AI & exponential growth: what does it all mean?

AI is growing at an exponential rate but a lot of people don't really understand what that means.

We frequently see news articles and blog posts which claim that AI technology is becoming exponentially more powerful over time. The implications of exponentially improving technology, especially if sustained over a long period of time, are rather profound. It seems pretty important, therefore, to develop an intuition for what “exponential growth” means…