AI’s Revolutionary Power: Will Knowledge Production Become Cost-Free?

The latest pitch for AI’s revolutionary power predicts that the technology will make knowledge production cost-free. Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind co-founder and now Microsoft AI’s CEO, made this bold claim at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week. He believes that in 15 or 20 years, we will be producing new scientific and cultural knowledge at almost zero marginal cost, making it widely open-sourced and available to everybody.

Suleyman’s vision has sparked debate and discussion across major news outlets like “Morning Joe,” NBC, and CNBC. If his prediction comes true, we could be entering a world of information abundance and economic dislocation that few are prepared for.

However, skeptics argue that Suleyman’s zero-cost knowledge claim is a sign of tech-bubble thinking. They point out that the upfront costs of building AI systems are astronomical, and that knowledge is more than just information – it requires human expertise and context that AI may not be able to replicate.

Despite the skepticism, many AI optimists see potential applications for the technology in areas like scientific research and creative endeavors. They believe that AI can turbocharge discovery and invention by assisting researchers and artists in their work.

This isn’t the first time such bold predictions have been made – the rise of the web in the 1990s saw similar claims that all knowledge would eventually be universally available for free. While the web did democratize information in many ways, it also showed that “information wants to be expensive.”

In conclusion, while AI may offer a wealth of knowledge and potential, it’s unlikely that knowledge production will ever be truly cost-free. Just like Wikipedia, which relies on donations to operate, we should expect to pay for AI’s knowledge bounty as well.