When Did “Amazing” Stop Feeling Amazing?

Isn’t it funny how quickly a “miracle” becomes an inconvenience?

There’s a famous comedy bit titled “Everything is Amazing, and Nobody is Happy.” The comedian describes being on a flight when the pilot announces they now have high-speed Wi-Fi. A few minutes later, the connection drops, and the man sitting next to him gets frustrated and says, “I can’t believe this!” The punchline being- How quickly do we feel the world owes us something we didn’t even know existed ten seconds ago? We could be floating at 30,000 feet in the sky, yet we’re frustrated because a video from YouTube won’t buffer.

The Pace of Change We are living through some of the fastest technological shifts in human history. We’ve moved from the novelty of “mobile” phones to purchasing a new pair of shoes in seconds and having them delivered to our house in hours. It’s no wonder our brains are always asking, “What’s next?” Think about it: 40 years ago, if you told someone you were upset because your pocket-sized television was too slow to live-stream The Masters in High Definition, they’d think you were speaking a different language. Our flawed human behavior points to a consistent theme: If we aren’t careful, our expectations can become the enemy of our contentment.

What to expect from AI It has been roughly 3.5 years since ChatGPT was released in late 2022. It was AI’s “iPhone Moment,” reaching 100 million users in just two months. (For context, it took Facebook nearly five years to hit that same milestone.)

Today, billions of prompts are processed every day. But despite the noise, the consensus is that we are still early in the capabilities it delivers. Experts label AI’s current stage in the “Utility Gap.” This is the period when we are using the new, state-of-the-art technology to do old tasks—just a little faster.

Just as in the early days of the internet, there was a “quiet period” of imagination and ingenuity before we got the amazing, unimaginable conveniences we rely on today. From our vantage point, we’re currently in the “spaghetti on the wall” phase—lots of ideas are being thrown out there, and we’ve hardly begun to see what will stick. This is why we optimistically believe that the “Golden Age” of AI is just getting started, with the true, definitive benefits to our lives coming soon.

Our Perspective for Your Portfolio When we look at history as our guide, two things remain true:

• Innovation feeds productivity and improves overall quality of life.
• Predictions will range wide extremes, but reality will fall somewhere in the middle.

While we don’t have the answers to what sort of ingenuity lies around the corner for AI, we do rest on the facts that eventually, productivity and quality of life will improve, but we are doubtful of extreme claims on either side, that all of life’s problems will subside, or doom will impend on society as we know it. As your wealth partner, our job is to balance the long-term benefits with the short-term starts and stops that come with these waves of invention and strategically align them with your plan.

The world is changing fast, and while “everything is amazing,” our goal is to make sure you stay “happy” through the transition.