Is AI normal technology?
A few people have been asking the question, what if AI is just normal technology? Spurred on by a paper from by Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor out of Columbia University. Jackie Snow summarized it:
Normal doesn’t mean insignificant. The printing press, electricity, and the internet all fundamentally changed the world. But they did it piecemeal, over decades, through messy processes of adoption that gave societies time to respond. Factory owners didn’t immediately understand how to harness electric power. It took years of experimentation with layouts, worker training, and production processes before productivity gains materialized. The technology was revolutionary, but the revolution was gradual.
A referenced example is self driving cars, which has been a 20 year (if not more) project. The models got better, which needed better or new data, which then improved the models, which then changed the data needed. Each with a loop of real world data in there.
Some things will move fast, others will take longer.
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Jackie Snow What if AI doom and bloom prophecies are derailing more important conversations?
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