Feels good when someone asks –
why no blogs from you? – even if it is just one person asking. As someone who
writes more by inspiration than perspiration, many thoughts and words flowed,
but a time gap between the flow of thoughts and committing it to paper meant,
the flow found its way into oblivion. But here I am back.
AI – Product (Form) Life Cycle
We have heard how products reincarnate themselves into different forms over time, also called as Product (Form) Life Cycle. One popular example being how we listened to music using vinyl records which over time transformed into CD’s – the basic principle being the same. The needle became a laser, the PVC disc became a polycarbonate disc (CD).
Mankind over centuries has always focussed upon acquiring knowledge, whether by sheer curiosity or due to a pressing need and obtaining information which between them contributed to much of the power a person or even a nation exercised.
A highly popular native American folk tale talks of how the native American Indians managed to obtain fire from 2 old women who refused to share it with the world. In history we have examples of how the Romans and the English undertook a census to identify opportunities for taxes and other reasons, in other words - to control the people. These illustrate the need for “knowledge” due to a pressing need and “information” for decision making and exercising Power.
For ease of writing, I club “Knowledge and Information” here as DATA.
In ancient times, people wrote and preserved DATA on papyrus while in India they used the palm leaf to create manuscripts. If the dead sea scrolls written on papyrus spoke of the Bible/ Old Testament, writings of wisdom, wars, prayers, the Indians used palm leaf manuscripts to preserve DATA about science, maths, medicine, architecture and so on. Thus, ever since mankind evolved there has been a quest for this DATA. The DATA thus collated helped us take decisions.
Fast forwarding to a few thousand years back, India had the Guru/Shishya (Teacher/Student) system where a teacher imparted DATA to others who were his students. These were imparted verbally and passed on from generation to generation. Each generation likely refined and improved on the DATA even as they were also distorted and misused by some.
Fast forwarding to a few hundreds of years back we hear of books, libraries and these provided mankind the DATA they sought. Like always even these were misused, distorted, but they still enriched mankind in its eternal quest for DATA.
Talking of our own lives, hardly 50 years back, as students we poured over books, libraries to gain DATA. We “searched” “browsed” these books/libraries looking for specific DATA we needed.
Geography and Economics created hurdles in this quest, and some had access to multiple libraries, while others were limited to what they could access, and many more had no access at all. The last group depended upon a “Teacher” they trusted or had no option but to trust whoever they dealt with. Each used the DATA to take decisions.
As always, every such “search” yielded right/wrong DATA, distorted or manipulated DATA and society moved along with these imperfections till each search became available and more reliable, affordable.
Soon the computer age (1950) dawned with the internet (1983) close behind and this suddenly changed how people obtained DATA. Change that used to take centuries, collapsed to just decades. This computer/ internet or information technology bridged geography, time and access like never before. Youngsters even if less privileged, now had access to the same level of information like all others even if geography and economics still mattered.
Mobile phones further revolutionised and democratised access to DATA with high-speed internet, social media, instant messaging and other such tools – even if like always there was misuse of the system and distortion of DATA. The next frontier in this is Satellite communication.
What took us to libraries for search became easier with Google and such software that gave us access to the whole world as a library. What we did was not very different from what we did then. We had a choice of “books” “authors” “publications”, and we could pick and chose what suited us including our biases. We browsed through various websites searching for the DATA we needed just like we trawled through books in libraries. The intent - of taking decisions – based this DATA remained the same even if the products/ tools used were different.
Within about 40 years after the dawn of the internet, 25 years after the advent of the modern search engine the world is now seeing a new revolution with Artificial Intelligence or AI. The growth and popularity of this tool within months if not a year or so at best, is incredible.
To a layman, AI takes the eternal search for DATA to the next level. As against the physical effort of browsing through a library of books trying to find DATA, we graduated to browsing through the internet to find the books (websites) that apparently had the DATA we needed. With AI, the tool not only browsed through the library of books, but also through the various books (websites) itself that apparently had the DATA we needed and then gives us the DATA in the form of the results/outcome we needed in a matter of seconds – thus enabling us to take decisions.
Geography, time was compressed to seconds, and access to DATA democratised to a level that even the differently abled people can now obtain DATA like everyone else. Once again distortion and misuse of DATA remains a constant factor – just like over the last few thousands of years. This new tool has an “agent” assigned who does the work we did earlier – searching and browsing – and often gives the decision itself.
This agent is not very different from the old Guru/Teacher we used to have over time – some trusted, others not, yet, to be trusted since we don’t have an option. Barring for the fact that geography and time have compressed to nano seconds, what we are experiencing with the AI revolution is no different from what the world has repeatedly experienced over thousands of years.
Papyrus/Palm leaf medium which took 10 to 15 days to make just one page and then took hours to write a simple letter are now replaced by flash drives and bits/bytes. What would take an entire building to house in the form of books, can now be carried in one’s pocket. A Kindle can hold as many as 10,000 books.
When one traverses this journey from about 2,500 years ago to today, what we see in this evolution is the Product Form Life Cycle that has changed constantly to compress geography, time and access but maintained misuse/distortion as a constant. Today AI conjures horrifying future outcomes, and many could well come true, but as always “water finds its level” – and the world will settle for a new normal.
Periodicity of change in terms of time taken, has reduced, with the last one taking about 25 years. This will continue and we can possibly see another change in maybe a decade. How we study, go to school/college, get healthcare, work, even how wars are fought, everything can change and time will tell what happens and where the water will settle.
The ONLY concern that I personally would have is that over centuries the democratisation of DATA that has happened over time, could itself see a new life cycle where once again DATA can become a tool to control people – just like the two old women not sharing fire or how the Romans/English used the census to control people.
Comments
the decline of an old product form is almost always caused by, and directly overlaps with, the introduction of a new product form. An excellent example of this overlapping transition is the shift from Digital Cameras to Smartphones. The decline of the standalone point-and-shoot camera was not a slow, natural death; it was directly caused by the aggressive introduction and growth of the smartphone.