There’s non-stop chatter in tech circles about AGI and how AI will change the world, but a tech CEO has pointed out that very little of that has happened at the moment.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has said that very little has changed in the physical world because of the recent advancements in AI. “Up until two years ago, very few people were talking about AI. And then of course, ChatGPT launched, and then the generative AI revolution basically started. And while it’s been so exciting, very few of you (would say) that your daily life has (become) any different because of AI,” he told the audience during an interview.
“Here’s a test. Take your phone out, look at all the apps in your home screen and ask what of them have changed two years later because of generative AI. Like truly changed. I doubt, other than using an AI native app, I bet you none of the apps you use, including Airbnb, are fundamentally completely different in a world of AI. And then ask yourself, what did you do today that was different because of AI? What have you done today or yesterday that changed fundamentally because AI?” he asked.
Chesky compared this state with the early days of the internet. “I remember when the internet came out. I was born 1981. So my memory is the internet (is from) 1993. It was before search engines, and before search engines, some of you might remember, do you know how you found a website? There was a phone book — like an actual phone book — with these websites and you would say, Oh, if I want to learn about this, you go to the phone book and you type in the browser,” Chesky said.
Chesky drew parallels between how the internet was in 1993 and the state of AI now. “I feel like we are in the like phone book stage of AI,” Chesky said. “We are still that early. And I think it is starting to begin to change our digital world, but it has not yet changed the most important part of our lives, which is the physical world. And that’s maybe one of the reasons why your life hasn’t completely changed by AI is even when it does change on the phone, our physical reality is still exactly the same as it was before,” Chesky explained.
Chesky seemed to be saying that the AI revolution was still in its infancy, in spite of all the talk about it in the tech world. He said that it could be a while before AI changed our digital world, and it would take longer still to change our physical worlds. The public internet was founded in the early 1990s, but companies like Facebook and Google only became mainstream in the 2000s and started changing people’s lives. And Chesky says that it could be a similarly long time before our lives are dramatically altered by AI.