There will undoubtedly be a recalibration of expectations, but there’s something different this time. I call it the “AI—artificial intelligence—inflection.”

When Google launched its search engine in 1998, only a few recognized its disruptive potential for the internet. By the time Universal Search debuted in 2007, “let’s Google it” had become the de facto way to find information online.

I believe the launch of ChatGPT marks a similarly pivotal moment in history. It’s the best natural‑language interface to date—and it keeps improving. For the first time, AI resides in every connected home in a very tangible way. Yes, platforms like Facebook and TikTok have long incorporated sophisticated AI capabilities, but until now those have worked behind the scenes.

There’s something profoundly visceral about a blinking cursor on your screen that can rapidly deliver an answer matching your question. That visibility of AI will, step by step, begin to shape our behaviors and drive broader adoption of AI technologies.

This newfound ubiquity of AI has kicked off a virtuous cycle—more investment in AI leads to more capabilities, which in turn drives further adoption and investment.

Just as crafting a good Google search query became its own skill, so too will learning to prompt generative AI become second nature. And with techniques like Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), you can back that powerful language interface with accurate, context‑specific information. Then, consider how we’ll move from text to speech, to images, and ultimately to video: we’re at the threshold of another fundamental shift that we’ll feel in the coming years.

Skeptics may remain cautious, while others will boldly predict when Artificial General Intelligence might take over large swaths of human jobs. Personally, I believe the best approach is to learn to use the technology, understand its strengths, and continuously adapt your skills to stay current. So although I’m confident it will take time before AI truly replaces many roles, I encourage you to recognize just how capable AI is today—lean into it, and trust that once today’s routine problems are solved by machines, people will naturally move on to tackling the next frontier of complexity.

That’s the culture we embrace at IFS: we leverage decades of mature AI—just as we do for programming‑optimization in our target industries—and combine it with innovations like generative AI as a skilled natural‑language interface to help extract and summarize complex technical knowledge.

And, of course, we also use it ourselves to boost our own internal productivity!

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— Vaibs Kumar
Source: https://blog.ifs.com/2024/03/whats-different-about-ai-this-time/