We had the technology to build human-level artificial hands in the 80s, I remember seeing it in movies and on PBS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Circuit_

We had the technology to build human-level artificial hands in the 80s, I remember seeing it in movies and on PBS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Circuit_(1986_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Circuit_(1986_film) We arguably even had the knowledge to build the neural nets to run them. Had more people been exposed to functional, declarative and data-driven programming back then, I think it would have seemed straightforward to wire up large networks as spreadsheets. Sadly, most of those older approaches have been replaced with opaque and buzzwordy approaches that bury concepts in terminology. Arguably there was no market back then for AI. But I think what really happened is that AI arrived simultaneously with neoliberalism and supply-side economics which treat workers as commodities. Rather than letting everyone replace themselves with robots and keep their paychecks, they were instead forced to work longer and longer hours for less pay and compete with companies overseas that have few labor or environmental protections. The problem isn't the technology, it's the political climate that can't see beyond jobs and so-called handouts. Which means that alternative societies are going to have to tackle problems all at once rather than piecemeal. There's going to be tremendous pressure to undercut human-oriented economies that focus on self-actualization over the mundane tasks of running the daily rat race (just like we've seen with organic, high efficiency, solar, wind and recycling being disincentivized).