Comment by gritspants
7 hours ago
We can absolutely conceptualize what we want or need. I was born in 1980 in NYC. When I was a boy my father took me to a tech conference where they had a demo of ordering TV shows on demand. It was a miracle, to my young mind. Was this what I needed?
Growing up I had a friend group of misfit boys, who discovered h4ck1ng and phr34king. But we also discovered slackware Linux on 3.5" floppies. We also had to discover ASM and compiling the linux kernel in order to do anything with it. Boys with machines. That wasn't what I needed either.
Later on we did have great things with tech. Google made the world searchable in ways Altavista didn't. I remember strapping the original iPod on my arm to go for runs outside. I didn't even need a car for a while investors subsidized my Uber rides to and from the office.
Now, it seems the US is balanced on a precipice. The economy seems to have an incredible amount of money desperate to grow, but to what purpose. In my lifetime, and in my parents, and their parents before them, when the dollar becomes restless the flag goes forth. The dollar follows the flag.
And here we are at war.
You wouldn't have known about a TV had you not seen it. That is what I mean by, people generally can't conceptualize what they want or need until they see it.
Wants and needs are not the same. We are experiencing the difference in real time. AI does not give society a want or need.
My point was not about the difference, it was about the fact that average people cannot conceptualize new ideas until one person or team invents it, then the average person will want or need it.
As for AI, I and many others want it, and some even need it, in certain use cases. Speak for yourself.
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