Where will AI converge? By Ibukun Adedeji

Technologies of truly great scale rarely leave anything untouched. They don’t just change things; they fundamentally rewire our experience of how we live, work, and relate with the world.

If we consider the internet, for instance, we use it in more ways than we can count. And it didn’t transform society immediately. No, it unfolded gradually—from ARPANET in the 1980s to the World Wide Web, where Tim Berners-Lee created a visual way for us to navigate all the interconnected data, with hyperlinks and web pages. To all the numerous ways we use it today, we can say it has converged.

Understanding Convergence

Convergence is the pivotal point where a powerful wave of innovation settles, becomes normalised, and integrates so deeply into our lives that we barely notice its pervasive influence. It’s when the revolutionary becomes utterly routine, fading into the background hum of daily existence because it is simply expected.

The internet, for instance, converged into mobile social networks, making global connections instantaneous and intimate. What started as a niche communication tool evolved into the fabric of our personal and professional lives, where video calls, instant messaging, and shared digital spaces are now second nature.

Cloud computing, once a highly technical concept discussed only by IT professionals, has converged to become the invisible, robust backbone of modern life, powering everything from our streaming services and smart home devices to complex enterprise software and global supply chains, often without us ever giving a second thought to the underlying infrastructure.

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So, with Artificial Intelligence diffusing across every facet of our existence, from the way we write code and generate creative content, to how we process vast amounts of knowledge and increasingly make critical decisions, the urgent question isn’t if it will converge, but where it will become so native that we cease to even call it “AI”? When does it simply become the new normal, indistinguishable from the background operations that define our digital reality?

Echoes from History: Energy and Access

To grasp this profound shift, it is instructive to look to history for parallels. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about the invention of new machines; it was fundamentally about unlocking and channelling energy at an unprecedented scale.

Before that era, humanity’s physical output was severely constrained by muscle power, animal labour, or the unreliable forces of wind and water. The advent of the steam engine, followed by the widespread adoption of electricity, tapped into vast new energy wells, dramatically scaling human capability in manufacturing, transportation, and communication.

The revolution wasn’t merely in the static discovery of these energy sources, but in how we collectively learned to effectively harness, distribute, and utilise that energy, funnelling it into factories, illuminating homes, and propelling trains across continents, thereby restructuring entire societies and economies.

Similarly, the internet, in its own wave of convergence, democratized access to information and connection on a global scale. It allowed us to leverage a distributed network of cognitive output, breaking down geographical barriers and enabling instant collaboration and knowledge sharing.

AI, in its current essence, is doing something even more fundamental: it is unlocking and amplifying cognitive energy. It’s giving us unprecedented tools to process information at speeds and scales impossible for humans, generate novel ideas, automate incredibly complex tasks, and derive insights from data in ways that fundamentally redefine human intelligence. The core challenge and the immense opportunity ahead lie in how well we deploy and integrate this new form of cognitive energy into every system and interaction.

Forces driving the AI convergence

Several powerful currents are pushing AI towards its point of ubiquitous integration, making its convergence not just likely, but inevitable.

Firstly, the sheer scale of economic investment is staggering. We’re talking about not just billions, but potentially trillions, poured into pioneering ventures like OpenAI and xAI, as well as vast internal R&D budgets within established tech giants. This isn’t merely speculative venture capital; it signals a fundamental reorientation of global economic priorities, with nations and corporations recognizing AI as the next critical frontier for growth and competitive advantage. This capital inflow translates directly into accelerated research, talent acquisition, and infrastructure build-out.

Secondly, the relentless pace of technological advancement is unlike anything humanity has ever witnessed. With breakthroughs and improvements emerging not annually, but seemingly every six months, the entropy in the system, the measure of disorder and change,

is immense. What was cutting-edge research yesterday becomes foundational technology today, rapidly enabling entirely new applications and capabilities. We are seeing models double in capability and efficiency at a pace that compresses decades of progress into mere years, leading to a constant state of disruption and rapid evolution that demands continuous adaptation.

