Latest / In The Loop / EP19 - Mary Meeker AI Trends 2025: Three Reasons Why AI Is Different Than Any Other Tech In History
Transcript
- 0:00After a six year break, the very famous analyst Mary Mika is back
- 0:03with her first. Trends.
- 0:04Report since 2:00. 1019 and this time.
- 0:08It's entirely focused on guess what?
- 0:10AI, all 365 pages of it. For those that are unfamiliar
- 0:15with Mary. Mika.
- 0:16She was one of the. OG tech influencers.
- 0:19In the 90s. Who was at Wall?
- 0:21Street. And an analyst?
- 0:22Who produced extensive. Reports on everything.
- 0:25About the Internet. It became.
- 0:26The must read document. Anybody that's trying to
- 0:29understand where technology? Is heading.
- 0:31When she. Released her.
- 0:31Reports. They weren't just documents or
- 0:33slides. They were cultural moments that
- 0:35made everybody in the industry. Stop now after a long.
- 0:38Six years of. Silence.
- 0:39She's back. In today's episode, I'm going
- 0:41to. Break down three of the main.
- 0:43Takeaways that explain. Why AI is?
- 0:45Different than. Any of the.
- 0:46Technology trend that's. Ever come before it taken?
- 0:49From her 365 page report and. I'm going to give you an honest
- 0:52take about. What I think?
- 0:53This shows about the state of AI.
- 0:55Understanding today. This is in the loop.
- 0:58With Jack Horton. Hope you enjoy the show.
- 1:11OK, so let's. Dig into.
- 1:12Today's episode as. I said there's 300 and. 65 pages
- 1:16released. By Mary Meeker and her.
- 1:17Team and I think there's three or four key things I want to.
- 1:21Discuss. That really tells us about why
- 1:23AI is just. So different than any other.
- 1:25Technology trend that's. Come before it.
- 1:27I think the first reason and the first theme let's.
- 1:30Say is speed. So that's come through really
- 1:34strongly in her. Report and it's one of the.
- 1:36Key ways that AI. Differs from any past.
- 1:39Technology trend in. History she's.
- 1:41Explicitly drawn a lot of. Comparisons, of course.
- 1:43Between previous. Platform shifts so.
- 1:45She talked about. Vincent serves. 1999.
- 1:48Observation that a year in the Internet business is.
- 1:51Like a whole. Dog Year.
- 1:53And then noted that a is. Pace is really.
- 1:55Just. 10 times more. Extreme technology compounds and
- 1:58AI is building on everything that came before it now.
- 2:02In today's episode, we. Will go through a number of.
- 2:03Charts and stats that are in a report there's. 360. 5 pages of
- 2:07it and I. Picked.
- 2:07Out what I think is. The most interesting, but.
- 2:10If you're just. Listening on the audio version
- 2:11and you're wondering? What some of these?
- 2:13Stats and charts pertain to if. You go to the Spotify.
- 2:16Video or the YouTube video? Or even the.
- 2:19Article that's. Produced for every single
- 2:20episode. Every single chart that's
- 2:22discussed. Will be included in that.
- 2:25So since. 2010 one of the. Key starts you've actually
- 2:28highlighted was that there's been a. 260%.
- 2:31Annual growth rate. In the.
- 2:32Use of data. To train new AI models and a
- 2:35three. 160. Percent.
- 2:36Increase in computing power. Which has led to an over. 167%.
- 2:41Growth. Over the last four years alone.
- 2:44In the number of AI models that have been produced, which as you
- 2:46can imagine, is driving just. Unprecedented uptake across
- 2:50consumers and business. And the.
- 2:51Speed of this. Adoption across different
- 2:53technological eras. Tells us.
- 2:55A very powerful story here because the PC took 20.
- 2:58Years to reach. 50% adoption in. US households.
- 3:02The desktop Internet. ERA took 12 years to reach. 50%
- 3:05of. People.
- 3:06The mobile took 6. But when it comes to.
- 3:09The AI era. It's looking.
