For Bill Gates, artificial intelligence is the most important invention since the internet or the personal computer. For Google boss Sundar Pichai, it will have a more profound impact than electricity and fire. Already, though, there are signs the AI revolution may be faltering. Since OpenAI released its landmark GPT-4 system in March 2023, new large language models like Google's Gemini have offered only incremental improvements. GPT-5 could change this tomorrow, of course.

Everyone from chief executive officers to product managers to venture capitalists wants to understand machine learning better. They know it has the potential to take their software to the next level. They feel the excitement around it. They've read the TechCrunch or Fortune articles, and they've maybe even done a quick linear regression or two. But the primary issue that many product leaders grapple with when it comes to machine learning is that they want programs that don't just crunch the numbers, but can also think for them.