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The sound of thunder
A Sound of Thunder is a science fiction story by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1952. In 2005 it was released in a film adaptation directed by Peter Hyams, A rather bad film, but a decent one for a Sunday afternoon.
The story is set in the future 2055, where a company called Time Safari Inc. offers time travel to hunt prehistoric animals. Before the trip, the expedition's guide warns the hunters about the strict rules they must follow to avoid altering history, including the obligation to stay on a floating path, designed to minimise their impact on the environment and not alter anything in the past that is not meant to happen.
During the trip to the Cretaceous period, the group is on a mission to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex, which was marked for natural death. When confronted with the dinosaur, one member of the group panics and runs off the road. Although they manage to shoot the dinosaur down and return to the present, the consequences of the small mistake soon become apparent: the world they knew has changed completely.
Back in the present, the expedition members notice that the language, people and buildings are different, and the presidential elections have resulted in the victory of a dictator. Checking his muddy boots, the panicked tourist discovers a small but significant detail: he had stepped on a butterfly in his flight, an act whose ripple effect drastically transformed history.
Pangolins and AI
The last four years have a bit of an aftertaste of Bradbury's 2055, reality seems completely altered and sometimes difficult to recognise. Whether it is because of a pangolin or a Wuhan bat in December 2019, or because of the irruption of ChatGPT in November 2022.
At Guindo, before the appearance of ChatGPT, we had had the good fortune to work on several projects related to AI and model training, But the last two years have been possibly the biggest technological revolution that we have ever felt in our flesh, and there have been a few already.
The craft of interaction design has been rebranded several times in the last decades (UX/UI, product design...) without changing much the essence of its work with each wave of new devices and technologies, but this is clearly no longer the case. Not only is the technology not the same, but also the is changing people's mental modelsThe following are just a few of the factors that have a radical impact on the approach to projects: lead times, expectations, uncertainties and perceptions of value.
More needs to be done
In 2024 absolutely all the projects we have worked on at Guindo have a strong AI component., both for clients as well as in the development of functionalities in StepAlong, where we have worked with several AI platforms and models for various applications, generation of product instructions from images or video, conversion of obsolete documents, context-sensitive translations in multiple languages, glossaries...
The outlook for 2025 doesn't look any calmer, we will have to keep learning and evolving. At Guindo we are excited about what is to come and we would love to count on you in this journey.