When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, there were many that couldn’t see what it could be used for. The same happened several years later with the coming of radio. What on earth would be the use of it? Lord Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, saw radio as a means of educating people and refining their culture. For the most part, these days, one hundred years later, broadcast radio is primarily used as an entertainment medium. Of course, radio has diversed too, from high grade encrpyted military communication, to walkie-talkies to the ubiquitous wi-fi found almost everywhere, including in many peoples homes.
I am reminded of this feeling of ‘what’s the point’ though myself. AI is the latest kid on the block. Yes, it has been around for a long time, in the background being developed, but it has suddenly burst into the public arena in a big way and almost every techie publication is writing about it, and YouTube has many videos about it. My intial reaction, I have to admit, has been “What’s the point?” Until, I, and many others, have been shown the useful practical ways AI can be used in the real world, that’s the initial feeling generated for many outside of the tech world. I have always considered myself a worldly-wise techie-orientated consumer, and I had a mobile phone, and a computer and was online way before most of my peers.
I remember, the best part of forty years ago now, being asked on more than one occasion, “What’s a modem?” When I explained you could get online, after explaining what online meant, the next question was invariably “What’s the point?”. Now, pretty much everyone has a mobile device or two, and many that wouldn’t consider themselves the slightest bit ‘techy’ regularly use social media accounts.
The new kid on the block, soon becomes ‘one of the lads’, and I know this is going to happen to AI. I just need to see some personally useful real-world applications of the technology and I’ll be on board with it. I’m not at that point yet, but I certainly don’t want to be left behind, and I’m never going to be that voice that says “What’s the point?” for long.