Four Time Scales for Technology Development and Deployment

> And then, people think that it can change the world economy in one or two or ten years. It really does take decades, essentially a human lifetime (and there is a causal correlation), to deploy a technology at large enough scale that it reshapes the world’s economy.

Hate to be the “it’s different this time” guy, but it really does feel like AI deployment and adoption is happening much more quickly than the cited timelines.

I don’t think it’s just the massive CapEx and easy distribution across major software interfaces (e.g. Microsoft suite, Google, Windows, etc.), though that certainly helps.

I think a lot of people (more than usual?) are also just excited to try AI tools. I’ve spoken to folks who are just a few years away from retirement and still experimenting with Copilot at work (non software industry) and having fun with ChatGPT, etc.

This reminded me of NASA's Technology Readiness Levels.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level