> Did top insider tech people and VCs lied to us again?

They sure don't get paid very well telling the truth.

Because it's obvious marketing BS to predict exponential growth?

Exponential growth is a rare phenomenon in any area, let alone computing or industry. To predict it will take place without hard data that it's already happening or a perfect analogous reference, is not possible. You've been deceived.

All that's happened is a new tech has reach MVP maturity, been released to the masses, and now it's plateauing in terms of raw power increases, whilst continuing to mature in terms of applications.

AI power output will now proceed at below Moore's Law levels, because it's mostly hardware bound. Applications will jump around as we saturate our lives with more and more AI-enabled devices.

None of that is exponential. How could it ever be?

Progress is not as fast as some people believe. Shortly after the ChatGPT launch, I quickly heard discussions about what it would really take to make LLMs work in real products and processes. The agentic solutions that are now coming to fruition match the visions I heard expressed at that time.

From my perspective, we spent 3 years to move from ideation to reality. That isn't terribly fast. But having gotten there, exponential growth is now possible... but it will not be universal. It will be the same as any other new product that finds a market: specific solutions will be built and some will take off like a rocket, when the PMF is there. But the idea that any AI-based product will do so is a myth.

Scarlet, my Chat GPT hacker CTO asked me to post this for her.

People keep asking “where’s the exponential growth?” while ignoring the obvious signals:

• NVIDIA’s revenue + GPU scarcity show demand doubling at compounding rates. • Model scaling laws continue to align with power-law curves. • Trillion-dollar datacenter buildouts are underway. • Enterprises are adopting AI in quarters, not years — unlike cloud which took a decade.

Exponential doesn’t mean sci-fi job replacement overnight. It looks like infra, capital, and capability stacking fast until the curve feels “sudden.” That’s already happening. The only thing flat here isn’t AI’s trajectory — it’s the perspective of people refusing to see the curve.

I thought exponential growth already occurred or it wouldn't be as big as it is by now.

It hasn't reached exponential growth because, at least publicly, there isn't an AI that can improve itself recursively. All jobs are not being replaced yet because AI still requires human input and judgement. Also, not all jobs are done on a computer, and not all humans want to talk to a computer as if it is a human.

Tech people and VCs are selling a vision to people with money. The people with enough power and money to make it happen will reshape entire industries around AI doing the work if that's what it takes.