Artificial intelligence: a high technology for us all

“You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.” — Andy Warhol

Embedded AI might be one of the first “high technologies” used by the poor and rich equally from day one.

The normal path for distribution of “high technology” is that the rich subsidize the edge of innovation, and eventually the future becomes affordable. Computers, televisions, smartphones, cars: all expensive at first but overtime scale and process innovation allowed them to reach the masses.

Software is a different because it’s usually not “high tech” per se: the hardware platform below is cutting edge but software creates the business logic for yesterday’s technology. Usually the innovative part of consumer software isn’t the ‘tech,’ but the experience.

AI violates these rules: it’s a software-based cutting edge technology that will be from the beginning mass distributed.

This is because innovation in AI happens centrally and the marginal cost of distribution is low. Innovation happens primarily in the data center and existing well-worn hardware channels (the smartphone) will work for its distribution. The first use costs just about as much the millionth, and both of them are low.

Facebook Messenger’s M, Google Photos, Skype Translator, AI scheduling assistants: these are the most advanced technologies out there and you can use them for free from your phone.

There are some exceptions for how AI will be distributed, of course: the automation in self-driving cars is constrained by (dropping) hardware cost, which will likely follow the traditional innovation distribution pattern. But most people have already and will continue experience AI in their lives, in the products they already use everyday.

Because of this unusual distribution pattern, AI will not have the luxury halo of other high technologies. Perhaps the rich will turn to humans to do what the rest of us will use AI for, evidence of human error demonstrating their unusual ability to pay for ‘artisanal intelligence.’

But more likely we’ll just all use the same AI, just like your smartphone is no better than mine.

—

To receive future posts via email, sign up here.