Anecdotes Everywhere, Evidence Almost Nowhere

In the first two installments of this “state of AI” series, I reviewed the pace of change and the factors driving that change. Today’s installment reviews AI’s present-day impact.In the first two installments of this “state of AI” series, I reviewed the pace of progress and the factors driving that progress. Today, I’ll explore the impact of these advancing capabilities, which can be summarized as follows:AI has had, with a few exceptions, very little clear impact on the world at large.Strap in! That may be about to change.The meteoric rise of Anthropic’s sales figures nicely illustrate both points. The most recent report puts Anthropic’s revenue at a minuscule 0.037% of the global economy1. However, that 0.037% hides astonishing growth: from $1B at the beginning of last year to $47B ARR recently2. Continued growth at that rate would result in Anthropic subsuming the entire world GDP by the end of 2029. Obviously that’s not going to happen, but it highlights that AI is now at the…