Editor’s note: Besides tracking technological advancements and innovations, our author is a Juilliard-trained musical composer. He has created a musical piece titled “Accelerating AI” for you to enjoy while reading this column.
Technology has always changed the world, but lately, the pace of that change feels different. Moore’s Law gave us a reliable clock for decades: computing power doubled roughly every two years. That alone transformed industries, economies, and expectations. But now we are facing something even faster. Artificial Intelligence, especially in its generative forms, seems to be racing ahead at a speed that outpaces even the most ambitious projections.
Between 2012 and 2018, the amount of computing used to train the largest AI models doubled every three to four months. That is not two times in two years. That is ten times in one. While this pace may have cooled slightly due to energy, financial, and architectural constraints, the exponential mindset has taken root. Its ripple effects are already reshaping how people learn, work, create, and connect. If Moore’s Law reshaped the world through hardware, this new curve is reshaping us through software.
What does this mean for the rest of us? It can feel like living in a storm of possibilities for early adopters and creative outliers. There is more leverage than ever before. Small teams can do the work of corporations. One person can build, design, write, and compose at a level that previously required an entire staff. But there is also more noise than ever. These new tools lower the barrier to entry, and when everyone can do something, originality gets harder to notice. The signal-to-noise ratio drops, so standing out requires even more clarity, craft, and courage.
The opportunity is real. So is the pressure. It is like surfing a wave that keeps getting taller. You can ride it, go farther than ever, or wipe out and wonder what just hit you. The challenge is not just technological. It is psychological. The rate of change can create a sense of dislocation, especially for people who have built their lives and careers on expertise that is now being reshaped or even automated. The traditional value of education, credentials, and experience does not disappear, but it has to adapt. Learning becomes continuous. Unlearning becomes necessary.
Interestingly, age and education matter less than you might expect. Younger people often adopt new tools quickly because they are not heavily invested in old methods. Older people often bring deeper context and wisdom but may hesitate to shift gears or feel overwhelmed. Highly educated individuals sometimes cling to legacy systems because their identities are tied to them. Ironically, those who are the most credentialed may find themselves slow to respond, while those who are flexible and curious find ways to thrive.
The real differentiator is mindset. People willing to explore, test, iterate, and rethink their assumptions tend to flourish. The creative outliers, the tinkerers, the improvisers, and the polymaths are often best positioned because they are used to uncertainty. They are not just consumers of change. They are participants in it. And they do not wait for permission to start.
Traditionally, a unicorn business is a privately held startup valued at over one billion dollars. However, with the mental and creative leverage that AI offers, an individual can realistically accomplish the work of an entire startup team. Think of it as a one-person unicorn engine coding, designing, marketing, writing, performing, and scaling faster than ever before. This kind of augmentation turns the old model inside out. The unicorn is no longer just a company; it can also be a person—a deeply curious, adaptable, and well-leveraged person with vision and momentum.
In February, 2024, Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI which makes Chat GPT said AI will soon allow a founder to surpass a billion-dollar valuation without having to hire a single employee. In that interview with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Altman even said he had a betting pool among his CEO friends as to what year this might happen.
Artificial Intelligence may not have a single name for its accelerating curve like Moore’s Law did, but its impact is undeniable. We are witnessing exponential growth in capability, creativity, and consequences. This acceleration favors the swift, the inquisitive, and the quietly rebellious. It also questions the old structures that rewarded slow, careful progress. We are not only speeding up; we are reshaping the terrain on which progress is assessed.
For the general public, it is essential to realize that this is not just about smarter gadgets. This is about a different relationship to time, knowledge, and agency. The tools we now have can amplify or displace us. And those outcomes will not be determined by the technology itself but by the people using it. This is not science fiction. It is daily life. The question is whether we are navigating it with intention or being swept along without noticing.
We are still early in this new era, so there is still time to engage, learn, and shape what comes next. And perhaps the most hopeful part is that creativity, curiosity, and courage are still traits anyone can cultivate. Even in a world moving this fast, human character still matters.
Now, imagine what happens when you put several of those people together. If one unicorn-level individual is already massively leveraged by AI and tools, a company of several such people would be tiny in size and massive in output. It would be incredibly agile, able to pivot faster than legacy organizations can react. It would be decentralized by nature because each person brings full-stack capability. And it would be potentially post-hierarchical, since no one needs managing in the traditional sense.
This kind of company would not scale like the old ones did. It would scale more like a distributed network of empowered nodes, a hive of unicorns, each with its own specialties but fully capable of creation, communication, and execution. The real challenge in such a company would not be capacity. It would be coordination without friction and alignment without control.
In short, it would not look like a traditional company at all. It might look more like a jazz ensemble of polymaths than a corporate organizational chart, and it could run circles around the old giants.
