Twenty years ago, some savvy engineers created the Rumba. It's a kind of annoying overpriced vacuum cleaner, but you can at least see the edges of a useful appliance.
Ten years ago, everyone was smelling their own farts about the advent of autonomous taxis. And, idk, we can at least pretend we're in the ballpark right now.
Today, it's noticeable how AI feels like a surrender on actual autonomous machines. Like, the idea of doing actual robotics is out the window. We're only going to spend our money on a solved problem - data processing - and see what we can wring out of it.
I do wonder what this will mean in another ten or twenty years.
