[tux1968]

It was likely the same back when the steam engine was invented. Everyone who could start a steam engine company, started a steam engine company. Because learning how to be a steam engine company was difficult, new, and unique. It would be a while before finding all the products that could be sold to people incorporating that new tech.

[KineticLensman]

Tech was very different then. The first commercial steam Engine appeared in 1712 - big static thing thing that could pump water out of mines. It took about about 100 years until 1804 to get to a steam engine small but powerful enough to pull a train. Mines and factories were pretty much the only users for decades and there were very few people who had a steam engine for the sake of it

[__MatrixMan__]

How was tech different then? We've been working on AI for 70 years now, seems comparable.

[KineticLensman]

We’ve been working on digital computers for 70 years and AI is just one part of that. Computers are everywhere and suddenly AI is being crammed into every product, it seems. In the first 90 years of steam, steam engines did not suddenly appear everywhere. Outside of factories and mines, they essentially did not exist. No one had a steam engine in their home. Innovation happened very slowly, no equivalent of Moore’s law, no continuous year on year improvements to the basic tech

[__MatrixMan__]

The products are different, sure. And there are more people participating now than then. But I'm not convinced that the two are that fundamentally different. Some technologies just take the better part of a century to mature.