Is AI as impressive as the internet makes it seem?

ChatGPT launched three years ago. Big tech made countless promises that it would change our lives in dramatic ways. But did it really?

I was initially extremely excited about ChatGPT and other chatbots. For the first time, it seemed that we were truly moving forward with something completely new, and it’s always exciting. Especially because for years before that, most of the tech releases were VC and social media bubbles like NFTs. It felt like we were moving in circles without anything innovative going on.

ChatGPT quickly became a big part of my life. But after the initial wow effect and excitement, I started noticing its limitations. With each new version, OpenAI promised breakthroughs, but the actual changes were smaller and smaller. Even after other giants like Google joined the gold rush of AI, I didn’t see any actual problems being solved by AI.

I am not denying that AI tech is now part of everyday life for most people. But I’d argue it improved it in just two (though huge) ways. The improvement of search (the “what”) and communication to the internet (the “how”).

What we got in the end is basically a much better version of Google (and other search engines). It is also better suited for humans than what we had before, as you can communicate with it in natural language. Less tech, more humane. It’s a great improvement, sure. But it’s not as revolutionary as traditional and social media often claim it to be.

To me, one of the biggest shifts was how I do my job: software engineering. I definitely have a different routine now. I rely more on AI to search for solutions and automatically apply them in my code editor. It’s incredibly fast, but it’s still the same programming I did before. Instead of Googling and learning about various solutions, I just use AI to find them for me, and review them after. Amazing improvement, not the revolution.

Of course, I also use ChatGPT instead of Google most of the time. Yes, I can ask it to reformat or analyse the information it found in all the ways that are convenient for me. But it is still the same search engine with a better communication interface.

Most of the other use cases I see promoted on social media and half-baked “announcements” from Silicon Valley either never see the light of day or just work worse than the solutions we had before.

There are also creativity applications. But who actually asked for them? For some reason, AI companies decided that humans have issues with creativity. So they gathered all their money and computational power to generate writing, images, videos, music, and other products of creativity for us. But why?

What artist ever asked for that? What musician ever said “I wish my music had been writing itself, and I was just typing to the chatbot instead”?

Humans ended up with creativity as form of self-expression and self-understanding. There was never a problem to solve there. The creativity and the strive for mastery is the sole goal, not the product.

My personal hope for AI is that it’ll change the course of its development and start solving real problems we have. Annoying tasks that we never want to do, like dealing with bureaucracy. Or maybe they’ll start making life better for people who struggle with daily tasks, that would be a noble goal.

But I guess it’s just easier to raise another round or make a splash on X with “AI photo generator” instead of “AI that files quarterly VAT taxes for you so you can focus on business” or “AI that can adjust a school curriculum depending on a child’s development stage”.

I really hope all that money poured in will go toward making life better for people instead of generating endless slop filling the internet that nobody, except other AI bots, wants to see.

Written in my temporary home office in Barcelona.