The Internet Bubble, which happened twenty years ago, could be one of the biggest bubbles in human history.
Only Tulip bubble, happened in Holland more than one hundred years ago, could surpass its craziness.
As long as you were famous, you could build a web site without any innovation or creativity.
You could then list your company on the stock exchange. The valuation of your company could be easily more than 100 billion.
At the time of IPO, it could be over subscribed by more than 100 times. Do you still remember those company names?
I worked at a local telecom company at that time. The company wanted to be tranformed to become an IP company.
Staffs had to learn IP and had to learn IP skill sets. Almost everything was IP.
Some colleagues joked that if your proposal did not contain IP, your proposal was not even entitled to be reviewed.
However, if your surname was IP, then your proposal could be approved.
All the proposals would be pre-scanned, if there was no IP in the proposal, then no one would even bother to read them.
I felt like what happened was like the cultural revolution. Ironically, when everyone was talking about IP, was there really anyone who really knew what IP was?
Now, a lot of people talked about AI (Artificial Intelligence).
The first time I heard about AI was when I was still in university. There was a talk about Fuzzy Logic.
I did not understand too much. I though it was about self-learning capability.
What is AI?
IBM computer played against chess world champion in the 1980s / 1990s. No one said it was AI.
A few years ago, Google's Alpha Go played against the world No. 1 Ranking GO player. People said it was AI against human.
Image processing had be applied in medicine more than twenty years ago. Now, Google's image processing program used to detect cancer was AI.
Automation has been around for many years, especially in the industrious sector.
There was automation in car production for example. No one thought automation was AI. However, a lot of people even think automation is AI now.
What is AI? What is automation?
Is a computer program, with analytic capability, AI? If analytic capability is AI, then a lot of things are AI.
Is facial recognition AI? I think it is analytical, not AI.
Is automatic car driving AI? I think it is analytical, it is automation. Not AI.
I think Google's search engine is quite intelligence. It returns results with great accuracy. Is it AI? It seems like no one says it is AI.
What is AI? Is analytic capabilty intelligence? Or besides of analytic capability, self learning capability is also required.
I think it is not intelligence if it does not have self-learning capability.
Most important of all, we can not confuse automation with AI.
I am wondering. If I was still working at the telecom company, if there was no 'AI' word in my proposal, would my proposal have a chance to be reviewed.