ChatGPT’s second birthday: What will the next generation of artificial intelligence (and the world) look like in two years?

It has now been more than two years since ChatGPT first appeared on November 30, 2022. large language model (LL.M.).

LLM is a Transformer architecture First launched by Google in 2017, it uses self-attention mechanisms to process and produce human-like text in tasks such as natural language understanding. This is more than just a successful demonstration project! OpenAI is as surprised as anyone by the rapid popularity of ChatGPT, which reached 100 million users in two months.

Although maybe they shouldn't be so surprised. Futurist Kevin Kelly, too wired, suggestion In 2014, “The business plans of the next 10,000 startups were easy to predict: take X and add artificial intelligence. This is a big deal, and it’s here now.

Kelly said this on ChatGPT a few years ago. Yet, this is exactly what has happened. Equally striking are his predictions in the same area wired The article stated: “By 2024, Google's main product will not be search, but artificial intelligence.” Whether this is true is still open to question, but it may soon become a fact. Gemini is Google's flagship AI chat product, but AI permeates its search and likely all of its other products, including AI features in YouTube, TensorFlow, and Google Workspace.

The robot is well known around the world

The boom in artificial intelligence startups that Kelly foresaw really gained momentum after the launch of ChatGPT. You can call it the Big Bang moment of artificial intelligence, or the robots that people around the world have heard of. It advances the field of generative artificial intelligence – a broad category of LL.M. in textual and diffusion models for image creation. This reaches the heights of hype, or what Gartner calls the “peak of exaggerated expectations” in 2023.

The hype may have waned in 2023, but only a little. by some estimateCurrently, there are as many as 70,000 artificial intelligence companies in the world, which has grown by 100% since 2017. artificial intelligence technology. Kelly’s predictions about artificial intelligence startups in 2014 proved to be prophetic.

If anything, huge amounts of venture capital continue to flow into startups looking to harness artificial intelligence. new york times reported that investors pour in In the second quarter of 2024 alone, U.S. artificial intelligence startups received $27.1 billion in funding, “accounting for nearly half of all U.S. startup financing during the same period.” Stasta additional: “In the first nine months of 2024, AI-related investments accounted for 33% of total investment by U.S.-based venture capital-backed companies, up from 14% in 2020, and will likely be even higher in the coming years.” Huge potential The market is attractive to both startups and established companies.

Reuters recent institute poll of consumers reported low personal usage of ChatGPT in 6 countries, including the US and UK. Only 1% in Japan use it daily, rising to 2% in France and the UK, and 7% in the US. This slow adoption may be attributed to Various factors range from lack of awareness to concerns about the security of personal information. Does this mean the impact of artificial intelligence is overestimated? Hardly, as most survey respondents expect artificial intelligence to have a significant impact on all areas of society within the next five years.

The situation in the corporate sector is very different. It is reported Entrepreneurial BeatIndustry Analysis Company GAI Insights It is expected that 33% of enterprises will put next-generation artificial intelligence applications into production next year. Businesses typically have clearer use cases, such as improving customer service, automating workflows, and enhancing decision making, which lead to faster adoption than individual consumers. For example, the healthcare industry is using AI to capture notes, and financial services are using the technology to enhance fraud detection. GAI further reports that Gen AI is a top priority for CIOs and CTOs in their 2025 budgets.

What to do next? From a generation of artificial intelligence to the dawn of superintelligence

The uneven rollout of this new generation of artificial intelligence raises questions about adoption prospects in 2025 and beyond. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both say artificial general intelligence (AGI) — or even superintelligence — could emerge within the next two to ten years, potentially reshaping our world. AGI is considered to be the ability of artificial intelligence to understand, learn and perform any intellectual task that humans can complete, thereby imitating human cognitive abilities in a wide range of fields.

The spark of AGI in 2025

as report go through typeAltman said we could see the dawn of AGI as early as 2025.

For example, Anthropic recently launched Computer usage functions This allows developers to direct the Claude chatbot to “use a computer like a human would – by looking at the screen, moving the cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text.” This feature allows developers to delegate tasks to Claude, such as scheduling meetings and responding to emails. Or analyze data to allow robots to interact with computer interfaces like human users.

In the demo, Anthropic showed how Cloud could autonomously plan a day trip by interacting with a computer interface — an early glimpse into how an artificial intelligence agent could oversee a complex task.

September, salesperson said It “is leading the third wave of the AI ​​revolution, helping enterprises deploy AI agents alongside human workers.” They see agents focusing on repetitive, low-value tasks, freeing people to focus on more strategic priorities matter. These agents can enable human workers to focus on innovation, complex problem solving, or customer relationship management.

With features such as computer usage capabilities from Anthropic and AI agent integration from companies like Salesforce, the emergence of AI agents is becoming one of the most anticipated innovations in the field. According to KnuthBy 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will contain agent artificial intelligence, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of daily work decisions to be made autonomously.

While businesses stand to benefit greatly from agented artificial intelligence, the concept of “ambient intelligence” is indicative of a broader shift in which connected technologies seamlessly improve daily life.

In 2016, I wrote in TechCrunch Regarding ambient intelligence, as a “digital interconnection that can generate information and services that improve our lives. This is the dynamic through mobile computing platforms, cloud and big data, neural networks and deep learning using graphics processing units (GPUs) combination to produce artificial intelligence (AI).

At the time, I said that connecting these technologies and crossing the necessary boundaries to deliver seamless, transparent, and persistent experiences in context would take time to achieve. It can be said that eight years later, this vision is about to be realized.

Five levels of AGI

According to OpenAI's roadmap, the journey to AGI involves continuous progress through increasingly powerful systems, with AI agents (Level 3 of 5) marking a major leap toward autonomy.

ultraman point out The initial effects of these drugs will be minimal. Although in the end AGI will be “more intense than people think”. This suggests that we should be seeing significant changes soon, which will require rapid social adjustments to ensure fairness and ethical integration.

How will advances in AGI reshape industries, economies, workforces, and our personal experiences with artificial intelligence in the coming years? We can speculate that the near future, driven by further advances in artificial intelligence, will be both exciting and turbulent, bringing breakthroughs as well as crises.

Balance breakthrough and subversion

Breakthroughs could include artificial intelligence drug discovery, precision agriculture and practical humanoid robots. While breakthroughs bring transformative benefits, the path forward is not without risks. Rapid adoption of AI could also lead to significant disruption, particularly job losses. This displacement can be significant, especially if the economy goes down Entering a recessionwhen a company wants to reduce its workforce but maintain efficiency. If this happens, there may be a social backlash against artificial intelligence, including mass protests.

As the artificial intelligence revolution evolves from generative tools to autonomous agents and beyond, humanity is on the cusp of a new era. Will these advances advance human potential or create challenges we are not ready to face? Most likely it will be both. Over time, artificial intelligence will become more than just part of our tools—it will become seamlessly woven into the fabric of life itself, becoming the environment and reshaping the way we work, connect, and experience the world.

Gary Grossman is executive vice president of the technology practice at Edelman Edelman is a global leader in centers of excellence for artificial intelligence.