Our Perspective
In 1945, ENIAC, the world’s first digital computer turned on. It cost 8.3 million in 2024 dollars, weighed 27 tons, and was 100 feet long. Today, there are almost 7 billion smartphones in the world that are orders of magnitude more powerful than ENIAC, weigh mere ounces, and are so cheap we take it for granted that we will replace them every couple of years.
In 1993 the National Center for Supercomputing Applications released Mosaic, the first web browser that could display images inline with text, introducing people to what would universally become known as the internet. Within 10 years, there were over 700 million people using the internet; by 2024, that number would grow to 5.3 billion, and our world has been forever changed.
In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. It reached 1 million users in 5 days. By February 2024 that number had grown to 180 million users, one of the fastest adoption rates for any technology in history.
The data that fuels this technology are also growing at rates unknown to humanity continuously fed by the array of devices and digital services we use every day.
When we think about the revolutionary growth of digital technology, our first thoughts are often drawn to hardware innovations, like ENIAC’s punch cards, software developments like the TCP/IP protocols that made the internet possible, or conceptual breakthroughs like transformer technology in ChatGPT.
What we don’t think of is the interface.
We Need a Way to Shape These Technologies.
Despite the remarkable advancement in AI algorithms, they are primitive in their ability to interpret our behavior, habits, emotional cues, and environment. Instead, current interface design seeks ways to modify our behavior to promote the technology.
After billions of dollars we still find ourselves alienated: AI is a stranger to us.