- 3:10Like it's been about three years to reach. 50% of all.
- 3:14Households using it. So each.
- 3:15Cycle of new technology is roughly.
- 3:17Half the cycle of the previous one.
- 3:19And you can really understand this when we think.
- 3:20About ChatGPT which? Just recently passed 300 and. 65
- 3:24billion annual searches, which is 5 1/2.
- 3:27Times, by the way. Faster than Google?
- 3:29Reached 300 and. 65 billion searches because.
- 3:32If you're not using it yet. The search feature.
- 3:34Inside chat. GBT is just.
- 3:35Brilliant and. Another theme that's consistent
- 3:39throughout the. Mary Mika report is that ChatGPT
- 3:41is just. Utterly dominant.
- 3:43The growth of that. Product has been unprecedented.
- 3:46It's currently the AI product to beat by a mile.
- 3:49You know the. Report shows chat.
- 3:50GBT subscriber and revenue. Growth being just exponential.
- 3:53It's reached 800. Million active.
- 3:55Users in the report and 20 million paid subscribers and
- 3:58they're nearly hitting 4 billion revenue and they've done that in
- 4:01just a few. Years and.
- 4:02What's really interesting about this growth?
- 4:03Rate and. Adoption in households.
- 4:05And amongst ChatGPT and others. Is just the.
- 4:07Demographic usage, actually. That's why most.
- 4:10Users are aged. 18 to 4920% of people, according to this
- 4:14report. Are age 65 and.
- 4:15Older and have claimed to. Have used church.
- 4:17GBT at least once. So this isn't just a young
- 4:19person technology. You know all the generations are
- 4:23using this as a Google replacement.
- 4:24And younger people are almost treating this.
- 4:26As a life advisor. We discussed this.
- 4:28In a recent. Episode just a couple of weeks.
- 4:30Back how chat. GBT's most.
- 4:32Popular use case now. And a IS.
- 4:34Property use case. Has actually become.
- 4:36Therapy I for. One use it as.
- 4:37A life coach. Almost every single day.
- 4:39Whether at work or at home. And when we.
- 4:41Think about the theme of speed. It's not just.
- 4:42The speed of. Adoption.
- 4:44It's also retention. Because daily usage.
- 4:47On Just ChatGPT alone has grown from less than 10 minutes a day
- 4:50to 20 minutes a day. In just.
- 4:52The last 18 months. So what's happening is a
- 4:54fundamental change in the. Way we interact with technology.
- 4:56We're moving from. Cooking and typing to a.
- 4:59Conversational interface. And this shift could even drive.
- 5:02People away from. Traditional.
- 5:03Platforms so social. Media or Netflix?
- 5:05Or YouTube. And as I've.
- 5:07Said before every. One of these.
- 5:08Companies wants to. Be.
- 5:09Essentially the chatbot interface that rules them all.
- 5:12Because every single. Interface, as it becomes
- 5:15conversational will connect to other.
- 5:17Conversational interfaces. So a person only has.
- 5:19To use. One platform to connect with
- 5:21many other platforms and go further with this theme of speed
- 5:24in the report by Mary Meeker when we talk.
- 5:27About developers and as a. Proxy to show.
- 5:29Developer involvement and the number of people.
- 5:31Building in this AI world now. In the.
- 5:35Google ecosystem developer. Ecosystem, that is.
- 5:38In the last 12 months has grown from 1.4 million developers to 7
- 5:41million. Developers in just as I said, a
- 5:44year. That's a 5X increase.
- 5:46Another area that the. Theme of speed.
- 5:47Applies to. Is also AI.
- 5:49Performance. Which is just.
- 5:50Accelerating at breakneck. Speed.
- 5:53AI models are becoming. So sophisticated that as of.
- 5:56February this year. ChatGPT. 4.5.
- 5:59Are consistently fueling. Humans into thinking.
- 6:02They're chatting with another human.
- 6:05Previously the win rate for that.
- 6:07Test was over. 70% so 70% of the time people would identify this
- 6:12as an AI system and in parallel the report.
