Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

The presence of currently unfolding areas of innovation doesn't discredit the fact that the exponential progress we've enjoyed since the Industrial Revolution has slowed suddenly over the past few decades.

Between this and the "Save money by skipping breakfast" piece, the WSJ is quickly affirming all my suspicions that it's editorial section can be safely ignored.

It can be anything really. Better medication design, discovery and modelling of new compounds, disease discovery, better understanding of our environment, etc.

So why aren't we already aware of what these applications are since ML has already been well-funded and hyped for about a decade? Basically what is the inflection point?

Obviously this is subjective, but underwhelmed would be a compliment for how I feel about ChatGPT. I've been hearing about these near-term breakthroughs for nearly a decade, even working in the industry. And yet, the real-world progress is nothing compared to the hype (or funding).

So why now? What's changed?

Consumer tech progress is slowing down.

There are still advances in tech currently happening, but people’s daily lives have gotten as good as they’re gonna get. Most progress now is just slightly faster processing on devices, better battery life, maybe new materials here and there, medical advances if we’re lucky. But for the most part there is no big thing waiting for the consumer, like the invention of plastics or a smartphone.

Many of the advances we are seeing in tech are at the producer level. It’s getting easier to make better stuff faster, and this will just translate to more products, more content, and more processing of data.

But all this stuff will be pretty much invisible or unknown to everyday people. All they will see will be the end products, which will be greater in quantity but not much different in quality. Life will be the same for a long time now until the next big tech catalyst emerges.