Smart Software: The Dream of Big Money Raining for Decades

June 14, 2023

Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.

The illustration — from the crafty zeros and ones at MidJourney — depicts a young computer scientist reveling in the cash generated from his AI-infused innovation.

For a budding wizard, the idea of cash falling around the humanoid is invigorating. It is called a “coder’s high” or Silicon Valley fever. There is no known cure, even when FTX-type implosions doom a fellow traveler to months of litigation and some hard time among individuals typically not in an advanced math program.

Where’s the cyclone of cash originate?

I would submit that articles like “Generative AI Revenue Is Set to Reach US$1.3 Trillion in 2032” are like catnip to a typical feline living amidst the cubes at a Google-type company or in the apartment of a significant other adjacent a blue chip university in the US.

Here’s the chart that makes it easy to see the slope of the growth:

I want to point out that this confection is the result of the mid tier outfit IDC and the fascinating Bloomberg terminal. Therefore, I assume that it is rock solid, based on in-depth primary research, and deep analysis by third-party consultants. I do, however, reserve the right to think that the chart could have been produced by an intern eager to hit the gym and grabbing a sushi special before the good stuff was gone.

Will generative AI hit the $1.3 trillion target in nine years? In the hospital for recovering victims of spreadsheet fever, the coder’s high might slow recovery. But many believe — indeed, fervently hope to experience the realities of William James’s mystics in his Varieties of Religious Experience.

My goodness, the vision of money from Generative AI is infectious. So regulate mysticism? Erect guard rails to prevent those with a coder’s high from driving off the Information Superhighway?

Get real.

Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Business strategy, Financial, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.