Enter the Turbo-Charged 2010s

Epoch AI separates AI history into three eras based on compute trends. Epoch dates the start of the Deep Learning Era to somewhere between 2010 and 2012. This year thus marks a hugely significant turning point in AI, as the decade in some ways resembles the 1990s of the Internet and the 1960s’ transition from the analog to the digital, featuring several key AI developments, including the breakthrough of Convolutional Neural Networks and the invention of Diffusion models, GANs and DeepDream.

For more context, we suggest [watching or listening (transcript) to our Ch 9 Artist Discussion with Tyler Hobbs, Helena Sarin, Rhea Myers and Gene Kogan.]

In several areas beyond AI this decade takes the themes from our previous chapter(s) and expands upon them with renewed vigor, due to a decade of robust technological growth. As introduced many times previously, AI and blockchain-based art have finally become more prominent parts of this story in a decade marked by ubiquitous social media, renewed institutional interest and a continued boom in tooling developments. While NFTs would not gain popularity until the following decade—and chapter—their introduction and impact begin here. We follow their evolution in detail throughout the decade, examining the themes and developments that continue to shape our story today.

This is also a decade broadly defined by growth and a historically low interest rate environment. Following the previous decade’s twin American-led wars and Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008–2009, the 2010s marked a resetting of the geopolitical-financial order that had settled post-Cold War. For our story, the technology sector experienced the boom in the 2010s it had failed to realize in the previous decade following the dot-com bust, wars and GFC. In the GFC’s aftermath, interest rates remained at historically low levels at 0.25% for half the decade. The Nasdaq index increased over 300% from 2010 to 2019 and the Nasdaq 100 increased nearly 400%, led by growth in the rapidly rising tech giants of Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix.

This technological leap partly explains—and is a result of—corresponding tech developments and compute power increases in the decade. These developments unlocked our ambitions for AI, which had laid dormant as theory until the tech caught up.

What this growth in tech signified—and further spurred—was humanity’s broader adoption of technology across the globe, as computing and network speeds that were unthinkable just a few years ago became possible due to the global proliferation of smartphones. Our pendulum-esque relationship with technology shifted once more—with the latest nadir coming in the '70s, marked mostly by fear—to now blind acquiescence. Smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, VR headsets and a growing number of delightful consumer tech devices meant that the rise of mass media and tech devices in our homes—which this author has mentioned dozens of times in previous chapters—skyrocketed this decade. Not only were tech devices found in our homes, beginning in earnest in the 1980s in the developed world, they were now constantly on our person. They were in our pockets, on our wrists, in our bags and even on our face. They were now part of us, a trend that does not appear to be slowing, which artists like Lauren Lee McCarthy, Sougwen Chung and Tyler Hobbs are responding to in this decade.

Humanity’s relationship with technology was different. This Timeline is the story—going very far back—of how that happened and an examination of our dynamic relationship with technology throughout history. This chapter is the story of how that relationship turned a corner.