While We Were Arguing About Artificial Intelligence Writing Hallucinated Stories to Earn Cents, Governments, Billionaires, and Technology Giants Were Building a New Layer of Civilization
Curator’s Note: The article written by Dr Michael Broadly discusses how society’s focus on AI chatbots distracts from a more significant underlying revolution in artificial intelligence. While some view chatbots as the pinnacle of AI, the author emphasizes that they are only a small aspect of a broader technological transformation. Key players, including governments and corporations, are recognizing AI as a crucial strategic asset impacting national security, economic resilience, and infrastructure. This shift marks AI’s evolution from a software story to one of national capabilities. The contrast between casual public interaction with chatbots and the serious implications for global competition and infrastructure illustrates this emerging layer of civilization built around AI.
The Hallucinating Chatbots Distracted Us While the Real AI Revolution Happened Elsewhere
Yesterday, I joined my usual group of elderly friends for Bingo night in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Before the numbers started rolling and before somebody inevitably accused the machine of favoring retirees from the Eastern suburbs, we gathered around coffee and scones to discuss the topic currently occupying much of the world’s attention: artificial intelligence.
One friend proudly announced that ChatGPT had written a birthday speech for his wife’s seventy-fifth birthday. Another explained how Gemini had helped him interpret a government tax notice that seemed intentionally designed to test the reading comprehension of the entire Australian population. A third claimed artificial intelligence had become more useful than his grandchildren because “the machine answers questions without looking offended.”
I shared similar conversations in a previous story, so I will not repeat them here. You can read, chuckle, and gain insights from their amazing conversations related to AI in this story entitled My Elderly Mates Trust AI More Than Politicians, Journalists, or Even Their Doctors.
As usual, the conversation drifted somewhere between wisdom and complete nonsense. Yet while listening to these discussions, I found myself wondering whether we have collectively become fascinated by the wrong part of the artificial intelligence story.
Most people believe artificial intelligence is fundamentally about chatbots. That assumption is understandable because chatbots are what we see.
They write emails, generate images, answer questions, summarize documents, and occasionally invent facts with the confidence of a politician during an election campaign. They are useful. They are entertaining. They are visible. However, visibility and importance are not the same thing.
The more I study current developments, the more I suspect that chatbots may eventually be remembered as the most public but least significant component of a much larger technological transition.
The real revolution appears to be unfolding beneath the surface. History offers useful parallels, as clearly illustrated by the recent story of Dr Mehmet Yildiz, which features the fascinating growth of NVIDIA, the most eminent company of the AI era.
From GPUs to Personal Intelligence: Why NVIDIA Is Reinventing the Personal Computer
The Next Computing Revolution May Live Beside You, Think With You, and Work Alongside Youmedium.com
When electricity first appeared, most of us viewed it as a better form of lighting. Some smart ones anticipated that electrification would eventually reshape manufacturing, transportation, communications, healthcare, education, and almost every aspect of modern civilization.
The internet followed a similar path. During its early years, many observers viewed it primarily as a faster way to exchange information. They could see websites. They could see the email. They could see search engines. What they could not yet see was the emergence of a new economic and social infrastructure that would influence commerce, politics, media, education, and global culture.
Artificial intelligence may be approaching a similar moment. The public sees chatbots. Governments see strategic infrastructure. Investors see economic leverage. Technology firms see a new computing platform. National security agencies see geopolitical competition. Enterprise leaders see the possibility of reorganizing how work itself is performed.
These perspectives observe the same phenomenon from very different perspectives. One of the most misunderstood developments involves the rise of AI agents.
Many people assume artificial intelligence is becoming more useful simply because language models are becoming more intelligent. Intelligence certainly matters. Yet decades of research in psychology, cognitive science, and organizational behavior suggest that intelligence alone rarely determines success.
Context, knowledge, and access matter.
A brilliant graduate placed inside an empty office possesses enormous potential but limited practical value. Give that same person access to records, workflows, colleagues, customers, historical decisions, and organizational knowledge, and their effectiveness changes dramatically. Artificial intelligence is discovering exactly the same lesson.
The newest generation of AI systems is becoming increasingly valuable because they can access more context. Internal documents, code repositories, customer records, operational systems, project plans, monitoring platforms, and enterprise knowledge bases are turning isolated models into active participants in organizational workflows.
This distinction represents a profound shift. For decades, computers processed information. They are participating in decision-making, coordination, analysis, and execution.
The transition resembles the difference between hiring a librarian and hiring an operations manager. One retrieves information. The other contributes to outcomes. This helps explain another development that initially seemed almost absurd.
