Can we measure the AI Boom?

The NewYorkTimes.com reported that “A chart created by METR, a nonprofit A.I. organization, has become an industrywide obsession as it measures the rapid development of big A.I. systems.”  The April 17, 2026 article entitled “How Do You Measure an A.I. Boom?” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/technology/how-do-you-measure-an-ai-boom.html) included these comments:

Behind every technological revolution is a chart with an exponential curve.

In the 20th century, microchip pioneers like Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, saw the density of components on a computer chip doubling roughly every year, and predicted they would keep doubling every year for the foreseeable future. (This observation, which became known as “Moore’s Law,” fueled the boom in personal computing and held up for more than 50 years.)

During the internet boom of the early 2000s, Mary Meeker, an influential stock analyst, moved markets with her PowerPoint presentations showing the explosive growth of e-commerce, online advertising and mobile phones, all of which contributed to a sense that underneath all of the dot-com hype, something big and important was happening.

Today’s artificial intelligence boom is awash in data showing the rapid progress of A.I. systems, and hype-filled claims about what the technology can and can’t do.

What do you think?