The history of internet applications has witnessed a continuous evolution, from the era of websites in 2000s to mobile apps in 2010s. However, we are now on the verge of a new phase in web interaction: AI agents. With Gen AI, we have unlocked the ability to access all human knowledge and computers through natural language queries. This will enable widespread availability to services that were once exclusive to the privileged few, including personal assistants, therapists, personal coaches, content creation, coding etc. Most existing consumer applications have will have a AI agent soon, and many new use cases will emerge -> leading to significant increase in productivity and potentially $5T in new market cap.
2000s was the era when we used websites to interact with the web. Applications were mostly basic and by 2010 ~2B people were online and spent ~1 hour daily. $0.5T of market cap was created. Google, Booking.com and Amazon were the major players. However, the real transformative power of the internet was unleashed with the advent of smartphones in the 2007. Suddenly, we had the capability of a ‘computer on the go’. By the end of 2020 ~5B people were online, spending ~6 hours daily. Now that most people are online and spending a lot of their time online — the next phase of innovation will likely increase the output of the time we spent online. ChatGPT has shown the promise Gen AI will have in massively increasing human productivity.