Comment by 6510

> I keep thinking of that, imagine teaching humans was all the hype

This is an interesting point.

It has been, of course, and in recent memory.

There was a smaller tech bubble around educational toys/raspberry pi/micro-bit/educational curricula/teaching computing that have burst (there's a great short interview where Pimoroni's founder talks to Alex Glow about how the hype era is fully behind them, the investment has gone and now everyone just has to make money).

There was a small tech bubble around things like Khan Academy and MMOCs, and the money has gone away there, too.

I do think there's evidence, given the scale of the money and the excitement, that VCs prefer the AI craze because humans are messy and awkward.

But I also think -- and I hesitate to say this because I recognise my own very obvious and currently nearly disabling neurodiversity -- that a lot of people in the tech industry are genuinely more interested in the idea of tech that thinks than they are about systems that involve multitudes of real people whose motivations, intentions etc. are harder to divine.

That the only industry that doesn't really punish neurodivergence generally and autism specifically should also be the industry that focusses its attention on programmable, consistent thinking machines perhaps shouldn't surprise us; it at least rhymes in a way we should recognise.