Kevin Kelly's The Inevitable traces several macro technology trends to their logical conclusions. A decade after publication, several of its AI-related predictions read as remarkably prescient, and the book's central forecasts are worth revisiting.
The most striking is Kelly's claim that "By 2026, Google's main product will not be search but AI." He recalls a conversation with Google cofounder Larry Page around 2002, when he dismissed free web search as a business. Page's reply, "Oh, we're really making an AI," has stuck with him. Kelly argues that Google uses search to improve its AI rather than the reverse. Each of the 3 billion daily queries trains its deep-learning systems, and CEO Sundar Pichai described AI as a core transformative force across all products.
Kelly also predicted an "oligarchy of two or three large, general-purpose cloud-based commercial intelligences." He points to the network effect: the more people use an AI, the smarter it becomes, which in turn attracts more users. Once a company enters this cycle, it tends to outgrow upstart competitors. Cloud-based AI, he suggests, will become deeply embedded in everyday life, but at a cost to competition.
Kelly's view was not entirely pessimistic. He argued that intelligence should ideally be cheap, even free, much like the open commons of the web. A free AI, he believed, could feed commerce and innovation, offering a counterweight to concentrated power.
Read together, these predictions show how accurately Kelly identified the direction of the industry, even as the open-weights future he hoped for remains an open question.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing