Since ChatGPT detonated the generative AI craze, artificial intelligence has become a huge opportunity that is rare in a century!
Many tech leaders have expressed similar sentiments. For example, Huang said that the release of ChatGPT is the iPhone moment in the field of artificial intelligence; Bill Gates said it was the most revolutionary technology he had seen in his lifetime besides the Windows graphical interface; Ma Huateng expressed it more vividly: "At first, we thought that artificial intelligence was an opportunity that would not be encountered in ten years, but the more we thought about it, the more we felt that this was an opportunity similar to the industrial revolution that invented electricity that had not been encountered in hundreds of years."
They gave their own judgments, but did not analyze in detail the underlying logic of this century-old opportunity. We believe that generative AI has the potential to have a huge boost to the economy, and there is likely to be a golden period of rapid growth for more than three decades! Because generative AI has the potential to inherit the best traditions of the Industrial Revolution, it can transform the market competition landscape from a zero-sum game to a positive-sum game.
1. Why is it said that artificial intelligence will bring a golden period of 30 years of growth?
The premise of this judgment is that we have analyzed the rationale for the industrial revolution driving economic growth. Specifically, before the Industrial Revolution, social production was dominated by handicrafts and agriculture, the efficiency was generally low, and a small number of products were difficult to meet the large number of people's needs, and the Industrial Revolution replaced individual handicraft workshops with large-scale mechanized factories, which greatly increased product output, which we call "production scale", while also reducing production costs and product prices, so that everyone can afford high-quality products, which realizes "consumption scale".
The "scale of production" superimposed on the "scale of consumption" meets the product demand that people have not met before, and the competitive power between enterprises becomes the continuous creation of new products, so that a continuous benign positive sum game is formed, and the market continues to expand, promoting the exponential growth of global GDP after the industrial revolution.
However, with the continuous advancement of technology, more and more product categories, and the slow growth of new demand, this has led the market to fall back into the zero-sum game of homogeneous competition.
In recent years, the impact of the epidemic and geopolitical games have made global economic growth even more difficult, and many people believe that we are entering an economic winter.
For example, Bank of America CEO Moynihan said that the U.S. economy may face a mild recession in the second half of this year and the first quarter of next year; The Confederation of British Industry says the UK will fall into a year-long recession in 2023; Germany's economy contracted by 0.5% in the first quarter, which meets the definition of a technical recession.
It seems that the arrival of the hot summer in nature may be an economically cold winter, and we need to be mentally prepared for the summer to enter the winter, but it is not without a turnaround.
Why do you say that? This brings us to the quote of Mark Twain, which we have always admired: "History does not repeat, but rhymes". After analyzing the law of economic growth driven by the industrial revolution, and then looking at the current digital revolution, we believe that artificial intelligence technology has now been tuned and matured and entered the application development period, that is, we have a new round of positive and game economic growth opportunities similar to the mature period of the industrial revolution!
In fact, the characteristics of large-scale production in the last stage of the industrial revolution are to solidify the service into the product, and people need to buy a specific product to achieve self-service, such as buying a refrigerator to keep food fresh, which can replace general services to a certain extent, but it is difficult to meet the demand for high-end services.
For example, although everyone can usually eat a variety of dishes, only a small number of people can taste the dishes made by three-Michelin chefs; Although everyone can enjoy universal medical services, only a few people can make master-level old Chinese medicine practitioners see the pulse of the doctor.
On the surface, the price of high-end services is too high for many people to afford, but the essential problem is that the energy and time of human services are limited, and the more top-level service experience, the more difficult it is to copy a large number of people, which makes high-end services have a strong scarcity.
However, after the maturity of artificial intelligence technology, we can meet the demand for high-end services on a larger scale.
Historically, this has been a maturation process: in the software age, individual human experiences can be digitally recorded; In the age of the Internet, the global human experience can be recorded, aggregated and shared; In the current era of artificial intelligence, we have been able to systematically summarize and analyze the aggregated human experience, and then train artificial intelligence to master human experience, and then transform it into a service to export to everyone.
