read this:  The AI Revolution: Road to Superintelligence – Wait But Why. Writes Tim:

The reason this post took three weeks to finish is that as I dug into research on Artificial Intelligence, I could not believe what I was reading. It hit me pretty quickly that what’s happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic, but by far THE most important topic for our future. … Not shockingly, that became outrageously long, so I broke it into two parts. This is Part 1—Part 2 is here.

And here are some illustrations that really nail the challenges of living in an exponential world (hat tip to Tim Urban)