[KineticLensman]

Really interesting to read about the history of the tractor, but the relevance to AI is a short almost throw-away para at the end of the article.

One massive difference between tractors and AI - not addressed in TFA - is that unlike tractors, using AI doesn't impose a massive upfront cost on the adopters. Many of the major software platforms are rolling out AI without even being asked to. People using Photoshop, MS Word, etc, suddenly find that AI-based functionality is appearing in their next product release. This is radically faster than the decades it took for tractors to achieve dominance.

[pixl97]

Ya there are some parallels, but there are many things that don't.

For example these days we live in a borrow/lease economy. Back then the companies wanted to sell you a tractor, but today no one wants to sell you a LLM, they want to sell you a service they maintain. Also interest rates and risk was pretty high in those Years making borrowing more difficult.