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Euronews
2 days ago
- Business
- Euronews
Pace of AI revolution 'unprecedented' in human history, report finds
The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) in our lives is officially unprecedented, according to the woman dubbed the "Queen of the Internet". Mary Meeker, a venture capitalist known for her internet trend insights, released a 340-page report titled 'Trends - Artificial Intelligence,' where copious research and charts show what she characterises as the 'unprecedented' pace of change in which AI is being invested in, developed, adopted, and used. Meeker ran capital firm Kleiner Perkins' growth practice during the 2010s, where she invested in future tech giants like Facebook, Spotify, and Canva. A profile in Forbes credits her with predicting the rise of Apple, Google, and the digital economy with her previous trend reports. 'To say the world is changing at unprecedented rates is an understatement,' Meeker, now the co-founder of venture capital fund Bonds, writes in the new report's introduction. One of the staggering charts of the report shows that ChatGPT, OpenAI's AI chatbot, reached 800 million users by April 2025, a couple of years after its initial launch in October 2022. The company's revenue also skyrocketed in a similar fashion; from zero in 2022 to just under $4 billion (€3.5 billion) by 2025. Based on user data, the rise of ChatGPT, in particular, is history's biggest 'overnight success,' nine years after the company was founded in late 2015, Meeker wrote. "And, unlike the Internet 1.0 revolution, where technology started in the USA and steadily diffused globally - ChatGPT hit the world stage all at once growing in most global regions simultaneously," according to the report. The report shows that ChatGPT reached 100 million global users in less than 2 months after its launch, the fastest technology to do so. In comparison, it took Facebook 4.5 years to reach the same number of users after its launch in the early 2000s. Meeker estimates in the report that it will take three years for a majority of households to adopt AI technology, down from the 12 years it took for households to start using desktop internet regularly. There are various factors at play for the 'rapid and transformative' rise of AI, Meeker writes in the report. There's general buy-in from new AI company founders and more traditional companies for AI adoption, Meeker contends, demonstrated by cash flows being "increasingly directed" towards AI "in efforts to drive growth and fend off investors". The report notes that technology's biggest players, including NVIDIA, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and China's Baidu have all increased the mentions of AI in their corporate earnings reports to shareholders since 2022. That, paired with a new wave of AI company founders that are "extremely aggressive" with all stages of the AI product development - from innovation, to product releases, acquisitions, cash burn, and capital raises - means that AI 'user and usage trending is ramping materially faster' than before. The report also noted that the number of new AI models has gone up 167 percent year over year since 2020, and the size of the data sets they are using is up 260 percent in the same period. Meeker notes that the decrease in costs to develop new models is also unprecedented. Citing Stanford research, the report shows inference costs for those that use the tech have dropped 99 per cent over two years, even though the cost of training a model is up to $1 billion dollars (€850 million). The pace at which competitors can match each other on the market is unparalleled. For instance, Meeker notes that NVIDIA's 2024 Blackwell GPU chip, which helps train AIs to do what users expect, has 105,000 times less energy per token than the 2014 Kepler model. "It's a staggering leap, not just of cost reduction, but of architectural and materials innovation that is reshaping what's possible at the hardware level," she writes. Apple showcased its latest technology at its annual developers conference on Monday, showing off a new 'Liquid Glass' software design, a solution to screen out spam texts, and demonstrated it was in no rush to bring out more artificial intelligence (AI) features. But the latest software features will not be available for several months until iOS 26 (rebranded from iOS 19) is officially released. Here is our roundup of the latest announcements from WWDC 2025. At last year's conference, Apple announced a more personalised AI-powered Siri. However, this year Apple only mentioned Siri very briefly. 'As we've shared, we're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,' said Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering. 'This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year'. However, Apple did say that AI would be integrated into some products with a focus on making our lives easier. Apple's WWDC comes just after Google unveiled AI updates at its developer conference last month. Samsung may also announce new phones in July. 'While it might seem others are leading the AI race, it is not a sought-after feature among users and there's no revenue uplift (for now),' tech analyst Paolo Pescatore told Euronews Next. 