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In 1850, few people felt that electricity was particularly profound either. That year, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Michael Faraday why
by jonas21 6y ago
In 1850, few people felt that electricity was particularly profound either. That year, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Michael Faraday why electricity was valuable. Faraday replied, "One day sir, you may tax it." [1].
The electric motor had been invented (by Faraday), but it couldn't do any useful work and had to sit in a pool of mercury to function. Electric lighting had been invented, but the filaments were dim and burned out too quickly to be practical. There was no way to generate or distribute electricity at scale. To most people, electricity looked like a toy (and a terrifying toy at that). It would take decades of invention and refinement to get to the point where electricity was useful, reliable, and ubiquitous. But the seeds for doing so were there in 1850.
So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perceptio...
- ISL 6y agoThere are almost seven times as many people alive today as there were in 1850 -- we may be in 1850, but the number of clever people driving advances is substantially larger.
- nine_k 6y agoThey are also spread over a substantially larger spectrum of scientific disciplines. There was no ML in 1850, and the word "tensor" was invented in 1846. No biochemistry, no genetics, no quantum mechanics.
- godelski 6y agoJust be aware that you're using selection bias to substantiate your point here. There were many more claims along the same lines that didn't pan out as well and didn't turn out as well. I even say this as someone who believes AI/ML will change the world (though I'm with MJ on this one).
- onion2k 6y agoSo when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. You can make a claim that "This might be revolutionary! It's just too early to tell." about literally anything.
- PoignardAzur 6y agoYeah, but if we're looking for potential revolutions, we already have a bunch of data that points towards AI in the possibility space.
- sytelus 6y agoI can use exact same analogy to prove that horseshit is next electricity. I don’t know why people do reasoning by analogies and why people accept analogies for reasoning.