A recently unearthed video clip from 1983 showcases the visionary thinking of Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs. In the footage, Jobs discusses his vision for the future of technology at the 1983 International Design Conference held in Aspen, Colorado. His remarks, which have resurfaced after nearly four decades, reveal a striking prediction about the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to encapsulate the knowledge and perspectives of historical figures.
During his speech, the 28-year-old Jobs expressed his admiration for the works of Aristotle and Plato, lamenting the inability to directly engage with these great thinkers. However, he envisioned a future where a machine could capture an individual’s “underlying spirit, or underlying set of principles, or any underlying way of looking at the world.” This machine, according to Jobs, would generate responses to questions in a manner similar to how the real-life person might have answered.
Fast forward to the present day, and Jobs’ prediction seems to be materializing with the advent of AI chatbots known as Language Models (LLMs). These AI algorithms are trained on vast amounts of data, enabling them to identify patterns and connections between words and topics. Similar to Jobs’ vision, an LLM could be fed all of Aristotle’s known works and provide responses to user queries in a manner consistent with the philosopher’s thinking.
Furthermore, today’s tech giants are actively pursuing advancements in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which refers to AI systems capable of performing tasks at or above human levels. However, the timeline for achieving AGI remains a topic of debate among industry leaders. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and X, believes AGI is likely to emerge within a few years, while Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, suggests that we are still a decade away from reaching that milestone.
This is not the first instance where one of Jobs’ predictions has come to fruition. In a 1985 interview with Playboy magazine, he foresaw the widespread use of computers in homes and their role in connecting people through a nationwide communications network. At the time, less than 10% of U.S. households owned a computer, but today, approximately 95% of households possess at least one computing device.
Jobs’ foresight aligns with the eventual creation of the internet by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, initially conceived as a means for sharing information among colleagues. Since then, the internet has grown exponentially, with close to 1.88 billion websites in existence as of 2021.
