So I revisited an interesting AI post written by “wait but why”, back in 2015 (10 years ago).

I saw an interesting notion about how progress happens in S-curve – a new technology emerge, slow growth, then mass adoption, then matures.

From my lifetime, I can see how that played out in the internet boom.

And I think now the AI boom is unfolding in front of me. So I want to make some predictions here and see how right I am 5-10 years from now.

The 3 phases of the S-curve

This is copied from the post:

1. Slow growth (the early phase of exponential growth)
2. Rapid growth (the late, explosive phase of exponential growth)
3. A leveling off as the particular paradigm matures

And being in the middle of the S-curve can mislead someone into thinking progress is slow, being in step 1 or maybe step 3.

I think right now in the year 2025, it’s the end of step 3 for the internet boom and step 1 for the AI boom.

And in the past decade innovation does feel kind of slow.

Some people commented the best invention of the decade was tiktok and short reels – which is kind of sad.

Standing from here it’s easy to think that technological innovation would happen at the same pace the next 10-20 years as in the past 10-20.

Timeline of the Internet boom

So the internet boom started around the 90s.

For maybe around 10 years it’s this novel thing and many people are excited.

So excited that it created an internet bubble in the stock market that subsequently popped in 2000.

However, when it popped, it’s actually still in stage 1, where the average joe isn’t using the internet or at least not much.

Thinking back when my mother first started using email, it was already 2002 and she signed up because I was moving to the U.S. and she needed a way to communicate.

The true internet adoption happened after the bubble popped, and an average person started using gmail, doing google searches … then by 2010s scrolling facebook, watching youtube, etc.

It was during 2000-2020, companies like apple, google, facebook grew by 1,000%-10,000%+.

And our lives really changed during that period – the iphone, search engines, social media.  from crappy car GPS to google maps. from expensive long distance phone calls to cheap skype calls. From expensive TV and media ads to cheap facebook ads. A smartphone on your hand can access any information on the internet.

Then come the 2010-2020s. The mature stage where even grandmas and grandpas are using smartphones, social media, emails, and watching youtube.

Practically no more huge leaps of innovation can happen on the internet. It’s still growing but nothing is “life-changing” per se.

Iphones went from 4 to 6 to 10 to 14. Video content went from long to short to even shorter.

So standing here in 2025, it seems like nothing has really happened in the past 10-15 years.

The slow growth of the next boom

The AI boom probably started somewhere around the early 2020s.

Starting with this novel chatgpt thing, which people talked about a lot and I have recently started using it a lot, super helpful.

But the average joe is still definitely not using chatgpt. Nor any significant amount of AI like those cute image and video generation thing.

These AI tools now seems novel, and kind of like cute toys which some people dismiss as “useless”.

For maybe 2-3 years now nothing much seemed like have happened – beside the stock market having one of the biggest bull runs ever.

Progress feels slow and many people dismiss the potential of AI.

Not the big tech CEOs anyway though. They are spending insane amount of money on capex to build out infrastructure and data centers. Investors are getting excited but also nervous at the same time.

The inevitable? bubble pop

• Some or most of the investment will go to waste
• new technology will emerge that renders previous investment useless (NVDA???)
• real profits might not materialize quickly enough to cause an over-excitement to fade

The explosive growth of AI

My prediction is that the explosive AI growth will start happening in the next few years.

So maybe starting late 2020s into the 2030s.

Autonomous cars will replace every driver. The younger generation don’t need to get driver’s license anymore.

AI agents will serve anyone and everyone including the grandmas and average joes. Any average person’s chores and repetitive tasks will be cut in half or more.

Something like AGI will probably emerge and millions of jobs will become irrelevant. AI can teach, AI can use computers and write code, AI can build and construct.

My investment strategy

• stay invested, don’t be afraid of losses and waste
• stay educated and informed, cut losses on non-winners and rotate to potential winners
• stay with the high potential but not too risky (none or maybe a small sprinkle of startups with zero profit and money burning)
• winners will become at least 10x+ and create generational wealth for me as an investor
• TSLA can reach at least $5,000-10,000 per share???