You have been in the industry 20 years, I have been in the industry nearly twice that and as far as AI is concerned, it is a no show. Certainly we have systems

You have been in the industry 20 years, I have been in the industry nearly twice that and as far as AI is concerned, it is a no show. Certainly we have systems that can play games, we have systems that automate factories and other processes, but none of these are AI. As humans have no understanding of intelligence and certainly not human intelligence, their ability to create an artificial one is effectively non-existent. Compared to the existing natural biological systems that we find around us, we cannot even duplicate their simplest processes with any aplomb. Our attempts are extremely inefficient in all areas, energy, speed, production purity, etc. If one looks around, one will see much change occurring. Yet, in so many ways, little changes. People remain people, the problems that plague people remain the same the same. If anything, our technology is only speeding up the rate at which these problems are occurring. Much of this is because we don't actually sit down and ask if we should be doing something at all. Just because we have varying success at developing various kinds of technology, doesn't mean we actually have the wisdom or understanding to use that technology properly or that we will achieve duplication of intelligence in a non-biological system. In regards to your pond analogy, instead of using exponential growth, I think we could say that it is logarithmic growth.