- 6:14Also. Discusses the speed of
- 6:15investment as well. So the Big 6.
- 6:17Tech companies alone, so the. Googles the Facebooks.
- 6:19The Amazons. Has spent 212 billion in 2024
- 6:23alone, which is up. 63%. Year on year.
- 6:26Which is far. Above.
- 6:27Any historical norm of spending? This brings on.
- 6:30To a very interesting point about AI that the.
- 6:32Pod does a great job of. Showcasing which is.
- 6:35The reduction inference cost and the.
- 6:36Speed of that reduction as well. So yes.
- 6:39People are spending more time on AI.
- 6:41Companies are spending. More on.
- 6:42Building AI. Whilst at the.
- 6:44Same time. Inference cost so.
- 6:46The cost to run a language model on servers.
- 6:49Has dropped by 99. Percent over the last two years.
- 6:52So what used? To cost pounds or dollars now.
- 6:54Cost maybe pennies. And what cost pennies today
- 6:57might even cost. A fraction of a penny.
- 6:59In the future. To understand really the speed
- 7:01of this reduction it took. 80 years for the light bulb to.
- 7:04Become that cheap to use. Versus a year.
- 7:07For some AI models to. Achieve a similar cost
- 7:09reduction. This cost?
- 7:10Reduction is. Only going to.
- 7:11Democratize AI access. Further.
- 7:13Which, as you can imagine, is only going to.
- 7:15Increase its usage and adoption. Which will only.
- 7:18Increase the amount. People will then spend on it.
- 7:20And another. Area of speed.
- 7:21That the report. Highlighted was.
- 7:23The adoption of. This technology and enterprise.
- 7:26Level. Because this isn't just a
- 7:27consumer. Technology trend that's.
- 7:29Trickled all the way. Up to enterprise.
- 7:31Everyone's been jumping in at once.
- 7:33The proportion. Of S&P 500 companies mentioning
- 7:37AI during their earning. Calls grew from. 10% when
- 7:40chapter. BT was first released.
- 7:42To now 50% and a 2024 Morgan Stanley survey found that 75.
- 7:46Percent of global CMOS. Were already.
- 7:48Running AI. Tests with virtually.
- 7:51Everyone else planning to start? Within 12 months.
- 7:53And that was 2024. We're now a.
- 7:55Year ahead of that. Again, there's an element.
- 7:57Of this report because it's 3. 160. 5 pages long and it's so
- 8:00extensive. It feels almost outdated.
- 8:03If you're listening to this podcast, every single.
- 8:05Week you'll. Know about the growth of
- 8:08adoption? And usage in companies.
- 8:11You understand? How fast?
- 8:12Things are really changing. OK, so I'm.
- 8:25Now going to move on from that big.
- 8:26Theme of speed and all the data and the statistics around speed.
- 8:29As well. To something else that was.
- 8:31Becoming very apparent. Inside the report which is that?
- 8:34AI has been global from day one and this is another real.
- 8:39Big way that. It differs.
- 8:40From any immediate. Or previous technology.
- 8:43Because previous. Technology trends started maybe
- 8:45in the US, and slowly. Spread worldwide.
- 8:48You know the Internet took 20. Three years.
- 8:50For 90. Percent of users.
- 8:52To be outside of North America and with chat.
- 8:54GBT that just took three years. The top.
- 8:57Countries in ChatGPT now isn't the US, it's.
- 8:59India, which represents. 13.5% of total.
- 9:02Usage compared to the US. Is 8. .9.
- 9:05And crazily after that. Comes.
- 9:06Indonesia and Brazil. Both with over 5%.
- 9:10Followed by Egypt. With nearly 4.
- 9:11Percent of total usage. And as a.
- 9:13Result it's been. Geopolitical.
- 9:14From day one too. This isn't a technology that
- 9:17developed in a vacuum and. Then became geopolitically
- 9:20relevant. The US and China have been in
- 9:22this AI competition from day one, and the report highlights
- 9:25the fact that there is an. Arms race going on.
