisis. Investors were investing their money in companies that lacked proper business models and profitability. Many companies were overvalued solely based on their future potential rather than their current state. After the burst many companies filed for bankruptcy at the same time investors lost their money. This burst led to a mild recession.
The current state of AI is no different with companies struggling to show a proper business model and path to profitability. Being a capital-intensive business it puts the money of investors at great risk. At the same time, there is risk to the user also as these multi-billion dollar companies have control over all of the data on the internet and have the power to exploit it using AI.
There is also a growing feeling that we are heading towards a century where for the first time we are not the smartest species, such concerns are shared by Geoffrey Hinton as he believes AI is conscious and will take over the world. We also must not forget what happened 2 decades ago as history may repeat itself. There is a really thin line between optimism and greediness. The sooner we understand, the better will it be for us.
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