Most importantly, generative AI can not only replicate the average level of human experience, but also has the potential to replicate the experience of top human experts, which represents the first time in human history that high-end services can be replicated! This is the true meaning and greatness of the new round of AI revolution! Specifically, there are four characteristics: First, if artificial intelligence successfully replicates the experience of top experts, it can turn small-scale high-end services that were previously enjoyed only by a few people into large-scale high-end services that can be enjoyed by most people, which can stimulate more consumption, which we call "service scale". Then, artificial intelligence can also provide one-to-one personalized services according to the specific conditions of different users, just like the previous information services of thousands of faces, providing thousands of people and thousands of faces of AI services, rather than as before, can only provide standardized services, this is "service personalization". Moreover, artificial intelligence can also inherit one of the benefits of the industrial revolution, which is to reduce costs with scale. Once expert experience is replicated, the marginal cost of providing services decreases and prices become lower and lower, making high-end services affordable for everyone, which is "service universalization". The above three points are similar characteristics of the artificial intelligence revolution and the industrial revolution. But artificial intelligence also has the uniqueness, that is, it can provide 24-hour uninterrupted continuous services, for example, the divine doctor Bian Que saw Cai Huangong only four times, but artificial intelligence medical services can monitor human health 24 hours a day, which is "service continuity".
This will also lead to a change in consumer thinking, because what we really need is not a separate product, but a continuous service, which is the servitization of the product we have been advocating, and the product will be just a medium and carrier of the service in the future.
Therefore, we will see that a large number of services that were difficult for humans to provide before, and the service needs that could not be met before, can be well satisfied, just as the industrial revolution drives economic growth with large-scale production and consumption, artificial intelligence will drive a wave of blowout growth with the scale, personalization, universalization and sustainability of services, and promote rapid economic development.
2. The biggest opportunity of the artificial intelligence revolution is to win the blitzkrieg of model innovation In addition to the rapid development of the economy, artificial intelligence also has a very important role is to promote the development of society, economist Diego Comin said: "The strength of an economy does not depend on the speed of its introduction of advanced technology, but depends on the depth of use of advanced technology", and the scale of services based on artificial intelligence is equivalent to allowing everyone to enjoy the most advanced and in-depth services. This is invisibly promoting the popularization of artificial intelligence and social progress.
In addition, the era of artificial intelligence will inherit and carry forward a fine tradition of the industrial revolution, the more popular the higher the level of service, rather than the more niche and more high-end.
In the past, many luxury goods advertised that their products were handmade, such as Rolls-Royce would use hand-stitched leather seats, but the core of the car is not the seat, but the engine, even Rolls-Royce does not dare to say that the engine is handmade, because it must not be as good as mass production.
Therefore, industrial large-scale production has brought a conceptual revolution, that is, large-scale production of products is better than niche handmade products. However, this concept has never been implemented in the service industry, and high-end services have always been niche services.
However, artificial intelligence requires a lot of data training, which means that the more people who provide services, the more data they will get, and the better the training effect, which is why ChatGPT is now the best artificial intelligence system, although Google launched the transformer and its own large model earlier, but ChatGPT was opened to the public earlier, allowing more users to use, which is equal to more people helping them train together, which has the possibility of leading.
Therefore, in the era of artificial intelligence, the more services provided to the public, the better the quality of services. In the past, there may be people who help you manage your finances, but his level must not be as high as the top financial advisors who help the rich manage their finances, but in the future, with the popularity of artificial intelligence services, just like AlphaGo defeating Lee Sedol, artificial intelligence gradually surpasses ordinary people in many fields such as financial management, education, and health and becomes an expert, and the more artificial intelligence algorithms that provide services to the public, the better the algorithm, that is, the AI that serves the public in the future is the top AI financial advisor.
In this way, we will see that society is fairer and more progressive, which is the great meaning of artificial intelligence.
Some people say that "technology is the greatest public good of this era". We also agree with this view, but the key logic is that the scale of production and service brought by science and technology allows everyone to enjoy the same high-quality products and services, and for enterprises, if they want to benefit society through science and technology, they need to be inclusive, the previous opportunity is to make products, and now the opportunity is to do services.
But we want to emphasize that the service in the era of artificial intelligence is not the same as the traditional service, and we should not understand it as an adult service, because its problem is that there is no way to expand, there is no way to scale.
