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The Wikipedia analogy strikes true. Generally people are resistant to change and the average person will typically insist new technologies are pointless. Elec

The Wikipedia analogy strikes true. Generally people are resistant to change and the average person will typically insist new technologies are pointless. Electricity and the airplane were supposed to be useless and dangerous dead ends according to the common person: https://pessimistsarchive.org/ https://pessimistsarchive.org/ But we all like to think we have super unique opinions and personalities, so "this time it's different." When the change finally happens, people go about their lives as if they were right all along and the new technology is simply a mysterious and immutable fixture of reality that was always there.

toddmorey 2y ago
I don’t think that was the common person, nor do I think the common person today thinks AI will be useless.
wat10000 2y ago
People also thought the Segway was a useless dead end and they were right.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago
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- timcobb 2y ago
  Segway seems to have hardly been a dead end, or useless for that matter. Segway-style devices like the electric unicycle and many other light mobility devices seem to be direct descendants of the Segway. Segway introduced gyroscopes to the popular tech imagination, at least in my lifetime (not sure before).
  - wat10000 2y ago
    What other light mobility devices? E-bikes and scooters seem to be the big things and they’re not anything like a Segway descendant. A world where Segway never happened would be nearly indistinguishable from our own.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_scooter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_scooter Not the most popular, especially these days, but they are very much descended from Segways and have their own fans.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Smartphones introduced gyroscopes to popular tech (and no, people were imagining them before transistors), Segway had nothing to do with that.
bpfrh 2y ago
There is a vast difference between arguments like "Phones have been accused of ruining romantic interaction and addicting us to mindless chatter" and "current AI has problems generating accurate information and can't replace researching things by hand for complicated or niche topics and there is reason to believe that the current architecture may not solve this problem" That aside optimist are also not always right, otherwise we would have cold fusion already and have a base on mars.
rsynnott 2y ago
> But we all like to think we have super unique opinions and personalities, so "this time it's different." Are you suggesting that anything which is hyped is the future? Like, for every ten heavily-hyped things, _maybe_ one has some sort of post-hype existence.
coliveira 2y ago
The pessimist is not wrong. In fact he's right more frequently than wrong. Just look at a long list of inventions. How many of them were so successful as the car or the airplane? Most of them were just passing fads that people don't even remember anymore. So if you're asking who is smarter, I would say the pessimist is closer to the truth, but the optimist who believed in something that really became successful is now remembered by everyone.
- Ukv 2y ago
  I feel your argument relies on assuming that being an optimist or pessimist means believing 100% or 0%, whereas I'd claim it's instead more just having a relative leaning in a direction. Say after inspecting some rusty old engines a pessimist predicts 1/10 will still function and an optimist predicts 4/10 will function. If the engines do better than expected and 3/10 function, the optimist was closer to the truth despite most not working. Similarly, being optimistic doesn't mean you have to believe every single early-stage invention will work out no matter how unpromising - I've been enthusiastic about deep learning for the past decade (for its successes in language translation, audio transcription, material/product defect detection, weather forecasting/early warning systems, OCR, spam filtering, protein folding, tumor segmentation, spam filtering, drug discovery and interaction prediction, etc.) but never saw the appeal of NFTs. Additionally worth considering that the cost of trying something is often lower than the reward of it working out. Even if you were wrong 80% of the time about where to dig for gold, that 20% may well be worth it; reducing merely the frequency of errors is often not logically correct. It's useful in a society to have people believe in and push forward certain inventions and lines of research even if most do not work out. I think xvector's point is about people rehashing the same denunciations that failed to matter for previous successful technologies - the idea that something is useless because it's not (or perhaps will never be) 100.0% accurate, or the "Until it can do dishes, home computer remains of little value to families"[0] which I've seen pretty much ad verbatim for AI many times (extra silly now that we have dishwashers). Given in real life things have generally improved (standard of living, etc.), I think it has typically been more correct to be optimistic, and hopefully will be into the future. [0]: https://pessimistsarchive.org/clippings/34991885.jpg https://pessimistsarchive.org/clippings/34991885.jpg
jdbernard 2y ago
This argument is very prone to survivorship bias. Of course, when we think back to the hyped technologies of the past we are going to remember mostly those that justified the hype. The failures get forgotten. The memory of social discourse fades extremely quickly, much faster than, for example, pop culture or entertainment.

