What surprises me is that people can't see this for what it is: early steps.
As an aside, the first steam engine was created by the Greeks 2000 years ago, but they just used it for toys. When Watt created the modern steam engine it had 0.7 horsepower. He actually invented the term horsepower as a marketing term because his engine was so underpowered. An actual horse produces 14 horsepower, but he adjusted for how long a horse needs to sleep and and rest and came up with 1 horsepower. His first production engine had 5 horsepower.
If hackers had existed in the 18th century I would have expected them to see the promise of engines replacing horses even though engines were less powerful at the time, not say "engines are basically smoke and mirrors right now".
It could be that I'm wrong, and we're at the Greek stage, where humanoids are at a false start, just toys, and the real thing is 2000 years away. But the lack of optimism surprises me.
People now understood that the vast majority of productivity boosting technologies benefited a few % of people at the top, while the rest of use still basically live like in the 70s, except we work longer, have worse job security, can't buy houses, &c.
"Automation will free us from work", "Your car will drive itself in two years", "owning a car will cut your commute time in half", "LLMs will bring UBI", "Robots will fold your clothes so you can spend time on your family", fool me once...
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/...