- 9:27And the reality? I quote the reality is AI
- 9:30leadership. Could be get geopolitical
- 9:32leadership and not vice versa essentially.
- 9:34The nation or company that leads AI.
- 9:37Is going to. Have the strategic.
- 9:39Edge on the geopolitical stage. And the report?
- 9:41Backs us. Up by comparing.
- 9:42Progress across countries. For example, China.
- 9:45Is portrayed as. Surging ahead in certain areas
- 9:48by 2025, China's. Released three major.
- 9:51Large. Scale open source models, which
- 9:53is more than any other country. The.
- 9:54Chinese language model. DeepSeek, which we've.
- 9:56Discussed on this episode went. From zero to. 21% of global LLM.
- 10:00Users in literally just a few months.
- 10:03Highlighting how? Quickly, China is.
- 10:05Mobilizing that massive. User base.
- 10:07And she also noted that the open source model.
- 10:10Produced by Alibaba. Called.
- 10:11Quen 2.5 is outperforming many Western models.
- 10:15And this battle really comes through.
- 10:17In the data because the total number of large.
- 10:19Scale AI systems in both the. US and China.
- 10:22Literally dwarfs the rest. Of the world.
- 10:25There is more. Large scale AI systems deployed.
- 10:27In both. The US and China versus the
- 10:30entire rest. Of the world combined, but for.
- 10:32China, they've got a huge. Advantage when it comes.
- 10:34To embodied AI. So this is.
- 10:36AI inside of. Robots.
- 10:37So China has more. Robots in industry installed
- 10:41than the. Rest.
- 10:41Of the world combined. With the US.
- 10:43Lagging you could. Even say.
- 10:44Embarrassingly far behind. The third major.
- 10:58Theme. I think that shows that this
- 10:59technology is so different than any other technology.
- 11:02Before it is. Just the breadth of.
- 11:03Disruption. Mary Mika.
- 11:04Isn't just saying? Things are changing faster,
- 11:06she's saying that. Everything is changing.
- 11:08In the. Report I tried to predict.
- 11:10Loads of different areas that AI will make an impact and to be
- 11:12honest it. Talked about coding.
- 11:14And. Research.
- 11:15And logistics which? To me just felt outdated.
- 11:18Because I'm already seeing these systems.
- 11:20Deployed. We're also seeing.
- 11:21New AI first. Companies just.
- 11:23Grow at unprecedented. Rates like livable.
- 11:26He was featured. In the report as.
- 11:28Growing their recurring revenue from pretty much 0.
- 11:30In 2020. 4 to 50 million. Six months later, these aren't.
- 11:34Small improvements these are. Exponential.
- 11:37Leaps. And throughout the report.
- 11:38Really, Mika? Highlights the.
- 11:40Fact that the. Competitive dynamics have never.
- 11:42Been like this. Before for example.
- 11:43One chart showed. Autonomous vehicles taking over
- 11:46Lyft. And even.
- 11:47Uber in certain. Areas in the US this isn't.
- 11:50Just this sci-fi. Experiment.
- 11:51It's the. Reality in San Francisco.
- 11:55In a real. Major city where?
- 11:56Driverless cars are. Becoming the.
- 11:58Go to. Form of transport.
- 12:00So yeah, the breadth of disruption across.
- 12:01Every single industry is. Unprecedented and when?
- 12:04Combined with the. Speed.
- 12:06And the fact that this. Is so global.
- 12:08You can. See why people are both?
- 12:10Excited and scared. But I thought I'd I'd.
- 12:12Give an honest take on all of this.
- 12:15Looking at. Mika's very.
- 12:16Comprehensive report. I think she nails this macro 30.
- 12:191000 foot story. But I think there's a big gap
- 12:22between this 30,000 foot. Analysis and.
- 12:25What's actually happening? On the ground.
- 12:27When it. Comes to trying.
- 12:28To. Extract.
- 12:29Value from AI. So I'll try and walk you through
- 12:31some. Of the.
- 12:32Things that I. See as disconnects.
