All S-curves look exponential at some point.

It was unclear if the current wave of AI would be an exponential, or for how long, or if it would end up just being another S-curve. The potential upside hooked a lot of people into action on the VC-maths of "it doesn't matter if it's unlikely, because the upside is just too good".

It is now becoming clear however that we aren't getting AGI. What we have now is fundamentally what we're likely to have in 5-10 years time. I do think we'll find better uses, figure our shit out, and have much more effective products in that time, I think we're entering the "LLM-era" in much the same way as the 2010s were the smartphone era that redefined a lot of things, but in still the same way, a phone of ~2010 isn't materially different to a phone of ~2020, they're still just internet connected, location aware, interfaces to content and services.