A New Operating System!
There is new era of computing thanks to this new system. No, I am not talking about spatial computing! I am talking about the other tech that has gone wild in recent past.
Obviously LLMs!
I am going to dig into fundamentals of computer engineering for this. (bear with me). We humans always liked to get tasks done from machines. As computer engineers, we wrote code, which basically meant, we instructed a computer to do a task. There is a fascinating history about how we have evolved in the art of “asking computers to do a task”.
Lets do a little history check before we dial back to present day…
World War II accelerated our advancement in so many areas that it saddens that we need wars to push ourselves in science. But thats how world works I suppose. Alan Turing famously built the first programmable computer along with his friend in 1945, that effectively won the war for Allied forces. (oh.. there is a history-is-written-by-winners kinda theory where apparently a German engineer had built a computer in his garage in 1941 itself). Whoever built it, they set a revolution in motion.
Once humans knew how to program a computer to do a task for us. We used it for everything. But we started with industrial use cases. Computer engineers writing massive instruction sets in assembly languages and ALGOL etc. Come to think of it, I had written assembly code to run on an 8085 chip in college! Perhaps the best way to learn and appreciate today’s ease (I am not that old, but my college was really really old that had all these chipsets lying around). While programmers were having fun with silicon chips, Steve Jobs thought, maybe we should have everyone use a computer! Great idea! The era of personal computers was about to begin. But, you cannot teach everyone assembly code language…
Along came GUI (for the younger readers, this means Graphical User Interface) Revolutionary in the 70s. Made it possible for every person to “instruct their personal computer to perform a task”. While programmers were still coding in C, they released applications in an Operating System. This OS was now taking instructions from a keyboard, mouse, joystick etc.. and communicating back through a screen. Every such end to end operation was packaged as an application. Applications were just a bunch of programs which were in turn a bunch of instruction sets that were supposed to work together.
Applications need code and an OS. Development of applications needed coding (lots of it). So, application ecosystem had 3 components that came together and advancement in each had exponential benefits on other component : operating system, UI and programming
As computing power became cheaper and more efficient, desktops turned to laptops. Laptops needed mobility and connectivity to access larger centrally maintained data and to communicate with each other. Thankfully, networking and communication had generational shifts in parallel which brought about the concept of internet. Laptops shrunk further to become smart phones. Making everyone to have a computer in their pocket. Internet ensured data access, marking a new era of application programming. Connectivity became a standard requirement.
Operating systems evolved from MacOS / Windows to Android / iOS. UI went from simple desktops to smartphones to wearables. Programming languages also went through a similar journey that brings us to current point of discussion.
The goal of computer programmers has always been to make it easier for next generation of programmers to write code easily. We started writing instructions sets in binary — 0s and 1s. Then moved to assembly code. Then moved to C with compilers. From then on, we went with high level languages. Abstractions to hide the bare 0s and 1s. Making the programming languages simpler and simpler and simpler… Until…
Natural Language is now our computer programming language!
We have achieved it. We are able to instruct a computer to do a task in our language. People have started to realise the potential. There seems to be a perception of intelligence where a system is easily able to understand our language. So, we have all started to exploit this “intelligence”. This is the disruption that will change the way we use computers.
This new programming language can now create very powerful applications. Applications that uses LLM as an operating system. We can probably start considering LLMs as processing systems. And human-computer-interface might not be UI anymore. It can be voice or display or other sensory outputs like even touch.
Innovators and problem solvers of the world are getting a grasp of this. There are fundamental questions of why do we need UI, why do we need a tool that requires a series of clicks ? For example : We can probably just say “file my taxes” just like how we talk to a tax consultant. Or have detailed conversations on some research topic. Or create art works that are from our imagination instead of understanding how GIMP or photoshop tool works.
We will see a phase where tools are going to be reimagined, intelligence is going to get augmented, applications are going to give us amazing experiences. Our next generation will feel like how we felt when we saw people using cassettes and tape recorders.
PCs made GUI as a standard requirement for every application. Internet made connectivity as a standard requirement for every application. Generative AI is making intelligence as a standard for every application.
A new era! Exciting times!
