On the Cusp of an AI Revolution

SAN FRANCISCO – Over the last 30 years, consumers have reaped the benefits of dramatic technological advances. In many countries, most people now have in their pockets a personal computer more powerful than the mainframes of the 1980s. The Atari 800XL computer that I developed games on when I was in high school was powered by a microprocessor with 3,500 transistors; the computer running on my iPhone today has two billion transistors. Back then, a gigabyte of storage cost 100,000 and was the size of a refrigerator; today it's basically free and is measured in millimeters. Even with these massive gains, we can expect still faster progress as the entire planet – people and things – becomes connected.