Comment by _wire_

>jaded in spite of astonishing progress

We've all seen something that looks amazing, but few seem to know what we're looking at.

I am unsettled by what I see as a division of thought between extolling AI's amazing effects on one hand and mysterious regards for how it works and its limits on the other.

Noting Arthur Clarke's dictum that 'technology can be sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic,' AI enthusiasm looks like a Feynman cargo cult.

But technology arousing magical thinking with little discussion of principle of operation and limits is common enough.

This was very much the case with arrival of personal computing: there's something the device is intended to do but most people aren't sure what that is. The devices crashed enough and went out of date so fast you felt ok for not understanding them.

It was even worse with the mobile+web as so much change happened so fast that a generation has been dumbstruck: look at USA politics.

I was looking at old episodes of the Computer Chronicles from early 90s on YT and by that time the show had close to a thousand episodes, but they could barely explain the significance of Windows 3.0 and the Pentium. As to what to expect from this stuff, they didn't even try it was mindless rambling and upsell interspersed with stern warnings from the Software Publishers Association that mucking with the code is a Federal offense. The show's guests all had something to sell with a half life of 3–6 months. For the Pentium episode they show a PC lab with nerds in Dockers (khaki pants) studiously examining how many fans it might take to keep a lanman server from overheating and crashing. Many were amazed by it all.

Also available on YT are old ATT videos, including an introduction to UNIX with Kernighan & Richie. The presentation entirely focuses on the power of the shell. They seemed much more reserved and competent in retrospect, but in its time they looked like a pure priesthood.

Maybe the arrival AI stuff is not so different from the arrival of personal computing?

But AI is basically just one app, and I get the feeling that the scene is far more enigmatic to the point that even the people building the kit don't really know why it does what it does, and no one seems to have a clear idea of what correct functioning means.