Because they _want_ it to be true. I've made a good amount of "enemies" debunking common bullshit believed about technology at table discussions. People just l

Because they _want_ it to be true. I've made a good amount of "enemies" debunking common bullshit believed about technology at table discussions. People just love believing we already have SkyNet but our governments have it by the balls, and the utopian future is juuuuust around the corner. They believed that for _decades_ now. Wish I was joking. But the modern AI / ML folk is very much to blame as well. Every 0.01% improvement in cat recognition NNs is hailed as the solution to all our problems. (Not to mention peer review rings where AI "papers" with zero reproducible experiments get applauded and published with almost zero scrutiny. There were a few articles about it on HN as well.) All of that certainly doesn't help for the general public to have the right info. The public discourse about the capabilities of technology really needs a bit more conservative revisit that must temper expectations. Especially having in mind that a lot of technology actually can achieve much more than it does right now... but is stymied by politico-economical and social factors, like 90% of the time.