Moore's Law for Everything
<i>In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice.</i><p>Aside from the other points, taking &quot;AI&quot; as it exists in it&#x27;s present form (deep neural networks and related) as specifically the bringer of unlimited wealth certainly puffs up the various &quot;AI companies&quot; notably OpenAI (It should be noted that OpenAI&#x27;s most famous product, GPT-3, can generate strings that sound a lot like legal or medical advice but it so far &quot;demonstrates non-understanding on a regular basis&quot;. Don&#x27;t follow it&#x27;s advice to kill yourself, for example).<p>It really should be said that deep learning, in particular, is still just one technology that&#x27;s very good at some things, kind of impressive but not functional at other things, and just unable to do other things (actual understanding of biology, for example, seems well beyond them). I don&#x27;t think this situation has changed since deep learning began it&#x27;s hype cycle (which isn&#x27;t to say it&#x27;s &quot;nothing&quot;, it just doesn&#x27;t seem like to bring us &quot;everything&quot;, a scenario the article literally sketches).<p>Automation has proceeded apace, automation in general has brought us enough resources right now to give minimal comfort to most people in the planet (as people have noted).<p>But automation has generally succeeded in situations where everything is controlled - ie, factories. Self-driving cars are forever five years away given the 5% or 1% or whatever level of unpredictable variable involved. Progress on robots that can interact well with either humans or &quot;the messy real world&quot; even in very limited terms has been painfully slow and I expect this to continue.