Too much of what is going on with AI is a race to get to a theoretical end state of a whole new world of business and technology. Many pushing this were around for the tail end of the transition to an internet-based economy and are struggling with what appears to be a “compressed timeline,” much the way people record disruption as a “moment” versus a journey.

I’ve been thinking about where we are today with AI and the transition to this next wave, generation, platform of computing, and how it might look like previous transitions but really isn’t. I’m thinking about three different transitions: the transition to the PC and graphical interface, the shift to online retail, and the pivot to streaming.

AI changes what we build and who builds it, but not how much needs to be built. We need vastly more software, not less.