Fasten your seat belts, we are in a turning point! Again!

Two recent announcements caught my attention and gave me a sense of déjà vu. We are living in a turning point similar to the one we experienced at the beginning of the 1990s when we all started to get access to the Internet through browsers like Mosaic and Netscape and began to talk about HTML, WWW, hyperlinks, e-commerce, DNS, .com, and many other new and a bit strange terms.

There’s a pattern with the adoption of some technologies. After their creation, they are used by a few people with in-depth technical knowledge for many years. Then, some use cases appear that popularize the technologies and make them useful to everybody. Then, several innovations with great global impact rapidly emerge.

That’s what happened with the Internet, which was invented in the late 1960s but only became popular in the early 1990s thanks to WWW, HTML, and the browsers Mosaic and Netscape. Now, we can’t imagine our lives without it:

There are many technologies that are still searching for use cases that will popularize them. Some examples of technologies that don’t yet have use cases that popularize them are NFT, Blockchain, Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR).

One technology that I believe has found a use case that is popularizing it is AI, a technology from the 1950s that is becoming popular thanks to GenAI, LLM, and ChatGPT. These use cases are popularizing AI, analogous to what WWW, HTML, and browsers did for the Internet in the early 1990s:

What’s next? Here are two announcements made in the last 2 weeks that showed me that very exciting times are ahead of us!

Announcement #1: Devin, the first AI software engineer

The company Cognition announced Devin 2 weeks ago as an AI software engineer. I found the video very interesting, and it has the potential to make software development move big steps ahead.

I’ve heard some concerns about software engineering people losing their jobs due to solutions like Devin.

I’ll share a story from almost twenty years ago that might help us understand what’s happening. I remembered this story as soon as I started hearing these concerns.

When I joined Locaweb in 2005 as its first product manager, we were about to launch a website builder. Locaweb was primarily a website hosting company at the time, so we had partnerships with web developers and website development companies. Many internal and external concerns existed that the launch of our website builder would harm our relationships with our partners and could drive many of them out of business.

What happened:

• More people started building websites because it was easier to create a website.
• Many website developers and web development companies have decided to use the website builder to increase their production capacity.
• Many website developers and web development companies commented that after we launched the website builder, several new clients were generated for them. People who created their first version of their website with the website builder wanted something more customized.

So, my opinion on the launch of software engineering AIs is that it will take us giant steps forward, similar to what happened with website builders and web development 20 years ago.

In fact, it can be a great tool for product managers and designers, helping them develop their ideas and test them with customers.

Announcement #2: Figure and OpenAI partnership to launch a general-purpose humanoid robot

This video from the company Figure is also quite impressive. It shows the connection of robotics and generative AI large language models to help us in everyday tasks. This marks a significant milestone in integrating robotics and AI into our daily lives. Such technology’s implications are vast and far-reaching, promising to revolutionize how we approach everyday tasks and interact with our environment.

At first glance, the concept of humanoid robots equipped with advanced AI capabilities may evoke images from science fiction. Still, this partnership underscores the tangible progress being made in this field. With Figure’s expertise in robotics and OpenAI’s cutting-edge generative AI models like GPT, we’re witnessing the convergence of two powerful technologies that have the potential to redefine human-machine interaction.

Imagine a future where these humanoid robots seamlessly assist us with household chores, provide companionship for the elderly, or even perform complex tasks in industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing. The possibilities are endless, and the impact on society could be profound.

The déjà vu

Today, we can’t imagine our lives without the internet, without access to the internet anywhere we go through our mobile phones. Without social media, to be able to connect to whoever, even people we haven’t seen for years and even people we don’t know. Without the ability to shop online from anywhere. Without audio and video streaming.

However, in the early 1990s, we couldn’t imagine what was to come.

In my view, we are in a similar moment now, but instead of the internet, it’s AI, a mature technology that finally found a use case that popularized it (GenAI + ChatGPT). Many exciting innovations are starting to appear, such as Devin and Figure 01. I’m looking forward to what’s to come!

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