The AI revolution: We've seen this movie before

The excitement around AI today feels remarkably familiar to those of us who lived through the early days of the internet revolution. Just like that shift, the real work is often hidden and unassuming, but business leaders ignore this groundwork at their peril.

I see the same exciting potential, the same misconceptions about where we are today, the same need to build foundations carefully while others chase headlines. My experience working with AI for the past decade tells me something important: We are still in the early foundational phase of this technology, and our understanding of what that means is crucial for business success.

It reminds me of the networking revolution of the 1990s, when I watched our CEO at Cisco, John Chambers, paint a vision of how the internet would change the way we live, work, play and learn. He was right -- but it took nearly two decades of methodical infrastructure building to get there.

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The real work wasn't the exciting demos or breakthrough announcements. It was identifying the foundational layers that would move customers forward step by step, while building toward that transformational vision. We had to bring customers along on the journey, helping them build capabilities they could actually use right then that would become the foundation for tomorrow's possibilities.

Many people saw the surface activity, such as endless web surfing, but they missed the fundamental infrastructure being built underneath: the communication layers, the data systems, the business process automation. They were looking at the tip of the iceberg while we were building the massive transformation happening below the waterline.

There was no single "aha" moment when everything suddenly clicked. The transformation was gradual but relentless. We went from businesses running entirely on physical documents and typewriters, where the rare few did financial calculations with computers running first VisiCalc and later Lotus 1-2-3, to every office worker having desktop capabilities for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and instant communication.

By 2010, capabilities that would have seemed magical in 1992 were taken for granted. We'd fundamentally changed how work gets done, but the transformation felt natural because we lived through it day by day.

AI is on the same path.

We're building the foundation right now. The models, the data pipelines, the ethical frameworks and the integration patterns are today's equivalent of network protocols and infrastructure standards. Just like with the internet, we're in the phase where the real transformation is happening behind the scenes.

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Business leaders today see the flashy AI demos -- the chatbots, the image generators -- but they might be missing the foundational changes that AI is enabling. Those include automated decision-making processes, pattern recognition in complex data, streamlined workflows and predictive analytics that reshape how they understand their markets and customers.

Here's what this means for business leaders who want to be part of this transformation:

Lean in early. Experiment with AI in real workflows. Build literacy across your teams. Start replacing manual processes and automating routine decisions now.

Stay grounded. Match your ambition with where the technology truly is today. Focus on practical applications that solve real problems while building toward bigger possibilities.

Think systematically. Your job is to identify the foundational AI capabilities that work today and will prepare your organization for the more advanced applications ahead.

Invest in your people. The human element of AI adoption is crucial. Build the organizational capability to evolve with the technology.

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Five years from now, you'll look back and wonder how you ever made decisions without AI-powered analysis, managed customer relationships without predictive insights or operated supply chains without automated optimization. It's just like how we can't imagine working without email or spreadsheets today.

AI will absolutely transform how we build, sell and operate. The leaders who balance vision with patience, who systematically build AI capabilities now, will be the ones who capture that value as the technology matures.

We are in the middle of something historic. The transformation is already underway, even if we don't feel it day by day. Let's build it right.