“Hur Funkar Det?” – Why AI Today Feels Like the Internet in 1997 (And Why That’s Actually Good News)

With all the AI chatter these days, I’m getting serious déjà vu from 1995-97 when the Internet was the shiny new toy everyone talked about but nobody quite knew what to do with. It’s like watching history repeat itself, except now instead of “What’s a website?” we’re asking “What’s generative AI”?

Back in 1997, I wrote my bachelor’s thesis at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMK) at Stockholm University. My co-writer Per Östlund and I stumbled upon a perfect case study: SEB, a major Swedish bank, had just handed out Internet Explorer to all their employees like party favors – complete Internet access, zero training, no instructions. It was basically the corporate equivalent of giving someone car keys and saying “figure it out!”

So there we had it: a brand new media tool dropped into employees’ laps with all the guidance of a cryptic IKEA manual. Naturally, we thought this was research gold and surveyed about 1,000 employees to see how they were handling their digital baptism by fire.

The responses were a delightful mix of enthusiasm and existential confusion. Most people were surprisingly happy with their new toy, but others were throwing their hands up asking the eternal questions: “How does this thing work?” and “Why didn’t anyone tell us what we’re supposed to do with it?”

One particularly frustrated response gave our thesis its title: “Hur funkar det?” (Swedish for “How does it work?”) – which basically became the battle cry of the pre-Google era.

Here’s my prediction: Give employees AI tools today and they’ll figure out how to boost their productivity themselves, just like they did with the Internet. After all, AI is here to stay and will likely evolve faster than a teenager’s TikTok feed – much quicker than the Internet did 30 years ago.

And just like back then, when some people dismissed the Internet as a passing fad (spoiler alert: they were wrong), we’re hearing the same skepticism about AI today. The cherry on top? We actually got criticism that our thesis topic was pointless because “the Internet won’t last.”

Well, considering I’ve spent my career developing Internet presence for companies ever since… let’s just say that aged about as well as a 1990s website design! 😊