Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in 3000 BCE. Since then, we have continuously developed more and more sophisticated means to communicate and push information. Whether unconsciously or consciously, we need more and more data faster than ever for a myriad of reasons. With every technological breakthrough that comes along, we also have a new set of new concepts that shape our world differently.

We can think, for example, of Gutenberg’s printing press. Invented in 1440, it pushed printing costs down and gave birth to revolutionary concepts like catalogs (first published was in Venice in 1495 by publisher Aldus Manutiu. It listed in all the books that he was printing), mass media (which enabled revolutionary ideas to transcend borders), magazines, newspapers, and so on. All these are concepts emerged from a single “master” technology breakthrough and had a great impact on every single aspect of our individual lives and the global world picture.

Hundred years later, the core idea of data distribution has not much changed. We still browse catalogs to buy our next pair of shoes, we create our own catalogs to sell our products and services, and we still browse publications looking for information we need.

Is the way we currently access and share information efficient?

This question may sound silly but technology and data quantity produced are intrinsically related. The more technology advances, the more data quantity increases, the more we need new, advanced technologies to process this data and extract valuable meaning from them. Data mainly has three uses: 1) It can be used “for action” such as optimizing the distribution of electricity; 2) It can be used for social change such as donations, traceability, and, online voting; and 3) It can be used for innovation, such as understand climate change, molecules, and invalidating/building new theories. All of these are the fruit of data consumption. By consumption I mean gaining valuable meaning from data we already have or using it to take an action.

The ratio of data quantity produced versus data impact is an important indicator of innovation’s engine speed.

It’s all about data production & consumption velocity.

Until the beginning of 21st century, the ratio of human data gathered vs data impact (that is, social change, innovation, etc.) was very high. We are where we are thanks to our brains’ capacity to imagine and build models for the data we’ve collected and get lessons from them. But, we’ve long time ago reached a “consumption saturation” point where the amount of data is increasing so quickly, so exponentially, that the old way of accessing data has become inefficient and obsolete. The tools we use in our everyday lives are outdated and obsolete. For example, in today’s super interconnected world where everyone has a different culture, language, and push valuable information on the internet, we basically rely on keywords searches to find information. This is rudimentary. Instead, we could be using an AI powered search engine that gives us the answer that he learned from whatever source in whatever language. We are still wasting time gathering basic information like weather and news.

Data access & sharing technologies are the most important fuel of innovation engine.

Don’t get me wrong, we are still innovating and using data in various ways. But the ratio of data quantity produced to data impact is really small because datasets are getting more and more complex and need more and more intelligence to process them.

Storing data is good. Consume it in a social and efficient way is better.

Technology obviously influenced the way we interact, how social circles are formed, how we make a decision and even the way we think, but it never changed our core nature. We are still social beings and with all today’s technologies, word of mouth is still an important part of our lives. We still ask our friends to for advice, get recommendations from our friends about a new interesting stuff, and ask our friends for help when making important decisions in our lives. It’s no wonder that the most successful products out there are the most social ones.

We have always tried humanizing technology and future breakthroughs in AI will go a step further and change radically the way we access and share information. We are truly going to experience AI powered social technologies everywhere and for the first time ever, everyone will have a smart virtual AI-powered friend that understands them, memorizes their habits and preferences, gathers meaning from the petabytes of data available on the web, gives advice, teaches, etc. For the first time, data access will be social and efficient.

Sure, we didn’t develop “HAL 9000” or “Her” yet, but in the meantime I believe that the recent progress made in machine learning and the democratization of it combined with the explosion of messaging already gives us the possibility of throwing most of the current apps in the trash and starting to develop real human interactions chatbots.

Chatbots are an old concept. Messaging apps are also an old concept. So why now?

It’s not only the technology that changes users’ behavior.

If we really delve into the reasons why websites replaced client applications, why apps replaced websites, and why messaging bots can and will replace mobile apps, we will find that users’ behavior changes mainly when the technology advances and users reach a certain saturation point in their usage. For client applications, it was the widespread availability of the internet and the need to get things done anywhere and everywhere. For websites, it was the smartphone revolution and the need to get things done on the go. For apps now, it is the advances in AI and the need to get everything now. Users don’t tolerate anymore the hassle of finding and downloading an app on the go; it is usually a waste of data, patience, and time. And no matter how great your app’s UI/UX is, there will always be users that simply don’t understand it and get frustrated because it’s just not natural. With chatbots, you don’t have to download anything. It’s more natural and you go straight to your goal.

However, current limitations in natural language processing and mostly “bad implementations” cause, of course, some critics to speak out against chatbots. But like any new concept, it takes time to define standards, frameworks (technical and conversational), and put best practices in place. But this is it, we are in the chatbot era. I believe that every era has a purpose and the purpose of the chatbot era is to get people comfortable interacting with a virtual entity to get things done. That’s it.

This will be, perhaps, the last stop before the arrival of true AI.