toddmorey 2y ago

I don’t think that was the common person, nor do I think the common person today thinks AI will be useless.

wat10000 2y ago

People also thought the Segway was a useless dead end and they were right.

oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
timcobb 2y ago
Segway seems to have hardly been a dead end, or useless for that matter. Segway-style devices like the electric unicycle and many other light mobility devices seem to be direct descendants of the Segway. Segway introduced gyroscopes to the popular tech imagination, at least in my lifetime (not sure before).
- wat10000 2y ago
  What other light mobility devices? E-bikes and scooters seem to be the big things and they’re not anything like a Segway descendant. A world where Segway never happened would be nearly indistinguishable from our own.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_scooter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_scooter Not the most popular, especially these days, but they are very much descended from Segways and have their own fans.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Smartphones introduced gyroscopes to popular tech (and no, people were imagining them before transistors), Segway had nothing to do with that.

bpfrh 2y ago

There is a vast difference between arguments like "Phones have been accused of ruining romantic interaction and addicting us to mindless chatter" and "current AI has problems generating accurate information and can't replace researching things by hand for complicated or niche topics and there is reason to believe that the current architecture may not solve this problem" That aside optimist are also not always right, otherwise we would have cold fusion already and have a base on mars.

rsynnott 2y ago

> But we all like to think we have super unique opinions and personalities, so "this time it's different." Are you suggesting that anything which is hyped is the future? Like, for every ten heavily-hyped things, _maybe_ one has some sort of post-hype existence.

coliveira 2y ago

The pessimist is not wrong. In fact he's right more frequently than wrong. Just look at a long list of inventions. How many of them were so successful as the car or the airplane? Most of them were just passing fads that people don't even remember anymore. So if you're asking who is smarter, I would say the pessimist is closer to the truth, but the optimist who believed in something that really became successful is now remembered by everyone.

Ukv 2y ago
I feel your argument relies on assuming that being an optimist or pessimist means believing 100% or 0%, whereas I'd claim it's instead more just having a relative leaning in a direction. Say after inspecting some rusty old engines a pessimist predicts 1/10 will still function and an optimist predicts 4/10 will function. If the engines do better than expected and 3/10 function, the optimist was closer to the truth despite most not working. Similarly, being optimistic doesn't mean you have to believe every single early-stage invention will work out no matter how unpromising - I've been enthusiastic about deep learning for the past decade (for its successes in language translation, audio transcription, material/product defect detection, weather forecasting/early warning systems, OCR, spam filtering, protein folding, tumor segmentation, spam filtering, drug discovery and interaction prediction, etc.) but never saw the appeal of NFTs. Additionally worth considering that the cost of trying something is often lower than the reward of it working out. Even if you were wrong 80% of the time about where to dig for gold, that 20% may well be worth it; reducing merely the frequency of errors is often not logically correct. It's useful in a society to have people believe in and push forward certain inventions and lines of research even if most do not work out. I think xvector's point is about people rehashing the same denunciations that failed to matter for previous successful technologies - the idea that something is useless because it's not (or perhaps will never be) 100.0% accurate, or the "Until it can do dishes, home computer remains of little value to families"[0] which I've seen pretty much ad verbatim for AI many times (extra silly now that we have dishwashers). Given in real life things have generally improved (standard of living, etc.), I think it has typically been more correct to be optimistic, and hopefully will be into the future. [0]: https://pessimistsarchive.org/clippings/34991885.jpg https://pessimistsarchive.org/clippings/34991885.jpg

jdbernard 2y ago

This argument is very prone to survivorship bias. Of course, when we think back to the hyped technologies of the past we are going to remember mostly those that justified the hype. The failures get forgotten. The memory of social discourse fades extremely quickly, much faster than, for example, pop culture or entertainment.