Where AI Could Take Our Information Infrastructure

To understand the future of AI, we can take a look back at the internet:

• First chips
• Next, devices
• Then services

The Future of AI

A Beginning

Looking ahead by looking back, Morgan Stanley suggests the monetization of the internet could be a prototype. Providing more detail, Our World in Data starts in 1989 when British scientist Tim Berners-Lee figured out how computers could share information. Just 10 years later, the internet was widely used in the U.S., but not in Asia and Africa. While just 7 percent of the world was online during the dot.com crash, 15 years later, by 2016, most had caught up. Still though, fewer than 5 percent are online in the poorest countries such as Somalia and Madagascar.

As for the chips, devices, and services, below, you can see some dates:

Our Bottom Line: Information Infrastructure

Thinking of an infrastructure, we could imagine transportation and our network of roads, airports, bridges, and all that we travel on, through, with. We could picture the financial infrastructure that, starting with banks, moves our money from one place to another.

For now though, our focus has been the information infrastructure through which we share our data. In a past post, we said the US Postal Service was a part of our information infrastructure. So too was the printing press, our stock tickers, and countless other devices and structures.

As for the internet, it has become an increasingly massive part of our information infrastructure:

Returning to where we began, we can think chips, devices, services and wonder where AI is taking our information infrastructure.

My sources and more: Thanks to Slate Money for alerting me to the Morgan Stanley monetizing roadmap. Looking for more detail, I discovered an internet history at Our World in Data and the Visual Capitalist graphic. In addition, I selected Nvidia for our featured image because, this past week, investors recognized its role in propelling AI through its software. Then, to learn a bit about Nvidia, I went to CNBC.

And please note that of course, I could not confirm the accuracy of the data I shared. But you get the picture. (This post was slightly edited after publication.)