Technology companies are now spending extraordinary sums on computational infrastructure. Figures measured in billions of dollars per month would have sounded like science fiction during much of my career.
When I first entered the technology industry, organizations operated successfully on systems possessing less computational power than a modern smartwatch. Today, companies are building digital infrastructure with neurotechnology at scales previously associated with national governments.
This pattern should not surprise students of economic history. Every major technological transformation develops an appetite. The Industrial Revolution consumed coal. The automotive age consumed oil. The information age consumed data.
The artificial intelligence era appears determined to consume semiconductors, electricity, water, land, specialized talent, advanced manufacturing capacity, and perhaps a small portion of humanity’s remaining patience.
Behind every friendly chatbot stands an industrial ecosystem of remarkable scale. For example: data centers, Power grids, Global supply chains, Cooling systems, Semiconductor fabrication facilities, Specialized networking equipment, Research laboratories, and National infrastructure investments.
The conversation occurring on a smartphone screen represents only the visible tip of an extraordinarily large technological iceberg.
One recent example particularly caught my attention. Some organizations have begun deploying AI infrastructure within temporary structures resembling large industrial tents because traditional data center construction cannot keep pace with demand.
At first glance, this sounds faintly ridiculous. One imagines engineers training language models while sitting around campfires discussing server architecture over roasted marshmallows.
Yet beneath the humor is a serious economic signal. Infrastructure expansion is struggling to keep pace with technological demand.
Railways experienced this challenge during industrialization. Electric grids experienced it during electrification. Telecommunications networks experienced it during the Internet boom. Artificial intelligence now appears to be encountering the same constraint.
When trillion-dollar corporations begin improvising physical infrastructure to accelerate deployment, we are witnessing more than technological enthusiasm. We are witnessing the early stages of infrastructure scarcity.
Equally significant is the growing attention from governments. Artificial intelligence is viewed through the same strategic lens as applied to ports, railways, telecommunications networks, energy systems, and financial infrastructure.
This shift marks an important transition. Artificial intelligence is evolving from a technology story into a national capability story. Questions of ownership, governance, security, sovereignty, resilience, and economic competitiveness are becoming central concerns.
Who controls the infrastructure? Who owns the foundational models? Who supplies the semiconductors? Who secures the data? Who captures the economic value? These are no longer software or hardware questions. They concern national capacity, economic resilience, and the future distribution of power.
Perhaps that is why the greatest illusion of the current AI era involves the chatbot itself. The chatbot is what we interact with. The chatbot is what journalists write about. The chatbot is what captures public imagination. Yet the chatbot resembles the reception desk of a much larger institution.
Behind it stand vast industrial systems, geopolitical interests, economic incentives, infrastructure investments, and strategic ambitions.
My friends at Bingo night may never care about graphics processing units, cloud architecture, semiconductor supply chains, cybersecurity frameworks, or digital sovereignty.
They simply want help understanding their cholesterol results and organizing family photographs. That is entirely reasonable. Yet their conversation revealed something fascinating.
Artificial intelligence has become personal for ordinary citizens at exactly the same moment it has become strategic for governments, corporations, and entire nations.
History does not present such convergence. The same technology that helps retirees prepare birthday speeches is simultaneously reshaping labor markets, infrastructure investment, industrial policy, national security, enterprise operations, and global competition.
Many people still believe the chatbot is the story. I suspect future historians may conclude that it was merely the introduction. The real story is the construction of a new layer of civilization beneath it.
I also documented another technological development in the business world, offering new perspectives on the constructive use of artificial intelligence. Here is the link to this business story:
The $5 Million PowerPoint Is Dying
How AI Is Tearing Apart the Consulting Industry’s Most Profitable Illusionmedium.com
Thanks for reading my story from Down Under. Have a lovely day.
I started a new series called the World Is Fucked Up. Here are two stories that might entertain and educate you:
In a World F@cked Up, Here’s What Medical Gaslighting Taught Me About Public Health
If you are interested in sex, I have started a sex education series which might educate, inspire, or even entertain you. Here are the links to some sample stories:
The 8 Habits of Sexually Satisfied Couples With Any Sexual Orientation
Sexual Health Is a Natural Part of Healthy Aging
What Most People Were Never Taught About Female and Male Orgasm
The Neurobiology of Sexual Pleasure and Meaningful Human Connection.
Human Libido: What Most People Were Never Taught About Sexual Desire
What Most People Were Never Taught About Sexual Confidence
Neurocognitive and Affective Differences Between Erotic and Pornographic Stimuli in the Brain [Warning: This one is scholarly!]
What Science Reveals About Anal Pleasure and Orgasm for Both Women and Men [Free access via my community blogs]
Cheers, Mike!
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