The illusion of limitless progress hides a fragile foundation built on hype, data, and borrowed human intelligence
I remember the first time I watched an AI model generate a flawless paragraph on a topic it couldn’t possibly understand. It was smooth, confident, and eerily human. The promise seemed infinite — models that could write, code, design, and even “think.”
But as I dug deeper, testing these tools beyond their comfort zones, a quiet realization hit me: AI’s growth wasn’t exponential in understanding — it was exponential in illusion. We were scaling prediction, not comprehension.
Today, we stand in a world obsessed with AI’s meteoric rise. Every headline screams disruption, every startup promises revolution. But behind this surge lies something unsettling — a system growing faster than it’s getting smarter.
1. The Mirage of Exponential Progress
Every chart, every curve, every valuation points upward — faster, higher, stronger. But exponential curves mean nothing if they rise on the wrong axis.
AI’s progress isn’t a straight climb toward intelligence. It’s a massive inflation of computation, data, and…
