A general critique: it's not just about AI. Computation, in general, is capable of solving many problems that afflict the world - disease, hunger, resource all

A general critique: it's not just about AI. Computation, in general, is capable of solving many problems that afflict the world - disease, hunger, resource allocation, etc. Some of these problems have "conventional" computational solutions. Fundamentally, there are two problems that must be solved. First, the actual ability to actually compute needs perfected. This means that massive computations (i.e. the computations that solve massive, game-changing problems) can easily be performed. Things like public clouds are solving that problem. Second, computation needs applied to a problem. Statistical learning approaches have become popular because they are relatively simple to apply and are relatively successful. AI researches tend to believe that AI is all that matters, but obviously the success of AI is only possible with efficient computation. Similarly, efficient computation alone is useless if that computation cannot be used to solve actual problems. Computation is to the 21st century as energy is the 20th. The ramifications of that statement are immediately obvious: consider the petrodollar. Soon, computation will become a currency.