AI is not at all like Mobile/Cloud/SaaS
AI is a hard problem and will take much longer to solve in any scope. The sudden uptick in interest may revert back to normal, but the cycle of work will be longer, much more diverse, and interesting than Mobile/Cloud/SaaS.
There’s an undeniable tsunami of hype in the AI space, and many compare it to the preceding waves of Cloud, SaaS, and Mobile “revolutions”. (Remember “mobile”?). At several AI conferences and VC panels, the question was asked, is AI next, and is it made of the same cloth? Will the AI technology cycle follow the hype cycle, and will it resemble Cloud/SaaS?
On the panels, most VCs said yes. In my informal Twitter poll 75% also said yes. Others said that AI will be like water. The joke goes like: an old fish passes by two younger ones and says, “The water’s good today”. The younger ones look at each other and ask, “what’s water?” Electricity and water are ubiquitous and are assumed to just be there, all around you. So will be AI.
My [definition of AI] is “computer-augmented decision-making in context”. I don’t think this comparison fully holds, however. I agree with the idea that Cloud, SaaS and Mobile are the key enablers of AI, since the data will be amassed together, next to the vast computer required to understand it, and sensing will occur in context.