- 12:33The capital. Deployment story for example.
- 12:35Is quite fascinating. Mika documents big technology
- 12:39companies. Spending, you know, 200 and. 12
- 12:41billion on AI. In 2024 alone, which is.
- 12:43Just staggering by quite. Literally any measure.
- 12:46But when you actually. Follow the money.
- 12:47Trail so. Where people are actually making
- 12:49money from AI. All the way.
- 12:51Back to the. PNL.
- 12:52In part the. Results are very.
- 12:53Uneven the winds are. Very real, but they're very
- 12:56specific rather than very broad I.
- 12:58Did an entire episode recently on the types of AI features.
- 13:01Being released. So take strikes.
- 13:03Fraud detection system. They have this.
- 13:05AI system that analysis. Payment patterns and has.
- 13:08Helped jump their. Catch rates the number of times
- 13:11they catch fraud. From 57.
- 13:12Percent to 97%. Pretty much overnight.
- 13:16That's not a. Small improvement?
- 13:17That's a. Huge change and that.
- 13:19Directly impacts. The bottom line?
- 13:20And. What's very noticeable?
- 13:22About all. The stories I've covered.
- 13:23When it comes. To AI features being released,
- 13:25is that B to B focused? And they're typically
- 13:27integrated. Into a very.
- 13:28Specific industry or customer workflow and they're solving
- 13:32very. Particular.
- 13:33Problems with a very clear, measurable outcome.
- 13:35They aren't these general purpose consumer AI.
- 13:38Assistants trying to. Be everything to.
- 13:40Everyone. That purpose, Bill.
- 13:42They're designed to slide into existing processes and platforms
- 13:45where the. Value proposition.
- 13:47Is just obvious. And quantifiable and.
- 13:49If we compare this to say. Consumer AI.
- 13:51Two years after ChatGPT or three years?
- 13:53After ChatGPT came out. What are we still left with?
- 13:57It's ChatGPT still. And ChatGPT.
- 13:59Plus, for those that want to pay $200 a month.
- 14:02Despite thousands of. Startups and billions being
- 14:05invested in these companies. That said, they're going to be
- 14:08the. Consumer application.
- 14:09For everything. Nobody.
- 14:11'S been that. Successful.
- 14:13They've really. Struggled to find the.
- 14:15Sustainable footing. Perplexity is.
- 14:17Probably one of the few that. Have done it and I think this
- 14:19really explains I guess a. Broader issue with how people.
- 14:22Interpret AI capabilities. You know every.
- 14:25Quarter, there's this new. Big headline that.
- 14:28This new language model achieves human level performance.
- 14:30X or Y task. And the benchmark?
- 14:33Improvements. Are very impressive and they're
- 14:35genuine. They're real.
- 14:37And the models are getting so much better.
- 14:38So quickly, but there's this. Huge gap between.
- 14:42This benchmark. Result.
- 14:44And real world. Business value or.
- 14:46Personal value that solves a real problem.
- 14:49Benchmarks are. Essentially tests with.
- 14:52Very, very clean data and very. Clear objectives, but.
- 14:55Businesses have very messy systems and legacy.
- 14:58Constraints and operational. Friction with annoying.
- 15:01And frustrated people. In the process that have to.
- 15:03Implement things so. If I make this a little.
- 15:06Bit clearer for. Programmers.
- 15:07If you're. Using this AI.
- 15:09Programming tool for. A brand new.
- 15:10Product. Or that this perfect code?
- 15:12Base. That's very.
- 15:13Small with very little errors. These AI tools.
- 15:16Will do. A great job and increase.
- 15:17Productivity you know about? 10 times probably.
- 15:20But use this. Tool on a multi million line
- 15:23enterprise. Code base it.
- 15:25Will struggle. The magic won't be as magical
- 15:29because that. Raw model power.
- 15:31Hits a bit. Of a wall.
- 15:33It will make. Mistakes.
- 15:34It can't. Identify all the dependencies.
- 15:36And you can. Repeat this example.
