In the history of computing lots of revolutionary decades were available, in the 1950s the first mainframe computers were build and in the 1970s the first Minicomputer like the Dec PDP-11 were available. The shared similarity was, that a new sort of technology was build / invented which has replaced former technology.
The last great computer revolution took place in the early 1990s. From 1988-1994 the IBM PC has improved drastically. Until 1988 a PC was a very expensive office machine with a text mode graphics card, but in 1993, the typical 486SX PC was great for gaming, for writing texts and for getting access to the Internet. The amount of software for the Intel/Windows PC has increased dramatically, because many millions of private and commercial PCs were sold and used on a daily basis.
In the 2020s there was another big revolution available which was the AI revolution. This AI revolution was initiated by chatgpt and has evolved into a full-scale introduction of Artificial Intelligence which goes beyond of simple chatbots. The difference to the early 1990s revolution is, that its much harder to describe the AI revolution in detail.
In the early 1990s, the transition could be isolated to the availability of new computer hardware/software and computer-networks. That means, there was a cheap Intel 486SX processor available, there was a new MS Windows 3.11 operating system programmed and new computer networks like the Internet and Compuserve were there. in contrast, the current AI revolution doesn't belong to classical categories of computing.
From a hardware perspective, the former Moores law seems to be dead. That means, the existing 64bit CPUs are no longer improving anymore, and software remains also stable. A modern Windows 11 operating system looks the same or even worse than the former version which was Windows 10 or Windows 7. So the development can't be called a revolution but a stagnation. At the same time, the AI revolution is a reality, but it doesn't belong to the computer industry.
To explain this contradiction we have to describe what Artificial Intelligence is about. Its not a certain sort of software and it doesn't belong to computer hardware. So it doesn't take place in the reality but its a virtual revolution. Let us go a step backward and describe what the situation was for the computer revolution in the early 1990s.
This revolution was a bottom up movement initiated by the people. Lots of computer users have bought a PC including software packages at this time, and new computer stores were created world wide. In addition, book publishers have discovered the subject and endless amount of computer related books were sold about the internal working of Winword 6.0, about the Turbo Pascal programming language and about the Win 3.11 API.
In contrast, the AI movement since the 2020 is working with a top down approach. There are no stores available in which AI technology is sold to the masses, also there are no computer expos available like CeBIT or Comdex. And even books about AI are not available. The most famous AI book is "Russel/Norvig: AIMA" which
quote "... is considered the standard text in the field of AI" [1]
but in this AI bible, no section about Large language models is available. The only chapter which explains the subject on the surface is section 24 "Deep Learning for NLP" [2].
On the other hand, there is a dedicated place in which AI is visible. In the Gutenberg Galaxy, and especially in the conference papers after the year 2020, the AI revolution is visible everywhere. Lots of new algorithms, datasets, and applications for large language models are presented to the reader in over 1 million papers. The only concern is, that the Gutenberg galaxy and especially the published conference paper are ignored by the public. The total amount of readers is very small.
The surprising situation is, that the AI revolution isn't mirrored in the mainstream book market, and not in computer journals, there are no AI related expos available and even large scale tech companies doesn't know how Large language models are working. In combination, this is a unusual situation because in the former 1990s computer revolution, the situation was the opposite.
The working thesis is, that the AI revolution was initiated top down with its roots in the academic papers since the 2020s. Its a virtual revolution which is bypassing existing economical or technological structures.
sources:
- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence:_A_Modern_Approach
- [2] AIMA book, 4th edition for U.S., 2020, https://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/
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