Do people systematically misjudge technology's impact, underestimating it over the long term while overestimating it in the near term?

Richard Socher · Aug 18, 2023

Both things are true at once: we are at the beginning of an exponential rise in AI capabilities, and there are also small waves of inflated expectations layered on top of it

The overall capability level is rising massively, but people wrongly assume the exponential guarantees continuous major breakthroughs

Scope: hard for non-experts to navigate

5:11 20VC: Does Value Accrue to Incumbents or Startups in the AI Race, Why Model Size Matters More Than Data Size, Why Artificial General Intelligence is Far Away, Why Carpenters Will Be Paid More Than Software Engineers & Future of Jobs with Richard Socher

Harry Stebbings · Nov 22, 2023 · hedged

Technology transitions generally take a lot longer than people expect

Scope: framed as a personal fear

31:55 20VC: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play, Why Apple Will Win in an AI World, Why Google is the Most Vulnerable Incumbent, Will LLMs Be Commoditised, Which Startups Are Thin vs Thick Wrappers on Top of LLMs with Jeff Seibert, Founder @ Digits

Gustav Söderström · Dec 20, 2023

People first underestimate AI and then overestimate it, building products the technology is not yet mature enough to support, so the hardest organizational work is getting everyone realistic and on the same level of understanding

Teams need empathy not just for users but for the models to know what they can actually do today

20:24 20VC Roundtable: Spotify, Adobe & Linkedin CPOs on How AI Changes The Future of Product, Why AI is Now the Product, How TikTok Changed Product, Why Cost is the Biggest Barrier to LLM Usage & Why Incumbents Can Adopt AI Faster Than Any Prior Innovation Cyc

Harry Stebbings · Jun 10, 2024

We overestimate technology adoption on one-year horizons and underestimate it on ten-year horizons, and this applies to personal AI agents.

37:17 20VC: Reid Hoffman on Foundation Models: Who Wins & How Do Incumbents Respond | The Inflection AI Deal: How it Went Down | Why Trump is a Threat to Democracy | The Future of TikTok | Lessons from Sam Altman, Brian Chesky and the OpenAI Board

Reid Hoffman · Jun 10, 2024

Technology change is overestimated year-to-year and underestimated over long horizons: next year looks much like this year, but compounding plus occasional phase shifts make the world unrecognizable

Compounding annual change plus phase shifts; twenty years ago two thirds of Londoners staring at phones on the street would have looked like Jetsons-style science fiction, and now it is ordinary

37:26 20VC: Reid Hoffman on Foundation Models: Who Wins & How Do Incumbents Respond | The Inflection AI Deal: How it Went Down | Why Trump is a Threat to Democracy | The Future of TikTok | Lessons from Sam Altman, Brian Chesky and the OpenAI Board

Michael Eisenberg · Jun 19, 2024 · hedged

Both are true at once: adoption cycles are overestimated in the short run, and LLM breakthroughs are arriving at unprecedented velocity

Scope: holds both sides simultaneously

22:11 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg

David Luan · Jun 24, 2024

Enterprise AI adoption is grossly overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term — as is true for most new technology

41:16 20VC: Why Foundation Model Performance is Not Diminishing But Models Are Commoditising, Why Nvidia Will Enter the Model Space and Models Will Enter the Chip Space & The Right Business Model for AI Software with David Luan, Co-Founder @ Adept

Mitchell Green · Mar 28, 2025

People consistently underestimate technology over the long term and overestimate it in the near term

Everybody was talking about self-driving cars ten years ago and only now is the experience good

65:49 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital