[BitsAndObjects]

Most of modern medicine, by which I mean each discovery and invention in their own right, stand alongside electricity. Particularly vaccines.

AI isn’t there yet. You could turn off AI tomorrow and there’d be a shock but people would quickly switch back. You could not do the same for electricity, medicine, combustion engines (or steam engines/turbines), computers, the internet, modern building materials, etc. You try to swap back off any of those and the modern world (literally and figuratively) collapses. Turn off AI, and there’d be a financial collapse but afterwards everything would return relatively easily to an earlier way of doing things (ye know, the way from just 4 years ago, and which is still 99% of how people do things :) )

[chuckadams]

I think the Internet is the more apt analogy. But even with electricity, you could have taken it away within the first couple decades of its popularity and society would have shrugged it off. Once they got used to that telegraph thing, not so much.

[BitsAndObjects]

Yeah, I agree, but AI isn’t there yet. It’s too early to call it one way or the other. There’s plenty else that’s as important as electricity in my view, and maybe AI will join those ranks in 15 years or so when it’s gone through the hype loop and when the economy has recovered from the now-basically-inevitable AI- and war-fueled turmoil of the next decade.

[jonah]

Sure, but compare this to "turn[ing] off" combustion engines a mere four years after commercial adoption rather than 162 years later (now). Back then, going back to horses wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it would be now.

[rpdillon]

That's primarily a function of the time for adoption, though, not the utility of the technology. In 20 years, people would not be able to so easily say that they could turn off AI with no impact.

[BitsAndObjects]

That..what..no. The question was whether there are any comparable to electricity, of which I have put forth a number of examples. And also offered my opinion that it is too early to judge whether AI will be as significant or not.

There are loads of technologies that, despite being decades old, do not qualify. So, no, it’s not “primarily a function of time”. It absolutely is about the utility. We can only be in a position to judge utility when sufficient time has passed, and AI ain’t had enough time yet to prove its utility. Given enough time, it might prove as useful as electricity, or it might just sit alongside computer operating systems - never quite making it onto anyone’s “this changed the world” list, even if it has as much utility as an OS.

[rpdillon]

Sure. I'm just more optimistic than you are about the enduring value of AI. Time will tell.