Google is well aware that traditional search is going to die (or at least go away for the vast majority of use cases). I don't want to search for things if I can just be told the answer.
Here's an example. I was installing new light fixtures in our bedrooms this week and I wanted a refresher on wire colors.
Historically, I would have done a Google Search, which would have then led me to some website or to some lengthy YouTube video that I didn't actually want to watch and that I would have had to scan through to find the salient parts.
But today that feels old school. Instead what I did was take a picture of the ceiling box and ask ChatGPT to just tell me the answers.
Voilà:
It seems almost trite at this point to talk about the virtues of AI. But over the last few months, I have found that — just like that — it has become an integral part of my everyday workflow.
This is true whether I'm playing electrician, planning travel, writing a blog post (and I want an assistant to find me data), or I'm looking to brainstorm around something business related.
I'm sure the same is true for many of you as well.
I have a new not-so-serious goal. I say not-so-serious because I'm busy with lots of other things and who knows if/when I'll actually get around to this. So let's just say that this goal is based on a strong interest. I would like to visit the 10 largest urban areas in the world.
I was careful to say urban areas, because largest cities can be misleading. City proper boundaries are an arbitrary measure. What matters more are the built up areas.
I have already been to a handful of them, namely the ones centered around Tokyo, Dhaka, and Mexico City. But there are more on the list that I haven't been to.
There are, however, two immediate challenges with setting a not-so-serious goal like this one. The first is that it's not easy to come up with a definitive list of the largest urban areas. It's nuanced and, for some cities, population estimates are very much rough estimates.
The second is that population figures are constantly changing. So by the time I get around to this, many of the largest cities might be in Africa (current forecast for this century) and I may be checking off the wrong list.
But let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Here's what I came up with. And by "what I came up with," I mean that I asked ChatGPT its opinion. This is the list I got:
Then I asked the question in a slightly different way and got this list:
Then I asked it to tell me its definition of metropolitan area vs. urban agglomeration:
Finally, I asked it why Lagos, Nigeria was not on the list. Current estimates place this urban region at more than 20 million people (which would place it ahead of New York in the first list), but I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Whatever the current number, it is widely understood to be one of the fastest growing city regions in the world. This is how ChatGPT responded:
I'm a little torn because high on my list of cities to visit are São Paulo and Seoul. And they don't seem to be finding themselves on the same list. I'm also very curious to see Lagos, and I have a suspicion that it's much larger than official estimates. Regardless, there are some clearly big cities to check off. India and China would be good places to start. So I better get to work. Or not. Since this is a not-so-serious goal.
AI is going to be very disruptive, right? At this point, I think it is pretty clear to most that the answer is yes, almost regardless of what industry you're in. But is it going to be really disruptive? Like disruptive in the Clayton Christensen sense of the word. (Christensen is known for coining the term "disruptive innovation", which he contrasted against "sustaining innovation.")
This is a good question, and I like how Ben Thompson thought about it in his newsletter this morning:
I tend to believe that disruptive innovations are actually quite rare, but when they come, they are basically impossible for the incumbent company to respond to: their business models, shareholders, and most important customers make it impossible for management to respond. If that is true, though, then an incumbent responding is in fact evidence that an innovation is actually not disruptive, but sustaining.
The point he is making is that given that the big tech companies (and of course everyone else) are all now responding to AI by incorporating it into their businesses, it, by definition, must not be a disruptive innovation. It's a sustaining one. This doesn't mean that AI won't have significant impacts on our economy; it just means that maybe it won't put a company like Alphabet out of business.
I thought this was an interesting way of looking at things because it is a reminder that "disruptive innovations" often start out at the bottom of the market. They start in a way that can feel innocuous to incumbents; that is, until they move upmarket. But this is not at all how AI feels. As soon as you play around with ChatGPT you immediately think to yourself, "holy shit, this thing can do my job."
That is obviously something very meaningful. But is it going to shake up the big tech world order? I don't know, if you follow Christensen's definition, crypto sounds like the more disruptive innovation.
