--- title: "A Decade of Working With AI: Our 2017 Forecast Revisited | antedote" description: "We have worked with AI for more than a decade. Our 2017 forecast, checked: what came true, what didn’t, and what it teaches about trend forecasting." url: "https://antedote.com/thinking/what-we-said-about-ai-in-2017/" published: "2026-09-28" updated: "2026-10-29" author: "Adam French" --- # More than a decade of working with AI, and what our 2017 forecast got right We have been working with AI for more than a decade. In 2017 we argued that the year’s technology trends came back to one: AI taking on whole tasks for people. The capability arrived; most of the companies we pointed to didn’t deliver it. What that teaches about reading forecasts now. Article on AI and judgment, 4 min read Reviewed by [Adam French, Founding Partner](https://antedote.com/why-antedote/#partners) on October 29, 2026. Published September 28, 2026; updated October 29, 2026. We have been thinking about and working with AI for more than a decade. In February 2017, one of our Partners in London argued in [Quirk’s](https://www.quirks.com/articles/the-rise-of-artificial-intelligence) that nearly every technology trend of the year came back to one: artificial intelligence moving from following simple commands to taking on whole tasks for people. The piece first ran on our own website as “One tech trend to rule them all.” Nine years on, the capability has arrived, and the companies the piece pointed to for each part of it were mostly not the ones that delivered it. That difference is the useful lesson for anyone reading a forecast now. ## What we argued in 2017 The case was simple. People want technology to take friction out of their lives, and the step after asking an assistant for the weather was handing it a whole job: buying the family’s presents, say, within a budget it had learned from past spending. The piece pointed to where that was already starting. Voice assistants were getting better. Self-driving cars had begun carrying passengers. AI was supporting legal and medical work, and writing music and news. Easier AI tools would bring a wave of startups, and the biggest technology companies already treated a top AI team as essential. ## What came true Delegation is now something people can buy. OpenAI describes its [ChatGPT agent](https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-agent/), launched in July 2025, as able to “do work for you using its own computer, handling complex tasks from start to finish,” and it asks permission before anything consequential. Driverless passenger service has arrived too. By March 2026, Waymo was [providing 500,000 paid robotaxi rides a week across 10 US cities](https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/27/waymo-skyrocketing-ridership-in-one-chart/), ten times its weekly total in May 2024. ## What it got wrong about who The piece treated the voice assistants of the day as the route to delegation. Delegation arrived through large language models, which broke through only after 2017. It used Uber’s first passenger rides in San Francisco as the sign of self-driving taxis; the rides now counted in the hundreds of thousands a week are Waymo’s. It named IBM’s Watson for AI in legal and medical work, and IBM [sold the Watson Health business](https://www.statnews.com/2022/07/06/ibm-watson-health-merative-data/) in 2022. That is how we read forecasts in our [trends and foresight work](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/innovation/#trends-and-foresight), and how we scored our own 2016 trends map in [What decides when a trend arrives?](https://antedote.com/thinking/what-decides-when-a-trend-arrives/) The capability and its timing are the claim to test. The named leaders are examples of who might deliver it, and they are the part of any trend report most likely to change. A team planning around a forecast does better to build for the capability, and to keep its choice of partners and platforms open for as long as it can. ## What it means for AI in research The same rule applies to the AI research tools teams are offered now: treat the capability as the claim to test, and the vendor as an example. Our forecast for the next few years is that reading a whole body of interviews will become routine for AI, and that the scarce skill will be checking what a confident summary left out. We set out that question in [What gets lost in a convincing AI answer?](https://antedote.com/thinking/what-gets-lost-in-a-convincing-ai-answer/) By 2015 we were using early AI text-analysis tools such as Luminoso to analyze large data sets for clients. They were precursors of today’s large language models. We have worked with many tools since, and we keep experimenting with the newest technology as it arrives. Our answer is on [AI in our work](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/ai-in-our-work/). We use AI as we did then, to look further and check harder. These days we build our own AI agents, and people decide what the evidence means. Our trends and foresight work for clients includes [a services vision for a consumer technology company’s devices](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/consumer-electronics-services-vision/), built from basic human needs; [a map of the forces of digital change for a sportswear brand](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/turning-digital-change-into-choices-for-a-sportswear-brand/), with what each could mean for the business; and [future food models for a foodservice business](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/future-food-models-sized/), each one sized. *The original: “The rise of artificial intelligence”, [Quirk’s](https://www.quirks.com/articles/the-rise-of-artificial-intelligence), February 10, 2017, an edited version of our post “One tech trend to rule them all.”* ## Common questions ### How long has antedote been working with AI? For more than a decade. By 2015 we were using early AI text-analysis tools such as Luminoso, precursors of today’s large language models, to analyze large data sets for clients, and we have kept experimenting with newer tools ever since. In 2017 we argued in Quirk’s that AI would move from following commands to taking on whole tasks for people. ### What did people predict about AI in 2017? In a 2017 article in Quirk’s, we argued that AI would move from following simple commands to taking on whole tasks for people. We pointed to voice assistants, self-driving cars carrying passengers, AI supporting legal and medical work, AI writing music and news, a wave of startups, and the biggest technology companies treating a top AI team as essential. ### How should a business read a technology trend forecast? Treat the capability and its timing as the claim to test, and the companies a forecast names as examples of who might deliver it. Calls about a capability tend to hold up better than calls about who will lead, so build for the capability and keep the choice of partners and platforms open for as long as you can. ## Read next - *Article* · 4 min read ### [The innovation brief that starts with pleasure](https://antedote.com/thinking/innovation-brief-pleasure/) Enjoyment, anticipation and self-expression can shape an innovation brief from the start. The commercial test is whether they add up to something people have a reason to choose. - *Article* · 4 min read ### [Does the brand need a new message, or a new direction?](https://antedote.com/thinking/does-the-brand-need-a-new-message-or-a-new-direction/) A new campaign can improve how a brand is understood. Sometimes the harder question is what it needs to stand for. ## How we help [Innovation](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/innovation/) See what’s coming, find where to grow, and decide what to build and back, with the people who’d buy. ## Working through this question now? Bring us the version your team is facing; half-formed is fine. We’ll say how we would approach it, and whether we’re the right fit. [Talk to us](https://antedote.com/talk-to-us/) · [hello@antedote.com](mailto:hello@antedote.com) A partner or director will reply.