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)?
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cousinbryce
Google’s main product was and continues to be ads
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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.
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froobius
these are good / accurate, but what's the error-rate? assuming these have been cherry picked, and he made more predictions
AndrewKemendo
If you really want your mind blown look at how accurate Ray Kurzweil was from his 1999 book Age of Spiritual Machines
The most striking thing is that almost all of his missed predictions were missed not because the technology was not available, but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology
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esafak
All right, let's see his 2026 predictions for the next ten.
royal__
Another prediction I remember from this book was that AI would be supplied much like electricity as a kind of utility into many different appliances. This is basically how it has turned out with tokens and APIs.
nialv7
OK, but which ones of his predictions did NOT come true? We don’t want survivorship bias do we?
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)?
Google’s main product was and continues to be ads
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
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.
these are good / accurate, but what's the error-rate? assuming these have been cherry picked, and he made more predictions
If you really want your mind blown look at how accurate Ray Kurzweil was from his 1999 book Age of Spiritual Machines
The most striking thing is that almost all of his missed predictions were missed not because the technology was not available, but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology
All right, let's see his 2026 predictions for the next ten.
Another prediction I remember from this book was that AI would be supplied much like electricity as a kind of utility into many different appliances. This is basically how it has turned out with tokens and APIs.
OK, but which ones of his predictions did NOT come true? We don’t want survivorship bias do we?