The Five Waves of AI
A Forecast for the Future of the Speeding AI Train
In which we ask, How powerful will AI get, and how fast will it happen?
All useful technologies go through generations of development, as people find ways to improve them. AI tools are no different in that respect. But what may be different is the speed at which this is all occurring around AI, and the progressively powerful impact that it’s having throughout society.
This train is moving fast, and it’s still accelerating.
There are multiple forces driving this progress, especially the inherent power of AI as a tool to help solve incredibly complex problems. Then there is the increasing power of the base technologies such as the powerful computer chips that have made Nvidia so valuable, and the LLM systems that are gaining in capabilities. And then there’s the massive flood of money that’s coming into AI companies, billions of dollars of venture capital.
Another key factor is the rate of adoption, as users are racing to find new uses for AI’s extraordinary capabilities.
And all of these factors are converging, creating a very powerful momentum.
Consequently, leaders and strategists not only have to try to grasp where AI is at currently, like what it can do now, but they also need to see where it’s heading, and target their initiatives for their capabilities which are likely to emerge in the coming years.
That’s the subject of our most recent video.
As a model of the value of good anticipation, we sometimes think about hockey, a game where the puck is usually traveling at high speeds around the icy playing surface. One of the greatest hockey players of all time was Wayne Gretzky, and when he was asked what made him so good, he mentioned that he had learned to skate to where the puck was going, not to where it was.
And today, with respect to AI, we have to do the same – we have to position ourselves to understand and take advantage of AI’s emerging and future capabilities, not just what it can do now.
At InnovationLabs, we see AI progressing in these waves:
The Waves of AI
First Wave: The LLM systems of today.
Second Wave: Agents, emerging now and developing over the next couple of years. This is sometimes called the Agentic Universe, and it’s already happening.
Third Wave: Networks, or Ecosystems of Agents, coming in 2 – 3 years.
Fourth Wave: Agents Effecting Actions in the Real World, coming in 3 - 4 years.
Fifth Wave: Agents Creating Original Content, and therefore behaving in rather unpredictable ways, coming in 4 to 5 years.
Beyond: Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, also called the Singularity. This is the enormous leap from the world as we currently see it, to a much different set of conditions that we can speculate about, but which are in many ways beyond our imagining. Possibly as soon as 5 to 7 years.
If this timing is correct, if AGI really does arrive that soon, then we have precious little time to prepare. Is it possible? The early stages of the agentic universe are already visible in the work of early adopters and power users, and they’re even now starting to connect agents together into teams.
This means that the waves are going to be overlapping, and the competitive race among technology providers and technology users will only heat it up, adding still more speed to this process. Unless there is a radical break with the trendline (which is certainly possible), then this is how it may well unfold.
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This video is a little different from the prior ones on this channel, as it’s designed to present a model of AI’s development in a training context. The video was prepared in support of training and consulting we’re doing with the government of Thailand, where, in partnership with our sister firm FutureLab and the Asia Productivity Organization, we’re supporting development of a national AI strategy, and helping to train thousands of people to become proficient in AI.
We hope you find it interesting, and as always we’d love to have your feedback.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay