coffeeai
⛅ open questions
The Story So Far
Eighty-three years of AI as one winding road: the lineages of ideas, and the events that bent them. Tap any stop. The thread running through it goes back to 1943.
UPDATED DAILY · NEW STOPS EVERY MORNING · LAST ADDED AUG 2, 2026
EVERY NODE RESEARCHED LIVE AND ADVERSARIALLY FACT-CHECKED · 8 ERRORS CAUGHT BEFORE PUBLICATION · CURRENT THROUGH AUG 5, 2026
Eighty-three years, in five eras
The shortest possible version. Tap an era to drive straight to that stretch of road.
The road to today
One road through 83 years, drawn fresh every morning. The route weaves a different way each day, and it paves itself ahead of you as you scroll. It never ends. New stops arrive daily. Landmark stops are big, minor ones small. Pick a lineage to recolor the road. Chinchilla (2022) carries an embedded explorable. J / K to drive between stops, ? for a random one.
Where AI actually stands, industry by industry
A second map, by industry: where AI works right now, and where it has stalled. State of play, August 2026. Tap to open.
That's the story so far
If you walked the road, you now know how AI got here: what a neuron has to do with logic, why the field froze twice, what attention actually unlocked, and how models became products, then coworkers. That's more context than most people making confident claims about AI are carrying.
The road only runs up to this morning. Everything past it is still being argued, and the history you have just read is what those arguments assume.
Grab a coffee every morning
A short morning email: what moved on the road overnight, which questions got hotter, and the two or three things worth knowing.
What was added to the road today
Three new pins this week. Each one hangs off a thread that starts in 1943.
Those are the newest stops. 72 of them below, all the way back to 1943.