Lab Report

Then: we flagged AI-driven wellness and personalized health as the trend to watch.

Now: AI health assistants are a standard feature in consumer wellness apps.

Then: we asked whether AI models built on scraped creative work owed anything back.

Now: AI governance and provenance are boardroom conversations, not internet arguments.

Then: ChatGPT had just crossed 100 million users, and Microsoft was folding it into Bing.

Now: AI-powered answers are the default expectation in every search bar.

Then: DALL-E 2 was a novelty making dinosaurs play frisbee.

Now: AI image generation is a default line in every creative workflow.

Then: we linked machine intelligence and behavioral prediction to a shift in capitalism itself.

Now: AI-driven personalization and data governance are core business functions, not theory.

Then: a computer-generated influencer was a novelty story in fashion trade press.

Now: AI-generated spokespeople are a normal, budgeted marketing channel.

Then: a chatbot recommending vinyl records by algorithm was itself the headline.

Now: machine-learned recommendations run quietly behind every storefront.