All courses / Landscape / Module 2 / Chapter 8
Learning objectives
After the lesson the participant can:
- Explain why adoption and capability curves bend, in the chapter's terms of sums of separate decisions.
- Compare the four baseline trajectories for AI and state what each projected for 2030.
- Read a V2 view: trails, the new tick and the retired mark.
- Review a projection by asking who computed it, from which points, and when it was last recomputed.
Key concepts
- The straight-line instinct
- The habit of taking the last two points of an adoption or capability curve, laying a ruler along them and reading the future off the ruler. It is a cousin of the instinct Rosling named for the world's population curve.
- Baseline trajectory and vintage
- The line the Commission's dashboard draws forward from observed points each year. For AI, the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 vintages reached 20.29, 16.76, 35.92 and 54.28 per cent in 2030. They are projections, not observations.
- Sums of decisions
- Adoption and capability are not motion. They are the sum of many separate decisions by different organisations for different reasons, and the sum bends whenever the reasons change. None of those events is visible in the two points before it.
- The trail
- How the time frame draws change: a hollow outline of the mark at its earlier position, a thin line, and the filled mark at its later position, with a tick for a unit that appeared and a hollow mark with a cross for one retired.
- Rule of thumb: what bent the curve
- Never extend the last two points; ask what bent the last curve and what could bend this one. The rule stops applying where the thing measured is motion with a known mechanism, such as the age of a workforce.
Interactive exercises
Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.
Interactive exercise 1 · Put in order
Four rulers on one series
Put the Commission's four baseline trajectories for AI in the order in which they were computed, from 2023 to 2026.
Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario
A projection reaches the board
Read the situation and choose what the board member should do, following the chapter's advice to an executive.
Teaching plan
| 10 min | Opening: the teacher shows only the four observed points and the 75 per cent target and asks each participant to mark where the share will be in 2030, then reveals the four baselines of Figure 8.1. |
| 20 min | Lecture on the evidence: the same bend in every size class, Denmark's series, the cloud decade with Finland's plateau, the cloud and AI projections moving in opposite directions, and the three caveats on the compute line. |
| 10 min | Guided reading of Figure 8.4: the two trails, the retired pilot, the two new units, and what Nordvik Region's year does not do. |
| 25 min | Exercise: participants test a projection with three questions and redraw a year of change as a V2. |
| 10 min | Closing: the two halves of the rule, the candidates the chapter names for the bend in the EU AI series, and Hansa Mutual's V2 with no trail at all. |
Discussion
- The bend came in every size class in the same survey year. What does the chapter infer from that, and which of its candidate causes could you check for your own sector?
- The instinct pulls in both directions: the slow line made the target look unreachable and the fast line makes it look within reach. Which direction is currently shaping decisions in your organisation?
- Hansa Mutual's V2 for the scenario year has no trail, yet the executive board took the decision right over every agent with write access to production. What does that say about what a count of units can show?
Written exercise
Exercise · 25 minutes
Three questions and a trail
Part one: take a projection that has reached your organisation, or the 2026 baseline trajectory for AI from the chapter, and write down who computed it, from which points, and when it was last recomputed. Note what bent the series before and what could bend it next. Part two: list the AI uses in your organisation, or Nordvik Region's from the chapter, that changed between two dates a year apart. Draw the changes by hand as a V2: a hollow outline, a thin line and a filled mark for each unit that changed cell, a new tick for each unit that appeared, a hollow mark with a cross for each retired, and the two dates underneath. Beside each change write the decision that caused it and who signed it.
Deliverable: A three-line review of one projection, and a hand-drawn V2 with two dates and every change annotated with its decision and decision-holder.
Self-test
Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.
Why did the Commission's 2024 baseline trajectory for AI reach a lower value in 2030 (16.76 per cent) than the 2023 one (20.29 per cent)?
Show the answer
B. Because the second observation, for 2023, had barely moved from the first, for 2021
The 2024 baseline was drawn after a second observation that stood only about 0.4 points above the 2021 value, where the first baseline had assumed about one point a year. The share rose, by 0.41 percentage points; it did not fall.In Nordvik Region's scenario year 2027, drawn in V2, which change does not occur?
Show the answer
D. A unit changes row and becomes harder to reverse
The year has two moves of one column each, one in each direction, one retirement and two additions. No unit changes row; nothing becomes harder to reverse.Denmark's share of enterprises using AI was 23.89 per cent in 2021, 15.17 in 2023, 27.58 in 2024 and 42.03 in 2025. What does the chapter use the series to show?
Show the answer
A. That a line through the first two points fell while a line through the last two rises faster than anywhere in the Union
The chapter calls Denmark's series the clearest warning against the ruler: the first two points point down and the last two point steeply up. It adds that some bends in country series are flagged breaks in the survey.