Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Paul Gauguin painted the question 127 years ago in Tahiti—an artist wrestling with the arc of existence.  Today, 2.5 years into the generative AI era, it’s worth asking these questions again—this time about work, business, and industry.

We’re all on a curve that’s rapidly steepening, and it’s easy to lose perspective. Two new reports offer a useful reset—one looking back, one looking forward.

Looking back: Stanford AI Index 2025

Stanford’s latest data-rich snapshot shows just how far—and fast—we’ve come.  Some highlights:

• AI moves from hype to land grab
  Nearly 80% of companies now use AI in key workflows—with a focus on customer service, product design, and internal productivity.

• The money is pouring in - particularly in the US
  US private AI investment hit $109B in 2024—12x China, 24x the UK

• China is closing in
  Chinese models are now matching US models on key benchmarks. The race is real—and it’s global.

• AI gets significantly cheaper and faster
  Query costs are dropping, and models are becoming 40% more energy efficient every year. Elite tech is becoming everyday infrastructure.

Looking forward: “AI 2027” by the AI Futures Project

This isn’t just a forecast—it’s a warning flare. And it’s gone viral for good reason.  Some of the (mind-boggling) predictions of our near future include: 

• Superintelligence by 2027
  AI may soon surpass human reasoning—and improve itself beyond it, building things people won’t begin to understand.

• Trillion-parameter models
  Next-gen systems will be orders of magnitude more powerful than anything today.

• 1000x compute power in 3 years
  Hardware gains could supercharge performance and scale exponentially.

• 5x coding productivity
  AI tools are already doubling dev output. Fully agentic teams may handle entire build cycles, rendering developers - as we know them today - obsolete.

• Billions of AI assistants
  By 2027, most knowledge workers will have their own AI agents—transforming how we work, think, and decide.

AI’s acceleration has been dizzying—and it’s about to go full throttle.  Exciting? Unnerving? Yes.

But we can’t stop the music and get off.  We need to be prepared (as much as possible) for this wild ride.