Plots

Five interactive timelines exploring exponential tech progress: compute power, adoption speed, energetic efficiency, civilization scaling, and energy leverage.

Quick Links: AI Compute | Adoption | Energetic | Civilization | Energy Leverage
AI Compute Timeline

1. AI Compute Timeline

Training FLOPs from vacuum tubes to frontier models. Exponential growth.

Interactive PNG SVG Data
Adoption Timeline

2. Adoption Timeline

Time to ~50M users: years → days. Exponential compression.

Interactive PNG SVG Data
Energetic Scaling

3. Energetic Scaling

Neurons/kg vs cps/$. Power laws – humans & AI as outliers.

Interactive PNG SVG Data
Civilization Scaling

4. Civilization Scaling

Energy/Coord/Memory/Repl over 1M years. Stacking infrastructure.

Interactive PNG SVG Data
Energy Leverage

5. Energy Leverage

From ~2× to ~17× metabolic baseline. Energy multiplier growth.

Interactive PNG SVG Data

Why These Plots?

Plot Shows Trend
Compute Training FLOPs (10⁰ → 10²⁷) Exponential growth ↑
Adoption Time to 50M users Exponential compression ↓
Energetic Neurons/kg & cps/$ Power laws (log-log)
Civilization Energy/Coord/Memory/Repl Stacking infrastructure
Energy Leverage Watts/person vs metabolic ~17× body energy

Together they show how scaling laws drive exponential progress – in biology, hardware, AI, and energy. Infrastructure layers stack to enable each leap.

Inspired by Kurzweil, Epoch AI, Statista, Herculano-Houzel, Smil.