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In the 1980s, VHS and Betamax battled for dominance in the home video market. Despite Betamax’s superior quality, it was the product that allowed for wider spread adoption through standardization that came out on top. VHS’s adherence to an open standard in terms of compatibility with existing technologies ultimately led to its victory over Betamax’s exclusivity. It turns out that videotapes and Model Context Protocols (MCP) have something in common.
“The standard almost always wins,” says Jay van Zyl, ecosystem.Ai’s founder, as he reflects on the striking resemblance of VHS’s success with a new development in the AI world: Model Context Protocols.
MCPs, a breakthrough announced by Anthropic in November 2024, has recently gained traction as a standardized way for LLMs to communicate with external servers and their associated tools, resources and prompt templates.
Prior to MCPs, expanding LLMs’ functionality by connecting them to external tools meant developers had to wrangle ever-changing APIs and inconsistent formats – a messy, unsustainable process. MCPs addressed this by introducing a universal communication layer, giving LLMs a standardized ‘language’ to communicate with external systems.
The ability for LLMs to move beyond linguistic usefulness to executing tasks using tools marks a profound step in the AI revolution. This development is a testament to the power of ecosystem thinking, where each component, while serving its own purpose, contributes to far greater outcomes through collaboration.
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