GPT-5 has convinced me that this is already the case. 5 is a major bump-up in terms of version name and yet it is impossible to tell what exactly has improved over the previous version by simply using the product.

On top of that we're at what, year four of the AI "revolution"? And yet ChatGPT is still the only AI tool that is somewhat recognizable and used by the general public. Other AI-based tools are either serving a niche (Cursor, Windsurf), serve as toys (DALL-E, Veo) or are so small and insignificant that barely anyone is using them. If I go to any job board and browse the job offers no company seems to be naming any specific AI-powered tools that they want people to be proficient in. I don't think I've ever seen any company - big or small - either bragging that they've used generative AI as a significant driver in their project or claiming that thanks to implementing AI they've managed to cut x% costs or drive up their revenue by y%. Open source doesn't seem to have much going on either, I don't think there are examples of any projects that got a huge boost from generative AI.

Considering how much money was pumped into these solutions and how much buzz this topic has generated all over the internet in the past 4 years it seems at least bizarre that the actual adoption seems to be so insignificant. In many other areas of tech 4 years would be considered almost an eternity and yet this technology somehow gets a pass. This topic has puzzled me a for a while now but only in this year I've noticed other people pointing out these issues as well.