Skip to main content TechRadar the technology experts Search TechRadar View Profile België (Nederlands) Deutschland North America US (English) Australasia New Zealand Tech Radar Pro Tech Radar Gaming Nintendo Switch 2 Best laptop Best web hosting NYT Wordle today Recommended reading Artificial Intelligence Hallucinations are dropping in ChatGPT but that's not the end of our AI problems Artificial Intelligence The action figure trend is the latest way people are misusing the power of AI – and I wish I could stop doing it "Just do it": Sam Altman says businesses looking to adopt AI should go ahead – or risk being left behind Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT just leveled up – so why is Sam Altman comparing AI to the Renaissance, not a revolution? AI in Marketing isn’t a leap anymore – it’s the new baseline From novelty to normality: how AI is defining work in 2025 Artificial Intelligence Google's AI Overviews are often so confidently wrong that I’ve lost all trust in them Artificial Intelligence We're all on AI time now and you better get used to it Lance Ulanoff 3 June 2025 The pace of AI development is "unprecedented," and if you're hoping it'll slow down, I've got bad news When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Are you living on AI Time? (Image credit: Getty Images) "We're on AI time," that's what I tell people now when they try to comprehend the rapid pace of AI and all connected technologies, advancements. Even though it's been just two and a half years since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world, I've known intuitively for months that in the world of technology, we are no longer operating on Moore's Law: the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. This is now AI Model Law, in which generative model capabilities are doubling every three months. Even if you don't believe that Large Language Models (LLMs) are developing at that pace, there's no denying the unprecedented speed of adoption. You may like Hallucinations are dropping in ChatGPT but that's not the end of our AI problems The action figure trend is the latest way people are misusing the power of AI – and I wish I could stop doing it "Just do it": Sam Altman says businesses looking to adopt AI should go ahead – or risk being left behind A new report (or rather a 340-page presentation) from Mary Meeker, a general partner at BOND investments, paints the clearest picture yet of the transformative nature of AI and how it's unlike any other previous tech epoch. "The pace and scope of change related to the artificial intelligence technology evolution is indeed unprecedented, as supported by the data,” wrote Meeker and her co-authors. Google, what? (Image credit: Bond Capital) One stat in particular stood out to me: It took Google nine years to reach 365 billion annual searches. ChatGPT reached the same milestone in two years. Meeker's presentation illustrates something I've been trying to articulate for some time. There's never been a time quite like this. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. I've lived through some big tech changes: The rise of personal computing, the switch from analog to digital publishing tools, and the online revolution. Most of this change was gradual, though, granted, it did feel rapid at the time. I first saw digital publishing tools in the mid-1970s, and it wasn't until the middle-to-late 1980s that many of us made the switch, which is also around the time personal computers started to arrive, though they wouldn't become ubiquitous for at least another decade. AI Time leaves little time, I think, for self-reflection. With the public internet arriving in 1993, it would be years before most people were on broadband. Knowledge workers didn't rise up immediately. Instead, there was a slow and steady shift in the workforce. I'd say we had a decade of solid adjustment before the Internet and its associated systems and platforms became an inexorable part of our lives. I still remember just how confused the average person was by the Internet. On The Today Show in 1994, the hosts literally asked aloud, "What is the Internet?" AI and platforms like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude AI, and others haven't met with the same level of confusion. (Image credit: Bond Capital) Meeker's report notes that ChatGPT users skyrocketed from zero in October 2020 to 400M in late 2024 and 800M in 2025. A shocking 20M people are paying subscribers. It took decades to convince people to pay for any content on the Internet, but for AI, people are already lining up with their wallets open. I suppose the rise of the internet and ubiquitous and mobile computing might have prepared us for the AI Era. It's not as if artificial intelligence appeared out of the blue. Then again, it sort of did. Almost a decade ago, we were marveling at IBM's Deep Blue, the first AI to beat a Chess Grandf Master, Gary Kasparov. That was followed in 2005 by an autonomous car completing the DARPA challenge. A decade after that, we saw DeepMind AlphaGo beat the world's best Go player. Some of these developments were startling, but they were arriving at a relatively digestible pace. Even so, things started to pick up in 2016, and various groups began sounding the warning bells about AI. No one was publicly using the terms "LLM" or "generative." Still, the concern was such that IBM, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google's DeepMind formed the nonprofit Partnership on AI, which was intended to "address opportunities and challenges with AI technologies to benefit people and society." That group still exists, though, I'm not sure anyone is paying attention to its recommendations. AI Time leaves little time, I think, for self-reflection. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Bond Capital) (Image credit: Bond Capital) A 2016 Stanford University Study on AI in 2030 (no longer available online) noted that "Contrary to the more fantastic predictions for AI in the popular press, the Study Panel found no cause for concern that AI is an imminent threat to humankind.” Meeker's presentation, though, presents an accelerated picture that, I think, does raise some cause for concern, with one caveat: the predictions come from ChatGPT (which is an even greater cause for concern). By 2030, for instance, it predicts AI's ability to create full-length movies and games. I'd say Gemini's Veo 3 is proof we're well on our way. It promises AI's ability to operate human-like robots. I would add that AI time has accelerated humanoid robotic development in a way I, in my 25 years of covering robotics, have never seen before. It says AI will build and run autonomous businesses. In 10 years, ChatGPT believes AI will be able to simulate human-like minds. If we remember that ChatGPT, like most LLMs, bases most of its knowledge on the known universe, I think we can assume that these predictions are, if anything, underambitious. Even AI doesn't know what we don't know. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (Image credit: Nvidia) There was some argument in the office that I had the equation wrong. There is no AI Model Law, there's just Huang's Law (for Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia). This law predicts a doubling of GPU performance at least every two years. Without the power of those processors, AI stalls. Maybe, but I think that the power of these models has yet to catch up with the processing power provided by Nvidia's GPUs. Huang is simply building for a future in which every person and business wants GPU-based generative power. That means we need more processors, more data, and development leaps to prepare for models to come. However, model development in real-time is not hindered by GPU development. Those generative updates are happening far faster than silicon advancements. If you accept that there is a thing such as AI Time and that the AI Model Law (heck, let's call it "Ulanoff's Law") is a real thing, then it's easy to accept ChatGPT's view of our impending reality. You might not be ready for it, but it's coming all the same. I wonder what ChatGPT thinks about that. You might also like When I die, please do not produce an AI version of me AI doesn't belong in the classroom unless you want kids to ... The Godfather of AI is more worried than ever about ... See more Computing News Lance Ulanoff Social Links Navigation Editor At Large A 38-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and “on line” meant “waiting.” He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade. Lance Ulanoff makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Mark, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Hallucinations are dropping in ChatGPT but that's not the end of our AI problems The action figure trend is the latest way people are misusing the power of AI – and I wish I could stop doing it "Just do it": Sam Altman says businesses looking to adopt AI should go ahead – or risk being left behind ChatGPT just leveled up – so why is Sam Altman comparing AI to the Renaissance, not a revolution? AI in Marketing isn’t a leap anymore – it’s the new baseline From novelty to normality: how AI is defining work in 2025 Latest in Artificial Intelligence iOS 26 doesn’t need a massive AI upgrade at WWDC 2025 – here’s why I’m not losing hope with Apple Intelligence You can now generate OpenAI Sora videos for free on iOS and Android – but only if you’re prepared to use Microsoft Bing Did ChatGPT ruin the em dash? 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