The New Nature of Change

IF ONE THING’S TRUE ABOUT THIS MOMENT IN TECH history, it’s that as soon as you think you’re keeping pace with the leading edge of AI—poof!—the edge moves.

- Brendan Vaughan

This is a perennial anxiety, but I’ve never heard tech insiders so vocal about it. It came up constantly as we spoke to CEOs, founders, investors, and analysts while assembling this special issue on the new age of autonomy.

“Every couple of months, we see such massive changes that it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen on what timeline. We’re planning by the seat of our pants.” —Neel Ajjarapu, product lead for commerce, OpenAI (page 94)

“Where Moore’s law doubled computing power every two years, the Time Horizon law is doubling cognitive reach every four months.” —Azeem Azhar, founder, Exponential View (page 52), referring to a useful way of looking at the dizzying evolution of AI agents.