- 15:38Across almost all. Work domains.
- 15:40Feed. One of these Incredible.
- 15:41Language models a perfectly formatted PDF and it will.
- 15:44Probably extract. Almost all the.
- 15:46Information perfectly but. Hand her a.
- 15:48Folder of. Chaotic, messy documents.
- 15:50With random. File types and.
- 15:52Really poorly scanned images and it will break down quite
- 15:55quickly. And the obsession with AI agents
- 15:57is another. Way this is illustrated.
- 15:59Perfectly. You know Google.
- 16:01Searches for AI. Agents, as highlighted in the
- 16:03report, has increased by 1000. Percent in early 2025.
- 16:06So obviously there's a clear. Vision of the future that people
- 16:10are having and they see agents as key to that.
- 16:12And I do too. But this?
- 16:13Obsession with autonomous systems that can.
- 16:15Plan. And reason and execute.
- 16:17Multi step workflows without. Any oversight or involvement
- 16:20from a human? Is.
- 16:22Well into the future point one of these models.
- 16:25At a business. Process and.
- 16:26Tell it to autonomously orchestrate and.
- 16:28Decide everything. It will often not work and.
- 16:33It'll only really work in a very constrained and.
- 16:35Specific scenario, but for. Many use.
- 16:39Cases I'd argue the most successful.
- 16:40Deployments will. Share a few critical
- 16:42characteristics. So the scope is quite tight.
- 16:46Second, the inputs are going. To be quite predictable.
- 16:48So it might be a. Recording from.
- 16:51Conversations or. It could be.
- 16:53A customer support. Conversation.
- 16:55And 3rd, the risk of any mistakes by the agent or the AI
- 16:57is very well managed. So there's some.
- 16:59Form of human. Oversight or ability?
- 17:01To. Order and quickly change.
- 17:02Things the moment you step outside.
- 17:04Any of this carefully. Constricted I guess.
- 17:06Comfort zones. Agents are going to become
- 17:08exponentially. More fragile because you're
- 17:11going to have. To have.
- 17:11Complex memory, that is. Remembering the correct.
- 17:15Things across many different interactions.
- 17:17You have to manage multi tool orchestration and despite.
- 17:20Lots of cool looking videos a. Production agent system still
- 17:23requires human operators. We call them AI managers.
- 17:27Who can look at errors or? Look at the.
- 17:29Data. And make improvements sometimes
- 17:31at. 345. AM in the morning to fix
- 17:33something that's. Just not working.
- 17:34So I guess what I'm saying is. The data doesn't.
- 17:38Tell the whole story. Because it's not.
- 17:40Just about. Technology curves or.
- 17:42Benchmarks. It's about the.
- 17:44Implementation. Specifics that makes a
- 17:46difference between. Cool looking videos and
- 17:48something that's reliable. And used every single day.
- 17:51And for those. That are.
- 17:51Already at technology. Companies or a builders or
- 17:54thinkers and innovators or business leaders.
- 17:57All I'd say is when AI. Capabilities are just.
- 17:59Becoming increasingly commoditized and competitive.
- 18:02Features are going. To be replicated in maybe weeks,
- 18:04not even months or years. The only competitive.
- 18:08Advantage you've got is to move. Faster have direct.
- 18:10Relationships. With budget holders and decision
- 18:12makers. Structure your.
- 18:14Contract renewal process. Really carefully make it.
- 18:17Really. Difficult to switch.
- 18:19From you, develop a brand that people love.
- 18:21And as you'll notice, these aren't.
- 18:23Magical AI Futuristic. New things that have come into
- 18:27play. These are quite.
- 18:28Traditional business strategies. Anyway, I hope that was helpful.
- 18:31That was a bit of a chunky episode of lots of.
- 18:33Information and data. Please do.
- 18:34Share This. To a friend in a Slack channel
- 18:37and Microsoft Teams channel. Give it a.
- 18:39Share online. It's growing quite.
- 18:41Fast and it's all through. Word of mouth, so I'll see you.
- 18:44Next week.