In 2013 I joined eigital, and in the labs the machines quietly started to learn.
By 2013 a breakthrough in deep learning was moving from research into industry, and digital-first was becoming the only strategy that mattered. India launched the Mars Orbiter Mission in November, while Voyager 1 was confirmed to have entered interstellar space.
In 2013 I came onto the board of eigital, built around a truth that was still somehow controversial: for most businesses, digital was no longer a channel, it was the whole thing.
In the labs that same period, something bigger was stirring. Deep learning had just shown it could see, recognising images better than decades of hand-written rules ever had, and that capability was starting to leak out of research and into products.
Most people filed it under academic curiosity. I filed it under not yet. The gap between not yet and obvious is usually just a few years, and it is the most valuable place a builder can stand.