In 2016 I wrote about the Internet affecting the world in a direct, physical way. It was connected to your smartphone. There were sensors like cameras and thermostats. There were actuators: thermostats, drones, autonomous cars. And there was intelligence in the middle, using data from sensors to figure out what to do and then actually do it. It was the Internet of Things.
The classic definition of a robot is something that feels, thinks and acts – this is today’s internet. We are building a world-class robot without even realizing it.
In 2023 we upgraded the “thinking” part with large language models (LLMs) like GPT. ChatGPT has both surprised and amazed the world with its ability to understand human language and generate credible, on-topic, human responses. But what they are really good at is interacting with systems that were previously designed for humans. Their accuracy will become better and they will be used to replace actual people.
In 2024 we will begin to connect these LLMs and other AI systems to sensors and actuators. In other words, they will be connected to the larger world through APIs. They will receive direct input from our environment in all the forms I thought about in 2016. And they will increasingly control our environment, through IoT devices and beyond.
It will start small: summarizing emails and writing limited responses. Dispute with customer service—in chat—about service changes and refunds. Making travel reservations.
But these AIs will also interact with the physical world by first controlling robots and then having those robots as part of them. Your AI-controlled thermostat will turn on the heat and air conditioning based on who’s in what room, their preferences, and where they’re likely to go next. He will negotiate with the energy company for the lowest prices, planning to use high-energy appliances or recharging the car.
It’s the easy stuff. The real changes will happen when these AIs are grouped together into a larger intelligence: a vast network of energy generation and energy consumption, with each building just a node, like an ant colony or a human army.
Future industrial control systems will include traditional factory robots as well as AI systems for scheduling their work. It will automatically order supplies as well as coordinate the delivery of the finished product. AI will manage its own finances, interacting with other systems in the banking world. It will call on humans as needed: to repair individual subsystems or do things too specialized for robots.
Think driverless cars. Individual vehicles have sensors, of course, but they also use sensors embedded in roads and poles. The real processing is done in the cloud by a centralized system that manages all the vehicles. This allows individual cars to coordinate their movement for greater efficiency: synchronized braking, for example.
