Computing Power Drives the Future: AI and the Next Big Thing

by William Meisel

Computing power has long grown at an exponential rate. That rapid advance has allowed digital systems to do more each year. Computer power crossed a major threshold when it made "Artificial Intelligence" driven by deep neural networks economically feasible. And huge investments are being made in ever-larger computer centers to support AI. This book challenges the assumptions behind those huge investments and explains why the generative AI that is making all the news is over-rated.

Computer power crossing a threshold allowed deep neural nets to be practical, and they have indeed been used effectively for many limited applications. Meisel discusses the "next big thing" that exponential growth in computer processing speed will allow. The book provides a realistic description of what we can expect as computer power grows ever more quickly than most past innovations, with major impacts on society, the economy, and competition between countries.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 8, 2025

About the author

William (“Bill”) Meisel’s experience combines a strong academic, technical, and business background. With a B.S. degree in Engineering from Caltech and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, he began his career as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at USC. He has published over 70 papers and several books, including a technical book, Computer-Oriented Approaches to Pattern Recognition. He was the editor and a contributor to New Components and Subsystems for Digital Design; VUI Visions: Expert Views on Effective Voice User Interface Design; Speech in the User Interface: Lessons from Experience; The Software Society: Cultural and Economic Impact (2013), and Technically Dead (2015).

After working in university research, Dr. Meisel launched and managed the Computer Science Division of an aerospace company, applying pattern recognition technology to a number of application areas, including target detection and intelligence data analysis. He then founded a venture-capital-backed speech recognition company and ran it for ten years. He has been issued six patents in various areas of technology. Currently, as an industry analyst, he publishes a paid-subscription, no-ads monthly industry newsletter, Speech Strategy News, on commercial developments in speech technology and natural language interpretation. He also authors a blog, Meisel-on-Mobile. As Executive Director of the Applied Voice Input Output Society (AVIOS), a non-profit industry organization, he creates the program for AVIOS’s annual Mobile Voice Conference.