Today, the term “iPhone moment” is often used to refer to a technology that is making its way into the mainstream. The launch of the first Apple phone in 2007 marked the beginning of the smartphone era: from then on, it became normal for everyone to carry a powerful computer with an Internet connection in their pocket.
The effect this had on society was enormous. Although the Internet, online shopping and social media had been around for some time, they were generally limited to desktop computers. This meant that only those with access to a computer, whether at work or at home, were able to join in the digital revolution. Suddenly, this was no longer the case and the Internet was available to everyone, everywhere.
Apple’s recent announcement that it has partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT-style services to its mobile devices (as well as its desktop computers) could very well be the “iPhone moment” (literally) for generative AI.
If your job, business, or interests revolve around technology, there’s a good chance you already use generative AI on a daily basis. For everyone else, however, recent research suggests it’s not yet mainstream.
But that could be about to change if the average smartphone user is about to receive a major AI-powered transformation. Integrating generative AI into the pockets of millions of people in a way that fits seamlessly into their everyday lives could be just as transformative for society (or even more so) than the advent of internet-enabled phones. While this has the potential to be hugely democratising and empowering in amazing ways, it could also present some tough challenges.
What is a technological “iPhone moment”?
An iPhone moment is more than just a technology that suddenly becomes very popular. The genius of Apple’s vision was to create a device that was so intuitive and easy to use that anyone who saw it immediately realized it could change their life.
It set new standards for user experience and functionality and ushered in the “app economy” by introducing the App Store, where you could find a tool for almost any task.
There are already hundreds, if not thousands, of generative AI tools and applications. Still, most are geared toward business, creative, or technical use cases, and people may not immediately understand how they would fit into their lives. On the other hand, general-purpose tools like ChatGPT may seem too broad and lack specific features that people would find useful on a day-to-day basis.
If anyone can bring about the perception shift needed to change this, history suggests it’s Apple. Integrating it into the suite of tools that millions of people use every day to stay in touch with friends, shop, navigate, and entertain themselves could easily be the step that brings AI to the masses. For example, Siri is one of the most widely used personal digital assistants in the world, and powering it with AI could normalize conversations between humans and machines that go far beyond the “voice command” model we’re used to today. And what about giving Apple Music or Apple Navigation the ability to converse with users, helping us choose what music to listen to or what route to take in a conversational way?
By making AI more user-friendly and, obviously, useful, the partnership between Apple and OpenAI has the potential to create a transformative shift in society’s relationship with technology. But it could also create some pretty serious problems…
Is AI ready to go mainstream?
So AI is not without its problems today, and the danger if everyone suddenly starts using it is that those problems could be magnified in terrifying ways.
Let’s start with an important topic: the environment. It is an inescapable fact that AI today consumes enormous amounts of energy and also generates a worrying amount of emissions. If it becomes widespread and millions more people use it every day, the number will only increase. This would create enormous problems for a world in which reducing our carbon footprint is a priority.
Then there’s the problem of AI hallucination. Anyone who has used a tool like ChatGPT for any length of time will have noticed that it sometimes makes things up. While this isn’t always a problem when we use it in a limited way to compose emails, for example, which can be easily corrected and fact-checked, it could be a bigger problem if millions of people suddenly use it for everyday activities like navigating trips, reminding them to do important things, or managing their daily schedules.
On top of that, there are questions of privacy and data security. How can we ensure that casual and everyday users understand the risks of putting personal data into opaque and often unaccountable AI systems that barely understand how it will be stored, processed and shared?
If Elon Musk, one of the original founders of OpenAI, is now threatening to ban Apple devices from his workplaces due to his privacy concerns, it’s probably an issue we should take seriously.
Unlike its rivals, Apple did not have any publicly available generative AI of its own prior to the announcement of this partnership, so it makes sense that it would want to work with OpenAI, the rising star of the generative AI revolution.
But just as the widespread adoption of the Internet and smartphones brought with it challenges that society still faces, so too will the integration of generative AI into everyday life.
We can take comfort in the fact that Apple has a relatively good track record when it comes to protecting user privacy, but will it be able to mitigate the risks of hallucinations and carbon emissions generated by large-scale AI?
For better or worse, this is an alliance that is likely to bring about great changes for all of us. Addressing these challenges will be critical to ensuring that the mainstreaming of generative AI is done in a way that is beneficial to all of us without causing further harm to society or the planet.
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