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How will AI Generated Content (AIGC) Lead a Technological Revolution?
Meng Jiang
Abstract: AIGC is not new but in 2022/2023 once again becomes under the spotlight with the
help of ChatGPT, as it is expected to generate trillions of dollars in economic value in the future.
AIGC will potentially lead the next technological revolution, but how? This blog starts with a brief
review on the Internet and Digital Revolution, where we can tell after thirty years how super
efficient communication, mainly for human generated content transmission, has changed our
life, education, politics, and research. AIGC allows super efficient content customization for
many tasks and scenarios, creating tremendous impacts on all the places. With human and
machine intelligence, we are living in the best era of harmony and intensity.
Introduction
Content generation enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not new. In past decades, AI
generated content (AIGC) was sometimes useful but most of the time unsatisfactory, which
might have lowered our expectations. Then the box full of surprises was open in 2022: GPT-3.5
and Codex
(March 15)
, DALL·E 2
(September 28)
, ChatGPT
(November 30)
, etc. These AI systems offer an input
interface of text data that can be given or voice-transformed, and generate many types of data
such as text, image, video, audio, code, table, or complex (semi-)structured data. If one is able
to describe a task and some demonstrations in language, those can be easily put into the
systems to see what is created and customized to the needs. Millions of people are using or
challenging these AI systems; and though several limitations are identified, the public becomes
appreciative of the efficient content customization. Some are predicting or stating that AIGC
is leading a technological revolution. Is it true? What in our world may soon or later be changed
by the AIGC? Can we use something we learned from the past to understand what we will see?
There are several technological revolutions such as the Industrial Revolution
(1780-1840)
and
Technical Revolution.
(1870-1920)
The most recent one is the information and telecommunications
revolution or known as Digital Revolution.
(1975-?)
The Internet was one of the key technologies
that led such a revolution, starting from a message that was sent over the ARPANET in 1969.
The public soon became appreciative of the possibility of super efficient communication that
could be used to transmit information at an unprecedented speed. Because of that, our world
has been changed: we have a much higher level of life experience, work efficiency, and
expectations on almost everything. So, what kind of higher level of life experience, work
efficiency, and expectations can we have with AIGC? Before answering this question, I would
like to briefly review what has been changed by the Internet.
How the Internet has Changed Our World
All started from a protocol established over 50 years ago. It basically allowed devices to transmit
thousands of bits in a second from one place to another. But when the bits became messages,
news, pictures, files, etc. our world was changed: the Web was no longer just spiders’ territories,
and numerous software have been developed and deployed on the Web. 50 years ago, people
were criticizing the unreliability of this new technology: Bits were lost, files were broken, images