An exponential phase of AI progress is finally upon us

About a month ago, I built my first app.

- RAHUL MATTHAN

It was a simple speed-reader Chrome extension that is designed to display text one word at a time so I can read an article faster than normal. I managed to code the entire thing in one shot, using one of the frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models, and was quite frankly surprised at how easy it was to build. The Al even added, of its own accord, a feature that allowed me to increase the speed—so that within days, I was reading at 500 words per minute.After that early (relatively easy) success, I grew more ambitious and started building increasingly complex applications—from a custom-built feed reader app to a minimal teleprompter that sits next to my laptop camera. I even made a few iOS games that are now available on the App Store. As my confidence grew, so did the ambition of the code I produced; the more I understood what AI was capable of, the more full-featured and well-designed my apps became. To the point where I now have three-four apps in various stages of development on my computer, and a GitHub page that is dark green with activity.

I am a lawyer who does not know how to code. I should not have been able to build an app, let alone the half-dozen apps I have so far. That I did is not because some latent programming talent has been unlocked within me, but because frontier Al models can now translate a plain-English description into working software.