AI is going to change our physical world
The Waymo Driver is in control at all times
Bond — which is a San Francisco-based VC firm with a cool website — just published this 340-page report on Artificial Intelligence. One of the authors of the report is Mary Meeker. She has been called the "Queen of the Internet" thanks to a 20-year run of presentations about the state of the internet, and her perceived ability to identity new trends early. So people are paying attention to this report. Her last one was in 2019 and I mentioned her 2018 report on this blog, here.
At this point, it's boring to say that AI is ushering in "unprecedented" global change. Everyone sends around snippets from ChatGPT. I incorporate some sort of AI-powered tool all the time in my daily workflow. And we've started using it on our development projects to help with tedious things like design coordination. Eventually we'll probably stop calling it out as "AI" and just refer to it as the things that computers and the internet can do.
But I think it's valuable to point out that this has been a really long time coming. The report talks about an "AI winter" from 1967 to 1996. That's a long time to stay motivated and interested in something that doesn't seem to be gaining traction. And it's a reminder that crypto is still early. Even though I also use blockchains every day and I've already transitioned (or am transitioning) a lot of my online life, including this blog.
Of particular relevance to this community is probably the fact that AI is also going to have a meaningful impact on our built environment. One of the sections in the report is called "Physical World AI," and it talks about how quickly data centers are now being built (compared to housing) and how Waymo (using AI) has taken something like 27% of the ride share market in San Francisco in the span of just 20 months.
This transportation product is now scaling, and cities have always responded and remade themselves according to new mobility innovations. This time won't be any different.
Cover photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Last week, Mary Meeker of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers published her annual internet trends report. You can find it here, if for whatever reason it is not showing up below. Also, here is last year’s Internet Trends 2017 presentation in case you’re curious.
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Internet Trends Report 2018 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
One slide that stood out for me is the one below. It shows the global demand for transportation trips booked through smartphone apps. The numbers include on-demand taxis, private for-hire vehicles, as well as on-demand motorbikes and bicycles.
China, through a combination of cars and bicycles, makes up 68% of the global share. It looks to be over 5 billion completed trips in Q1 2018. A staggering number. At the same time, look at how much of that is a result of growth in the number of bicycle trips.
Mary Meeker – who is a partner in the VC firm Kleiner Perkins – just recently released her annual Internet Trends report.
I’ve pasted the table of contents above so you can quickly decide if you’d like to spend your time going through it. The entire report is over 350 slides.
If you can’t see the embedded slideshow below or if you’d like to access the reports from previous years, click here.
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Internet Trends 2017 Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers