In a book I was reading, Cal Newport shared this interesting story: When IBM first set up an email system for their employees, they had to figure out the server capacity sufficient to handle the email volume.
So they looked at all the communication happening through pen and paper, etc., assumed that all that would translate into email traffic, and accordingly estimated the server capacity.
But when they flipped the switch and started the email service, the server crashed. The actual load was 5-6 times higher?
What happened?
It turned out that people started CC’ing others, which was obviously not happening in the pen and paper world.
We often predict the impact of new technology by looking at how our existing way of life will get translated into the new world. But it rarely happens that way.
Instead, technology fundamentally changes human behavior in ways it is hard to predict.
Whether it is ChatGPT or any other new technology, they won’t just take over some tasks we currently do manually. They will likely create entirely new behaviors, new industries, and new side effects.
The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know anything for sure.
– Rajan