Although AI services can be scaled, large models such as ChatGPT, which led this round of AI revolution, are still just a tool, and to really use it to benefit society, it needs to be transformed into a service that can be provided continuously.
This is the "blitzkrieg" concept we share at the Tech Training Camp: technology is tanks, and we need to find the right way to blitzkrieg. This round of tanks is artificial intelligence formed by aggregating all human intelligence, this round of blitzkrieg is a universal service based on artificial intelligence, and the key problem is model innovation based on the latest AI technology.
In fact, every round of scientific and technological innovation, whether it is the Internet or wireless Internet, has a rule, that is, when the technology has just made a breakthrough, there are always many people who make small repairs on this basis, but in the end, the real leading the industrial trend, promoting the popularization of technology and application, and becoming the world's top enterprises are all technology application enterprises based on the most cutting-edge technology model innovation.
In the era of artificial intelligence, we also have reason to expect the emergence of a new batch of innovative companies, and it must be the first to make the right model of the enterprise is the easiest to succeed.
Because the model innovation of artificial intelligence has the Matthew effect, the original Internet has the Matthew effect of user growth, and the accumulation of artificial intelligence user data can superimpose a layer of Matthew effect, so we can expect that in the future, the earliest enterprises that use artificial intelligence technology to make model innovation and fight blitzkrieg, while promoting social progress and benefiting the public, will certainly be able to achieve their own great causes, and even surpass the entrepreneurial enterprises in the Internet and wireless Internet period.
3. To win a blitzkrieg, you must enter in time, but not too blindly
Now is the eve of the industrial explosion. Just like when the Internet was first built, there were already a large number of BBS forums on the Internet, but Sina, Sohu and even BAT had not yet appeared, and it was when the sentient beings were noisy, and at this time it was necessary to explore the ability boundaries of advanced technology and fully master tank performance in order to fight the right blitzkrieg.
Therefore, it is very important to enter the market in time, if someone makes a new pattern, it will form a Matthew effect, and it will be extremely difficult for future generations to catch up.
However, you can't start a business with a blind trial and error method, because if you are not familiar with the performance of tanks, do not know how to use theory to guide practice, the possibility of blitzkrieg is naturally relatively small, if you just make fun to do homogenization business, and finally hope to survive through natural selection, it is equivalent to thinking of entrepreneurship as buying lottery tickets, which has no practical meaning.
Therefore, we have always emphasized that on the eve of the outbreak of the technology industry, because of the understanding of the underlying logic of the artificial intelligence revolution and the accumulation of experience in the two rounds of entrepreneurial innovation of the Internet and wireless Internet, we can better look forward to the future, so as to find the right direction and better realize model innovation.
For example, for the AIGC (artificial intelligence generated content) concept that many people mention now, we believe that it certainly does not represent the future, because a single accidental AI idea is difficult to last, and the future should be AIGS, that is, artificial intelligence generation service, which is the high-end, personalized, inclusive continuous service we mentioned earlier, and this is only one of the results we have explored.
Finally, Musk recently said that there may be a 12-month hard period in the future, after which there will be a good recovery and development of the economy, his original intention is that the hardship is only temporary, and the economic recovery is just around the corner, but many people only saw him say that the future will still be tough, so everyone is talking about how to survive the winter.
But don't forget that winter is followed by spring, and if you only think about winter, you may not enjoy the opportunity for everything to recover when spring comes. Therefore, the more winter comes, the more we must see in advance when spring will come and what vigorous opportunities will appear, because our purpose is not only to survive in winter, but to be able to bloom in the spring and summer of the future after winter!
The difficulty is actually immediate, there may be a period of pain in the future for one to two years, but then it will usher in thirty years of rapid development, we need to realize that now is the BBS moment of the Internet, the new Big Mac has not yet appeared, but the next generation of startups that can surpass the previous generation of Internet giants in ten years is likely to be brewing, so don't lose confidence at this time, you must act quickly.
We agree with Diego Comin's theory, but we also have a more general statement: "The widespread use of technology is the root cause of social progress." Therefore, I hope that everyone can seize the opportunity of this round of once-in-a-century artificial intelligence revolution, fully scale services, and create a new entrepreneurial myth while promoting the rapid development of the economy!
(The article was originally published in the WeChat public account global outlet)