Simon Willison’s Weblog

That development time acceleration of 4 days down to 20 minutes… that’s equivalent to about 10 years of Moore’s Law cycles. That is, using generative AI like this is equivalent to computers getting 10 years better overnight.

That was a real eye-opening framing for me. AI isn’t magical, it’s not sentient, it’s not the end of the world nor our saviour; we don’t need to endlessly debate “intelligence” or “reasoning.” It’s just that… computers got 10 years better. The iPhone was first released in 2007. Imagine if it had come out in 1997 instead. We wouldn’t even know what to do with it.

— Matt Webb