AI Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: How MCP Transformed the Hype Into Real Value

Artificial Intelligence has been part of our lives for quite some time now, and the enthusiasm seems to only get bigger. For the past few years, AI integration promises to rewrite every rule of business, especially in the tech landscape. But while the technological progress is remarkable, it is important to understand where AI integration goes beyond the hype, and provides the best value to the end user.  

At How to Web Conference 2025, Tejas Kumar, an internationally recognized speaker and engineer from IBM, took the stage to cut through the marketing noise. Through a dynamic ”show, don’t tell” type of presentation, he introduced an open-source standard that has been a game changer for AI development: the Model Context Protocol (MCP). 

To understand why this matters for your product journey, in this article we take a look at where AI has been, what it can do right now, and where it is taking us tomorrow.

AI Yesterday: Smart, But Limited

When OpenAI first launched ChatGPT in November 2022, the tech world felt like it changed overnight. The fact that this tool could provide us with so many complex answers to (what seemed like) all our questions was revolutionary, at the time. 

But the initial enthusiasm began to fade, as creators and business people encountered the harsh realities of the first-generation AI. Those early versions had a massive flaw: they were completely cut off from the real world. 

As Tejas Kumar reminded us during his talk on the 2025 How to Web Conference stage, those early-stage chats didn’t search the web for real-time information, instead basing its solutions solely on data previously fed into the model. 

This created an incredibly frustrating experience for anyone trying to scale their products, because of the disconnection from real-life solutions. For example, if you asked the AI about a current news event, a shifting market trend, or a live stat from your own business database, the answers provided would be unreliable or nonexistent. 

Furthermore, it created a massive gap between the promised AI and what it could actually do. So tech users quickly realized that while a clean and simple chat window is great, it wasn’t enough to build real, sustainable software products. 

Tejas Kumar’s full speech at the 2025 How to Web Conference:

AI Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Extending AI Systems with Model Context Protocol (MCP)

AI Today: The Rise of Virtual Assistants

Fast forward to today, if you use a modern AI chat tool right now, it can browse the web to find fresh answers. It does this using a technique called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Tejas explained RAG through an everyday concept he calls “prompt composition.” Think of it as a helpful middleman standing between your chat window and the AI brain. Every time you type a question, this middleman quickly rearranges your request behind the scenes into a simple template:

• The user asked (question)
• The data is (data)
• The answer for the user is (answer)

This process has evolved into something even more complex: “agentic mode.”  As Tejas puts it, an agent is an entity (whether human or machine) that can look at a task description and choose the right tool to get it done. 

For example, in order to solve math problems (task), humans (agents) use brains (language model) to choose a calculator (tool). In the exact same way, modern AI agents don’t just guess anymore. They look at your prompt, realize they need a specific tool (like a web searcher or a file reader), and go fetch the answer on their own, without you having to guide them every step of the way.

What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)? 

Instead of building a unique, complicated connection for every single AI model out there, MCP lets you create an MCP Server on top of your data. This server simply tells the AI app (the MCP Client) over the network that these are the tools it has available, and here is how you can use them safely.

For a tech team, this is a massive shortcut. You build the connection to your data once, and any modern AI tool can plug into it instantly. It saves months of tedious work and lets small teams build incredibly helpful AI features with less effort and time spent.

AI Tomorrow: Shifting Towards the Ultimate UX

Where is all of this open connection taking us? Tejas painted a fantastic picture of what tomorrow looks like: ”Agents controlling browsers on our behalf, so we don’t have to.” He continues – ”That is where AI is going, it’s all about the UX. I genuinely believe that.”

But many people are questioning whether this is more helpful than not, especially in an evermore uncertain business landscape. So what is the answer to this? As Tejas eloquently puts it: 

”What does this mean, does this mean our jobs are going away? Where is this leading? If we get AI to do the busy work like booking the flights and filling the forms, then we get a lot of time back to do what really matters – spending time with our loved ones, touching grass, and enjoying life.”

The Strategic ROI for Startups and Product Teams

Beyond just a great speech from Tejas, delivered in a high-energy interactive presentation, here are a few actionable next steps, to replicate in your own business:

1. Stop reinventing the wheel: Don’t waste weeks writing custom bridges for every single new tool. Use open standards like MCP to launch your ideas much faster.
2. Stay flexible: If you build your product using these universal plugs, you can easily swap your AI provider whenever a cheaper or better model comes out down the road.
3. Focus on solving real issues: Move away from basic chatbots that just write text. Start building workflows that handle actual, boring tasks for your users.

The Future Belongs to User Experience

What Tejas Kumar proved on the How to Web Conference stage is that the future of AI is found in smart, open-source, and simple engineering. When used right and leveraged at its full potential, AI integration can give us back our most precious resource: time.

If you want to be in the room where these real-time tech breakthroughs are shared and demystified, you need to be part of the community – to join thousands of founders, creators, and tech leaders in Bucharest, and grab the practical insights you need to build what’s next.

Get your tickets to How to Web Conference 2026 

For more helpful videos on how the world’s best platforms are built, check out the How to Web Conference Build & Grow Stage playlist for  Day 1 and Day 2.