ImageNet and the Turning Point

Some turning points are only obvious after the numbers come in.

Progress in science and technology often moves slowly, then suddenly. Years of incremental improvement, best practices accumulating, error rates nudging downward one percentage point at a time. And then something happens that doesn't fit the curve.

A result arrives that is so far outside the expected range that it doesn't just move the conversation forward. It ends one conversation and starts another. Researchers who had been working on something else look up. The field reorients.

That kind of moment is rare. When it happens, it tends to compress years of debate into a few months of consensus. The question stops being whether something works and becomes how fast to catch up.