The foggy years
We may look back on this period of AI transformation as just the beginning
I once got caught in a sudden-onset blizzard while driving from Flagstaff to Phoenix in a Chevy Trax. Bet y’all didn’t know that Arizona can have blizzards (and neither did I before then), but hey life is full of surprises.
I crawled along at 25 mph initially with visibility of 15 feet or so. Made it to Phoenix by just plowing forward steadily, increasing speed only as the visibility increased, knowing the sun would come out eventually.
In January, I posted about how the race towards something called Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, was driving everything about AI development this year. We’re not quite there yet, but the AI models are improving exponentially as the race accelerates.
So, where does that leave us here in April 2026, as regular folks just working with the ever-evolving AI tools we’re given? I think it means a few things:
- We don’t yet know what future AI models will be capable of (beyond a generation or two), but we know for sure that they will be powerful based on current capabilities and the pressure cooker of the ongoing competition between AI labs.
- I’ve found that the quickest way to learn new models is by just diving in and trying them out for oneself.
- I think one or more of the AI labs will claim to have achieved AGI within a decade.
- If they ever make this claim, they’ll be referencing an extremely powerful future AI model that will be able to complete many of the workflows on a laptop that currently require human input.
- If the robotics field catches up to a similar level of capability, AI will become that much more capable of real-world physical tasks.
- With or without full AGI being achieved in the future, we should always take the time to understand how these ever-evolving AI tools function and operate them with due diligence. However, we can’t move too slowly either, lest we never escape the blizzard.
This is why I’m thinking of this moment in time as the foggy years. We’re all cruising down the I-17 amid a blizzard of new tech with the limited visibility that a blizzard always brings. Which is exciting and sometimes concerning. But hey, I think we’ll end up in sunny Phoenix if we just keep calm and carry on with appropriate confidence and responsibility.