Foundations of Science in Invasive Technologies
Authors: Coccia Mario 
Published: February 2024

This study proposes that one of the drivers of technological change is the technological invasion of path-breaking technologies and innovations. Invasion is anything that breaks into a place, occupying it or spreading in large quantities. This aspect is present in botany with invasive plants, in biology with invasive organisms, or in medicine with invasive cancer cells. The extension of this concept to the field of technology can clarify the main dynamics of technological change. From a perspective of generalized Darwinism, the theory here suggests the invasive behaviour of technologies that expand the space of adjacent possible by introducing novelties and radical innovations with dynamic interaction between the actual and possible. The prediction of the theory, given by the acceleration rates of invasive technologies that conquer the space of alternative technologies, is tested in the emerging path-breaking technology of transformers (a type of deep learning architecture used in natural language processing – NLP – and in generative artificial intelligence). Transformer technology, introduced in 2017, has been developing radical innovations in pretrained language models (Generative Pretraining Transformers, GPTs) since 2018, such as OpenAI’s GPT series, and Google’s Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model. Notable products include ChatGPT, introduced in November 2022, and Microsoft Copilot, which started in February 2023. Transformer technology and related radical innovations are spreading rapidly, invading and displacing other established technologies, changing the space of possibilities in human society. One significant way to understand the invasive behaviour of technologies is to estimate and analyze rates of spread. Statistical evidence here, based on patent analyses, reveals that the growth rate of transformer technology is 55.82% (over 2016-2023), more than double compared to 23.02% of all other technologies. The last three years (2021-2023) show that the growth rate is 25.81% for transformer models with an invasive and disruptive force on other technologies, having a mere 0.76% growth. Results are confirmed with a model of technological evolution that reveals a growth rate of invasive technology of transformers of 0.30 versus 0.13 for other technologies. Comparative analysis with a previous technology in neural networks, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), suggests that transformer architecture has a higher disruptive force that spreads rapidly, invading the space of other technologies (technological invasion) with radical innovations, generating a drastic technological shift and change in the space of possibilities. This accelerated dynamics of transformer technology driving generative AI that mimics human ability is due to leading firms (such as OpenAI with ChatGPT, Microsoft with Copilot, Google with BERT, Apple with its forthcoming GPT, etc.) that are creating the innovation ecosystem based on new platforms and products directed to applications and diffusion in markets for a main technological and industrial change. Overall, the invasive behaviour of transformer technologies and related innovations is fueling continuous innovations in the space of adjacent possible in generative AI and explains, in the current world of knowledge-based competition, the ‘creative destruction’ that has revolutionized the field of NLP with new products that invade current and new markets. Implications for the management of technology and innovation policy are suggested to support invasive technologies.