I notice a lot of SaaS products offering new AI-based features or tools in the past 2-3 years. In order to be part of the mainstream conversation, it seems you can’t not have AI-based or AI-powered offerings as a business. Too many product decisions are made not because of technical fit, but due to not wanting to be left behind.

In my opinion, that was also why completely non-technical businesses (think FMCG) had some kind of blockchain-based thing a few years ago when NFTs were the talk of town.

It is worth asking, what is to AI what NFT was to cryptocurrencies?

NFT was one specific application of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, but the whole “genre” dominated conversations specifically due to NFTs. To put it simply, when people were talking about blockchains and “crypto”, they were specifically talking about NFTs.

In 2024, when people talk about AI, I think they are most likely talking about:

1. ChatGPT or similar prompt-based AI interfaces
2. Generative AI like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney
3. If the individual was slightly more technically inclined, AI-powered search

Far from undeserving of the public attention, AI is exciting. However, AI is so much more than that! Across the stack, from how neural networks are built and how emergent behaviour can be coaxed out of the tools we already have around AI, there are so many opportunities to prod and play with the technology.

The difference is between accepting what commercial product is now dominating the conversation as the logical end point, and seeing the state of the art as lego blocks to start building really interesting stuff from.