I was recently in a work meeting with some higher ups where we discussed the near-term future of AI. The idea that this is the interface revolution on-par with GUIs and the WWW was mentioned, and attributed to Bill Gates (I guess he must have talked about this recently). I've been dwelling on everyone's expectations for a few days and I see the hype cycle.

A good reason to consider "what if" is that it's still going to take a lot of effort to get from where we are to where expectations are. There's been many false starts recently: self-driving cars, 3D printing, VR/AR, crypto. 10 years on and they're all real technologies anyone can use and making progress every day, but the wild expectations hit reality. When we get there with AI (and we will, because expectations are a moving goalpost) it's good to have considered what we want to do about it. We don't want to waste years of resources on insurmountable roadblocks, we want ideas about why what worked before stopped and what easier paths forward might exist.

That is, I don't see many people downplaying AI but I do see people with lots of unanswerable questions about how long this current boom will last and where we'll wind up when it's over.