I had a private dinner yesterday that reminded me, again, that feeling nauseous about the speed of advance during the pace of our progress is normal and appropriate. Artificial Intelligence is no longer confined to labs or science fiction; it is reshaping our world, eroding at the soil under the professions that anchor our societies.
For lawyers and other professionals, this transformation should not be abstract. AI is drafting contracts, analyzing case law, predicting outcomes, generating interfaces, establishing relationships, and automating workflows in ways that could only have been conceived as elaborate smoke and mirrors ten years ago. Yet, as
wrote in The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence—first published in 2015 and relevant every year since—most people struggle to grasp where we stand on this timeline. The gap between the pace of exponential progress and the everyone’s linear intuition on an average day leads to a frustrating disconnect, even as the stakes rise year after year, and we stand on the cusp of a very, very turbulent 2025.To understand this, consider exponential growth: if you double a penny daily, it takes weeks to appreciate its power. By day 10, you have $10.24. By day 30, you have over $10,000,000.00. The next day, the 31st, it double again. Similarly, humanity’s technological journey—slow and plodding for millennia—has accelerated to the point where breakthroughs that once spanned centuries now occur in decades or less. Urban’s vision is a classic. He illustrates the through shrinking "Die Progress Units" (how much progress would shock you to death to witness?), tracing progress from the Stone Age to AI, where compounding advancements are no longer perceptible over ages (stone, bronze, iron) but in generations, years, and then months.
Since 2015, Urban’s insights have remained painfully accurate. AI advancements, from GPT models to autonomous systems, continue reshaping industries and societies. Yet the public discourse often fails to reflect the urgency of this moment. Superintelligence—a system exceeding human intellect in every domain—was then, and is now, not just theoretical but an approaching reality with consequences we barely comprehend. Urban gave notice that this isn’t distant science fiction; it’s the culmination of trends already in motion, and how we manage it will determine humanity's trajectory.
This frustration is an invitation. Urban’s long piece remains essential reading, offering a vivid image of exponential change and a compelling framework for understanding AI’s transformative potential. Written nearly a decade ago, its clarity remains unmatched, and its lessons grow only more pressing with time. It’s cute on purpose, to counteract some of the natural nausea that it engenders when the ideas sink in. I encourage you to read the full article and reflect deeply on where to invest your next efforts—because the future isn’t waiting for anyone to catch up.
