Beginning in the late 18th century, the Industrial Age made physical power scalable.
Beginning in the late 20th century, the Information Age made information scalable.
Now, the Intelligence Age is making intelligence scalable.
Human intelligence has always been constrained by three pounds of brain tissue. Creating another engineer, scientist, programmer, physician, or researcher requires years of education and experience.
Machine intelligence is different.
Once intelligence can be produced computationally, it can be scaled and deployed by adding computing capacity, semiconductors, energy, and infrastructure. Global AI compute capacity grew roughly 3.3 times per year from 2022 through 2025, while corporate AI investment more than doubled in 2025 alone. With AI adoption still expanding rapidly, the forces driving demand for computation continue to grow.
The evidence that this transition is already underway is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore:
• Machine intelligence is becoming dramatically cheaper.
Stanford's AI Index found that the inference cost of achieving roughly GPT-3.5-level performance fell more than 280-fold in approximately two years.
• AI adoption is accelerating.
Stanford's 2026 AI Index found that generative AI reached roughly 53% population adoption within three years, faster than either the personal computer or the Internet. Among surveyed organizations, AI adoption rose from 55% in 2023 to 78% in 2024 and 88% in 2025.
• Capital is pouring into the infrastructure required to scale intelligence.
The major hyperscalers are expected to invest roughly $670 billion in 2026, while estimates of global data-center investment through 2030 run into the trillions.
• The physical foundation of computation is rapidly increasing in economic value.
The global semiconductor industry generated approximately $796 billion in 2025. WSTS now forecasts approximately $1.5 trillion in 2026, driven heavily by AI-related demand and an extraordinary increase in memory value.
• Economic value has been migrating toward technology.
The combined market value of the Magnificent Seven rose from about $5.8 trillion in 2020 to roughly $23 trillion today, a nearly fourfold increase in six years. And this has not been driven by valuation alone: the seven companies generated roughly two-thirds of S&P 500 profit growth in 2024.
Intelligence is becoming computational, and therefore scalable.
The implications could be enormous. IMF modeling suggests AI could raise global GDP by 1.3% to 4% over ten years. McKinsey estimates $13 trillion in added global economic activity by 2030 (+16%), while semiconductor sales could add roughly $1 trillion annually.
The Industrial Revolution changed the world. The Intelligence Age will prove even more consequential.
#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Technology #Innovation #FutureOfTechnology
JeffreyLCooper.com