From Prehistoric Fires to Generative Artificial Intelligence

From the time our ancestors discovered fire, to today's solar and nuclear power plants, we have seen energy revolutions that have provided the fuel for human progress. But there have also been computer revolutions — from language to writing, from printing to telephone calls and, of course, the Internet.

Now here we are, in the middle of the web age, swept away like a river in flood. Our daily life, our species, our society, everything has changed. Not even two decades have passed, and we have gone from not knowing whether it was summer or winter in Brazil to being informed that in New Zealand the temperature has risen. Eventually we feel everything closer, as if it were next to us. The world has become small, and maybe a little better, in spite of everything. Yes, with ups and downs...

There is more. Illiteracy is becoming old news, and with it population growth is slowing. Women are studying, working, and the world, step by step, seems to be moving toward a somewhat more sustainable future.

But there is something that is growing, and getting worse: the digital bureaucracy. Yes, that dark thicket of rules, numbers, documents, and interfaces that look like something out of a Kafkaesque nightmare. Who hasn't cursed the municipal website while trying to pay a traffic ticket, right? Worse than the fine itself!

The realm of the absurd: we, the sapiens, with two million years of linguistic evolution behind us, having written the odyssey, now find ourselves mashing buttons on shiny screens like neurotic apes at the zoo. But, we believe, that is about to change: thanks to Generative Artificial Intelligence.

Did you think that Generative Artificial Intelligence will only serve to make us laugh and cry with online content? Also. But the real magic lies in its power to change the way we interact with the digital world. Imagine being able to talk to a database as if it were an old friend. "Give me customer addresses?" Done. And in the blink of an eye, with no need to know SQL.

An agent with Generative Artificial Intelligence could even navigate that ugly municipality site for you. No matter how complicated it is: he won't give up in front of a bad interface (you pay the fine though).

And now, the million-dollar (indeed, billion-dollar) question: how much is this technology worth? Look at OpenAI: from zero to 90 billion in a very short time. And Nvidia, with its microchips that run this software, is approaching a capitalization of nearly a trillion.

A bubble? Perhaps. But more likely not. When we think of the astronomical increases in capitalizations in past years, who can say where we will reach in the not-too-distant future? OpenAI, Nvidia, or some as yet unknown or nonexistent new player — someone will climb these heights. And we will be here, perhaps more neurotic, perhaps less, but certainly more connected to our digital world.