Thirdly, the network effects are rapidly taking hold, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of adoption and improvement. As more users adopt AI tools, interact with AI-powered applications, and generate data, the feedback loops accelerate. This continuous stream of data refines the models, enhances their accuracy and utility, and thereby compounds their value, pushing AI past a critical mass and helping it achieve escape velocity in the market. This momentum is further reinforced by the strategic leverage of big tech—the FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) and their powerful peers—who are not just developing AI, but deeply integrating it into their existing, massive ecosystems.

This integration is designed to solidify AI as an indispensable part of their platforms, further locking in users and consolidating AI as a core utility within their vast digital empires.

Moreover, AI’s practical utility already demonstrably surpasses the tangible, everyday impact of other much-hyped technologies that have garnered significant attention, such as large-scale 3D printing, mainstream augmented/virtual reality, or even the practical utility of Bitcoin for everyday transactions. While these technologies have their places, AI’s applicability is far broader and more immediately impactful across diverse sectors.

Finally, AI’s inherent form factor adaptability is key to its pervasive convergence: AI isn’t confined to a single device or a specific interface. It can be a sophisticated layer seamlessly integrated into your web browser, embedded deeply within specialised hardware, woven into existing mobile computing platforms, or integrated into virtually any sensor, robot, or industrial system. It is the invisible force capable of enhancing every digital and, increasingly, every physical interaction.

The profound impacts of AI convergence

The inevitable convergence of AI will reshape our world in multifaceted and profound ways, altering the very fabric of our society:

• Productivity Tools: It will be the central engine behind advanced copilots and intelligent agents, acting not just as assistants, but as true extensions of our own capabilities. These tools will automate mundane, repetitive tasks, freeing up human creativity and strategic thinking. They will accelerate research cycles, rapidly synthesise complex information, assist in creative generation across various mediums (from art to engineering designs), and enable more efficient and precise problem-solving at an individual and organisational level.
• Infrastructure: AI will become deeply embedded in critical national and global infrastructure. From optimising resource allocation and predictive maintenance in energy grids to enhancing cybersecurity in financial systems and streamlining diagnostics and personalised treatments in healthcare, AI will elevate operational efficiency, anticipate potential failures, and enhance security at scales previously unimaginable and with a precision that minimises human error. Consider traffic management, urban planning, or even climate modelling—all will be fundamentally transformed by AI.
• Human Interaction: It will profoundly alter the nature of human interaction, permeating voice interfaces that understand nuance, interpreting and generating emotions in digital contexts, and even providing companionship through sophisticated conversational agents. This raises fascinating questions about the future of human connection, the nature of empathy, and the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence in our daily lives.
• Low-Infrastructure Economies: For emerging or low-infrastructure economies, AI might catalyse truly transformative leapfrog systems. In contexts where traditional, costly infrastructure development is scarce, AI could become the foundational “system” itself, enabling direct transitions to advanced capabilities in areas like education, agriculture, or finance, bypassing decades of conventional development and democratizing access to services.
• On an epistemic level, AI’s convergence will critically challenge our very understanding of knowledge, truth, and creation. When models can synthesise vast amounts of information, generate highly convincing narratives, and even produce novel insights or creative works that are indistinguishable from human output, how do we redefine authorship, establish the boundaries of expertise, and pursue knowledge in a world where information is not just retrieved but actively generated and curated by machines? The ability to discern and validate information will become paramount.

Seizing the Opportunity

If you possess the foresight to anticipate where AI will converge—specifically for your unique context, for your particular industry, for your targeted market—you don’t merely ride the wave of technological progress. You become an architect, a sculptor of its landing, actively influencing its direction and maximising its potential.

This is not a passive observation; it is an active, strategic engagement with the future that demands vision and proactive planning.

We are living through this convergence in real time. It’s dynamic, it’s exhilarating, and it’s accelerating at an unprecedented pace. If you don’t actively ask where it’s headed, if you don’t think critically and strategically about its direction and profound implications, you might just wake up in a world you merely reacted to, rather than one you thoughtfully shaped.

The future is not just coming; it is being built now, by those who dare to ask and then act upon the subject of AI convergence. Are you building with it?

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