'Considering the negative perception, Apple needs to tread carefully not to frustrate and disappoint its loyal base of iPhone users'. But he said that the latest updates provide a more coherent feel and 'Apple remains in an enviable position' given its large installed base of users. Apple is expected to reveal its latest iPhones later this year. Apple Watch is getting a new, AI-enhanced 'Workout Buddy' feature. The new tool analyses users' exercise and fitness data, such as pace and distance to then make personalised recommendations. The demo showed a runner having data such as their heart rate during each kilometre and the distance they run that year at their fingertips. The feature will include other sports too. The biggest design update is a glass-inspired aesthetic to all Apple products. Called 'Liquid Glass' it makes icons and menus partially transparent. Apple said it retracts light and dynamically reacts to your movement with specular highlights. Apple announced users would soon be able to screen out new senders in its messaging app. 'Unknown senders appear in a dedicated area where you can decide if you want to mark the numbers as known, ask for more information, or delete,' said Darin Adler, a vice president at Apple. 'Until you accept, messages from unknown senders will remain silenced and won't appear as notifications'. Apple also announced that you will soon be able to create in-message polls. The tech giant also announced that its users will soon be able to converse with people in different languages with a Live Translation feature. 'Live Translation can translate conversations on the fly. It's integrated into messages, FaceTime and phone,' said Leslie Ikemoto, an engineering director at Apple. It will work in phone calls, even with a non-Apple responder; your words can be translated as you talk, and the translation is spoken out loud for the call recipient. And when the person you are speaking to responds in their own language, you'll hear a spoken translation of their voice. In messages, it automatically translates the text for you as you type and deliver while the response can be instantly translated. On FaceTime, Apple Translate provides live captions in your preferred language. Apple has not said how many languages it will support. Overall, the 'subtle addition of Apple Intelligence across key services will help grow awareness and provide users with confidence to drive further engagement,' said Pescatore. 'The tight integration between hardware, software and services really stands out with this latest move'. 'It looks like Apple has done enough in what promises to be a year of transition as it further builds out its AI capabilities,' he added.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It's not your imagination: AI is speeding up the pace of change
If the adoption of AI feels different from any tech revolution you may have experienced before — mobile, social, cloud computing — it actually is. Venture capitalist Mary Meeker just dropped a 340-page slideshow report — which used the word 'unprecedented' on 51 of those pages — to describe the speed at which AI is being developed, adopted, spent on, and used, backed up with chart after chart. 'The pace and scope of change related to the artificial intelligence technology evolution is indeed unprecedented, as supported by the data,' she writes in the report, called "Trends — Artificial Intelligence." There's a certain poetic history to this person writing this kind of report. Meeker is the founder and general partner at VC firm Bond and was once known as Queen of the Internet for her previous annual Internet Trends reports. Before founding Bond, she ran Kleiner Perkins' growth practice, from 2010-2019, where she backed companies like Facebook, Spotify, Ring, and Block (then Square). She hasn't released a trends report since 2019. But she dusted off her skills to document, in laser detail, how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history. ChatGPT reaching 800 million users in 17 months: unprecedented. The number of companies and the rate at which so many others are hitting high annual recurring revenue rates: also unprecedented. The speed at which costs of usage are dropping: unprecedented. While the costs of training a model (also unprecedented) is up to $1 billion, inference costs — for example, those paying to use the tech — has already dropped 99% over two years, when calculating cost per 1 million tokens, she writes, citing research from Stanford. The pace at which competitors are matching each other's features, at a fraction of the cost, including open source options, particularly Chinese models: unprecedented. For example, she points out that Nvidia's 2024 Blackwell GPU uses 105,000x less energy per token than the company's 2014 Kepler GPU predecessor. Meanwhile, chips from Google, like its TPU (tensor processing unit), and Amazon's Trainium, are being developed at scale for their clouds — that's moving quickly, too. 'These aren't side projects — they're foundational bets,' she writes. The one area where AI hasn't outpaced every other tech revolution is in financial returns. While VCs are pouring money on the AI fire as fast as they can, AI companies and cloud service providers are also burning through cash. AI requires massive investments in infrastructure. That's good for consumers and enterprises, the beneficiaries of fast improvements, while competition lowers costs, Meeker points out. But the jury is still out over which of the current crop of companies will become long-term, profitable, next-generation tech giants. "Only time will tell which side of the money-making equation the current AI aspirants will land," she writes. As for the rest of us: Just hold on to your hats. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
