The AI Century
The Century of Artificial Intelligence began more than 60 years ago. So we are already in the second half.
In the first half of the AI century, there were many groundbreaking research results. Machine Learning was first discussed in the 1950s. The term Artificial Intelligence was first used in 1956.
The adoption in the real world was mainly driven by the “Good old fashioned AI” in the first half . Based on deduction, AI systems were able to “think” and make decisions. The term used for this: Expert Systems. But it never delivered what it promised. It was very difficult to bring expert knowledge into these systems – because they could not learn from experience.
All that changed in the second half. Driven by the exponential growth of digital data (Internet) and computing power (cloud computing, GPUs) and new insights from research, the old paradigms of machine learning and especially deep learning are now working in practice. We now have AI systems that can “learn” based on induction. This has opened up possibilities for real solutions in many areas – and the use of AI is now growing exponentially.
Just look at some recent studies
ARK Invest predicts that the Enterprise Value of AI Software Companies will grow from 2.3T US$ (2021) to more than 80T US$ in 2030. This is a compound annual growth of nearly 50% over the next 9 years. (1)
Training costs for AI systems will decline by 60% at an annual rate over the next 9 years driven by improvements in AI hardware and software. (1)
AI adoption is continuing its steady rise based on the McKinsey report “The State of AI 2021” . 56 percent of the respondents have adopted AI in their organisation. And 27 percent saw an increase of their EBIT of at least 5% attributable to AI. (2)
This is based on the adoption of current AI technologies.
And AI research is not standing still, too.
By 2050 AI will be ubiquitous – just like electricity today.
(1) ARK Invest – Big Ideas 2022 –
https://research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Download_Files_ARK-Invest/White_Papers/ARK_BigIdeas2022.pdf
(2) McKinsey – The state of AI 2021 –
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/global-survey-the-state-of-ai-in-2021?
