New "most transformative technologies ever" appear monthly in the trade publications
Beware of hyperbole!
Andrew Ross Sarkin leads off his DealBook newsletter in the NYTimes today, 17 May, with a story on the clamor around regulating AI. One quote stood out:
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina likened A.I. to a nuclear reactor that needs an operating license and regular testing. When Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer and another witness, suggested that a new agency wasn’t needed, Graham pushed back: “I don’t understand how you could say that we don’t need an agency to deal with the most transformative technology, maybe ever.”
If you’ve been analyzing technology trends as I have since the late 1970s, you might realize the irony in that quote. No, not the observation that a Republican is supporting the notion of creating yet another Federal agency. It’s that people are saying generative AI (as in ChatGPT, Bard, et al) is the most transformative technology ever. Hello. How about fire? The wheel? and the Miriad of new transformative technologies being promoted by politicians, investors, geeks, and, yes, a few frauds too (hello, Theanos?)
I went to BARD and asked it “List the top 50 transformative technologies that have emerged over the last 100 years.” Try it. How many did you find that people might have called “the most transformative” maybe ever? Hmmm….if we follow Senator Graham’s logic, we should have had Federal agencies regulating robotics, transistors, 3D printing, cloud (and network) computing, nanotechnology, crypto-currency, gene therapy, digital twins, telemedicine, fusion energy, and so forth.
I’m going to speculate that we will see new, tremendously transformative technologies announced every quarter, attracting large waves of press coverage every three years, and declarations as “transformative technology of the decade” far more often than once every ten years.
I AM NOT saying that generative technology isn’t going to be highly disruptive. I believe it will be; not in all forms and the most disruptive forms are yet to emerge from the labs.
Equating the “need for regulation” with emergence and shock might be overstretching the metaphors that guide our judgment.
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A few of my earlier pieces to also consider:
Beware of Forecasts of Immediate Massive Change For No Doubt They’re Wrong! which I wrote in September of 2019. It takes 20 or more years for technology waves to run their course.
Confronted with too much tech FUD and FOMO? which I wrote in September 2021. FUD and FOMO are mixed together to drive early (usually premature) conclusions and purchase decisions.
Filtered Large Language Models Open Minds & Inspire which I wrote in June of 2022. Look at the positives and experiment. Yes, there are shortcomings too so don’t go into this blind.