I’ve been thinking about the right way to explain how I've been feeling about where we are with AI, and the timeline we’re on with how it will shape the future.
The closest analogy I keep coming back to is, this is how I felt in the early days of the internet. The foundation was there but until broadband came along, the real potential was out of reach.
Still, even back then, the feeling was clear: this is going to change everything. I think many of us at this point have had the realization that this is where we’re rapidly headed with AI. We know it's going to change everything, but we’re not sure exactly how.
That change is already happening everywhere. Yet this time, what we see, feel and create in this technological revolution, will be light years faster than when we had to wait for the internet to operate effectively with the slow evolution / adoption of high speed bandwidth.
Then (1995):
When I first got online in the mid-90s during my time at UMBC, I used an old clunky 286 computer, mainly for word processing. One day, my fraternity brother Alan came by and installed Netscape 1.0, and something called the TIA (The Internet Adapter) app. This allowed me to dial up to UMBC’s mainframe, from home, on my computer’s 14.4 baud modem.
These were the early days of “surfing the web.” It was so clunky, so painfully slow, and yet totally magical at the same time. The web felt like an uncharted frontier. No rules. No roadmaps. Just curiosity and a browser (and REALLY slow loading images!). Maybe some of you remember that same sense of wonder that I’m referring to.
That era felt like freedom.
And now, I have that same kind of feeling again with AI.
Now (April 2025):
Here we are now, still very much at the beginning of the next revolutionary tectonic shift in technology and computing.
LLM’s (Large Language Models - ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) are like the first web browsers, powerful, a little awkward, yet absolutely loaded with potential. We’ve got the raw engine. But the infrastructure around it, the stuff that will make it intuitive, integrated, and reliable, is still catching up.
Back then, the bottleneck was bandwidth.
Now, the bottleneck is context, memory, compute and orchestration.
Just like fiber-optic cables and high speed modems unlocked the internet’s true potential, breakthroughs in these areas are set to unleash the true power of AI.
To put these into clearer perspective, here’s where we are today:
Context is like having a conversation with someone who listens carefully but forgets what you said as soon as you finish. There’s conversation, but no continuity.
Memory is like working with a sharp new hire who shows up every day without notes, forgets your name, and has to be re-onboarded again and again.
Compute is like trying to stream a high-def movie on an old computer with a slow internet connection. The content is there, but the system keeps buffering under the weight.
Orchestration is like trying to run a team of professionals to complete a project with no project manager. Everyone’s talented, but without coordination, timelines slip, handoffs get messy, and nothing flows.
That’s where we are (at least as far as I can tell at the time of this writing).
Future:
But here's the difference between then and now: AI’s version of broadband is coming much faster.
It took us nearly 30 years to go from 14.4k dial-up to gigabit fiber.
AI might make that kind of leap in 3–5 years.
We’re already seeing signs of acceleration:
Models are starting to remember who you are.
Early systems that can take simple actions and complete tasks.
Infrastructure is being built to support multi-agent coordination (Agentic AI is already here).
We’re in a multi-decade transition of computing power (Conventional to Quantum).
And there’s a new wave of builders sprinting toward new innovations that deliver real-time, personalized, always-on intelligence across every industry imaginable.
So yes, things are still clunky.
But they won’t be for long.
We’re entering a new era, not of prompts, but of possibility. Not of demos, but of daily use. Not of isolated sparks, but of connected systems that will quietly shape the way we live and work.
And if you're feeling that same spark of curiosity, wonder, and possibility that some of us felt back in the early days of the web. I’m right there with you.
It’s quite a potent and creative time to be imagining and shaping the future. Time to build!
Thanks for reading.
#neverstop (but pause often)