Kevin Kelly predicted Google's main product would be AI by 2026. He was right.
Kevin Kelly's 2016 AI Predictions, 10 Years Later
In his 2016 book The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly forecast that by 2026 Google's main product would be AI, not search. He also predicted an oligarchy of two or three cloud-based commercial intelligences, AI as a cheap utility like AWS, and conversational question-answering. A decade later, Taylor Town revisits these excerpts and finds Kelly largely on target—except for the bitter lesson.
My prediction: By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI.
- stephen_cagle
By my own, completely arbitrary split of this into 16 predictions, I would say that this hits on maybe 8 of 16 if we are being a bit generous. Which is good, but certainly not "Inevitable" (the title of the book).
With that said, maybe he meant inevitable as N approaches infinity... So there's still time!
Aside: I think the biggest interesting prediction he had was that AI would obey a user driven network effect. It seems like a very clean prediction, and yet it has failed to materialize? I wonder if this has more to do with just how scrape-able the whole internet was or with distilation or what? There is certainly an advantage to having good user data, but it seems like it is largely something that can be worked around (by hook or crook)?
- cousinbryce
Google’s main product was and continues to be ads
- at1as
In addition to writing about current (and future) technology, Kevin Kelly also put together Vanishing Asia, a photo book documenting disappearing communities and traditions across Asia
Possibly the best photography book I've come across. It's out of print, but I managed to snag a copy on eBay last year
- rossdavidh
I would say that KK's "The bulk of AI will be special purpose software brains" has turned out closer to the truth than "The Bitter Lesson" has. LLM's do not drive cars, or vice versa. Stockfish still beats the newest, largest LLM at chess. Etc. Most of the truly productive "AI" is customized for a specific purpose, or class of purposes anyway.
- froobius
these are good / accurate, but what's the error-rate? assuming these have been cherry picked, and he made more predictions