1.) definite improvements
2.) and engineering inefficiencies that are economically difficult to overcome.
A mindless analogy would be fixed wing aircraft with engines vs. wings that flap. And hey, maybe we end up with flapping wings on commercial aircraft at some point, so who knows!
Day one of Intro to CE had a slide that is burned into my brain:
Engineering = Physics + Economics
Improvements can be had in directions we’re not even thinking about and possibly that spark in artificiality that brings it to life in the self autonomous way. I could see that becoming a bad path for us…
Engineering inefficiencies will arise when it’s used for the wrong thing and that’s happening a lot when a ton of money is poured in new tools that are used without being properly understood.
It's a pretty old argument, and a little unfair. The better comparison would be between between bird's wings and drone's rotors, and even then if you wanted to compare an owl's agility at swooping and landing on branches to that of a drone, rotors aren't serving as well as flappy wings.
For sure, in terms of transatlantic flight and carrying capacity, fixed-wing all the way. But for neural networks, a lot of what's useful isn't doing things that are altogether different from what humans do, just automated and faster.