AI models have developed at a pace that was unimaginable just two years ago, but there are three big barriers to further progress, says Lewis Z Liu

As the current revolution in artificial intelligence accelerates, it is more important than ever for society to engage in a well-informed debate about this technology. Through this column, I aim to provide a balanced perspective on the state of AI, as I believe that an informed audience – one that understands the real issues – will be best positioned to both benefit from and mitigate the risks of the AI revolution. Misconceptions about AI abound, fuelled by a range of actors, from self-serving incumbents like Sam Altman and Google to political operators like Musk, Trump and China’s Xi. In a landscape where power is at stake, it is only natural for influential figures to shape the narrative of such a transformative technology to serve their own interests.

First, I want to outline what is now possible that was unimaginable just two years ago. AI models can now compress the entire internet with remarkable fidelity and “converse” with users or process text inputs with near-human fluency. This breakthrough is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of what a “computer” is and how we interact with technology.

The most tangible change is in user experience (UX, in software industry terms). Those old enough to remember the command prompt – where users had to enter lines of code in specific syntax in Microsoft DOS, the precursor to Windows – will recall it as the successor to punch cards in the 1980s. The command-line interface was later replaced by the Graphical User Interface (GUI), which began with the advent of the mouse and evolved into the touchscreen interfaces we now use on mobile devices. However, even today’s most advanced smartphones still........

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