After more than two decades, or more specifically, twenty-four years since Google launched on September 4th, 1998 it has relentlessly dominated the Search industry, acquiring and possessing more than 90% of the industries marketshare and preserving its status as a global monopoly with zero fear of a contender worthy enough to supplant it–at least, until now.
On November 30, 2022 the world was introduced to ChatGPT, a novel new AI application with unprecedented natural language capabilities, never before seen in a consumer product. Sure, we've had our fair share of dumb Chatbots; most technophiles will remember the 2016 bot-hype era as one filled with both promise and massive disappointment. After all, we anticipated an array of futuristic and highly functional messenger bots that would transform the internet, instead we were punished with Tay, Microsofts infamous racist and sexist 'hate-bot'. Â
Boomers will certainly raise their eyebrows at the gloomy depiction of the state of AI agents in 2016, after all scientist and engineers alike have made substantial progress since the early days of ELIZA–but 2022 was different. OpenAI, the parent company behind ChatGPT, achieved a breakthrough, so much so that in just five short days, the service exceeded one-million users, beating out Instagram, the previous record holder who achieved the same feat in 2.5 months.
And if that wasn't staggering enough, ChatGPT would go on to seize another record from Instagram when it surpassed an astonishing one-hundred-million users in two months–post-launch, to put this in perspective, it took Instagram more than two years to reach the same milestone!
Implications
Understandably, you might be questioning the implications of all this
I think Bill Gates got it right, when he acknowledged in one of his most recent notes that, The Age of AI has Begun.