[thedevopsguy]

Remember this book too. It's a classic text in AI. I think what they were trying to say in the intro is that the approach has a significant effect on how much effort is wasted. The engineering effort required to get a plane of the ground using moving wings is considerably greater than using rotational parts like propellers. Imagine how many decades would have been wasted to scale an orthinopter to handle the load of a passanger jet.

This makes me think that AI research isn't going to be a gradual process of research being built on other research but it will be a eureka or an ah-ha moment that changes everything.