Artificial intelligence moved from research laboratories into everyday life. Machines learned to generate convincing images, write software, interpret language, produce video, and increasingly interact with the physical world. Robots are leaving carefully controlled factory environments and moving toward warehouses, hospitals, streets, and homes. At the same time, the systems surrounding us have become extraordinarily good at collecting information about who we are, where we go, what we want, and what we may buy next.
Taken together, these developments suggest that we are entering a new technological period: a digital renaissance in which the relationship between humans, machines, information, and commerce is being rewritten at remarkable speed.
Then Artificial Intelligence Accelerated
Machine learning has been developing for decades, but the period beginning around 2022 marked a dramatic change in its public accessibility and capabilities.
Stanford University’s 2025 AI Index documented extraordinary year-over-year improvements on several demanding AI benchmarks. In only one year, performance increased by 18.8 percentage points on MMMU, 48.9 points on GPQA, and 67.3 points on SWE-bench. AI systems also made substantial advances in video generation and software development.
Businesses responded almost immediately.
Stanford reported that 78% of surveyed organizations used AI in 2024, compared with 55% in 2023. U.S. private AI investment reached $109.1 billion in 2024, while global private investment specifically in generative AI reached $33.9 billion.
McKinsey observed a similarly rapid change. In its early-2024 survey, 65% of respondents said their organizations regularly used generative AI in at least one business function—nearly twice the proportion reported only ten months earlier. Overall reported AI adoption jumped to 72% after remaining around 50% for roughly six years.
That is what makes the current period unusual. It is not simply that computers are becoming faster. Multiple technologies are advancing and being deployed simultaneously.
Intelligence Is Moving Into Machines
The next stage is already becoming visible: connecting increasingly capable artificial intelligence to machines that can interact with the physical world.
Industrial robotics provides a useful measure of the broader trend. According to the International Federation of Robotics, 542,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2024—more than twice the number installed annually a decade earlier. More than 4.6 million industrial robots were operating in factories worldwide. Professional service-robot sales approached 200,000 units in 2024, while medical-robot sales increased sharply.
These technologies are converging.
Computer vision allows machines to perceive environments. Large AI models allow systems to interpret instructions and reason about tasks. Improved sensors allow machines to understand their surroundings. Robotics gives those systems a physical means of acting upon the world.
AI is therefore beginning to move beyond software that simply answers questions.
It can increasingly see, interpret, decide, and act.
Three Years That Felt Like Ten
It would be difficult to scientifically prove that technological development between 2022 and today exceeded all progress during the preceding decade. “Technological advancement” does not have a single objective unit of measurement.
But the acceleration across specific measurable areas is difficult to ignore.
AI benchmark performance has risen dramatically. Business adoption has surged. Investment has reached extraordinary levels. Robots are being deployed at scales that would have seemed ambitious only a decade ago. Autonomous vehicles have moved from demonstrations toward commercial transportation; Stanford reported that one major U.S. operator was already providing more than 150,000 autonomous rides per week by the time of its 2025 AI Index.
And these developments increasingly reinforce one another.
Better AI produces better software.
Better software helps design better machines.
More data improves predictive systems.
Better predictive systems make data more valuable.
More investment finances greater computing infrastructure.
Greater computing capacity enables more capable AI.
The result is not one technological revolution.
It is several revolutions beginning to overlap.
Your Behavior Has Become Data
The modern internet is built around observation.
Every search, click, purchase, location signal, abandoned shopping cart, and interaction can produce data. That information has enormous commercial value because companies can use it to understand not only what consumers have done, but what they are likely to do next.
This extends beyond advertising.
In 2025, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published findings from an investigation into what it calls “surveillance pricing.” The agency found that intermediaries working with retailers can use information including precise location, demographics, browsing history, shopping behavior, and even mouse movements to help determine which prices, products, or promotions individual consumers see. The companies examined by the FTC worked with at least 250 clients across industries including grocery and apparel.
This represents an important shift.For most of modern commerce, a retailer determined what something was worth and displayed the price.
Increasingly, technology makes another model possible:
The seller can attempt to determine what something is worth to you.
The FTC found that pricing intermediaries can analyze details such as what consumers search for, what they purchase, when and where they shop, and which products they leave behind in their carts. These systems can then help retailers tailor prices, discounts, recommendations, and the products presented to different consumers. The FTC’s published examples are partly hypothetical because confidential company information is aggregated, so this should not be interpreted as evidence that every retailer is secretly changing every customer’s price. But the infrastructure necessary for individualized pricing already exists.
The distinction is important. The future of digital commerce may not simply involve algorithms predicting what you will buy. Increasingly sophisticated systems may help businesses estimate when you will buy it, how badly you want it, and what price or promotion is most likely to make you act.
The Digital Renaissance
The Renaissance transformed society because developments in art, science, engineering, communication, commerce, and philosophy occurred together. The printing press changed who could access information. New scientific methods changed how knowledge was produced. Advances in navigation changed commerce and geography. One development accelerated another.
Our current transformation has similar characteristics.
Artificial intelligence is changing how knowledge is produced. Robotics is changing what machines can accomplish. Data collection is changing how businesses understand individuals. Digital platforms are changing how people work, communicate, purchase, create, and form communities.
For the first time, corporations can potentially know enormous amounts about millions of individual consumers while simultaneously possessing increasingly sophisticated systems capable of interpreting that information at machine speed.
That deserves our attention.
The defining question of the coming decade may therefore be less about whether artificial intelligence becomes “smarter than humans” and more about something already happening:
What happens when machines become increasingly capable of understanding us while we understand less and less about the machines making decisions around us?
We are not waiting for the digital renaissance.
We are already standing at its edge.
Sources
Federal Trade Commission — Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices (2025).
FTC surveillance-pricing study
Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence — The 2025 AI Index Report.
Stanford AI Index 2025
International Federation of Robotics — World Robotics 2025.
IFR World Robotics 2025
McKinsey & Company — The State of AI in Early 2024: Gen AI Adoption Spikes and Starts to Generate Value.
McKinsey State of AI survey