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Comment by RandomLensman | Hacker News Reader

There is no doubt that some leading AI proponents in the 1960s were overconfident.

This is exactly the point. The pessimists get the pedantic thrill of pointing out that, 60 years ago, some proponents were overconfident. But they neglect to notice the larger picture, which is one of extraordinary progress. They'll be sitting in the passenger seat of a self-driving car, arranging their travel itinerary with a chatbot fluent in English and 60 other languages, and smugly commenting on HackerNews about how "AI pessimists got it right in the 60s."

Lots of progress in some areas, very little in others. Neither the pessimists nor the optimists got it right.

(Btw., a really hardened pessimist might even say your example is mostly things that were doable when there were not many computers around at all... taxi driver to drive you, a secretary to book a flight, meet in a club to discuss things, ...)

To me, if artificial intelligence means anything, it means automating mundane tasks -- most of which humans can accomplish already. If someone tells me they're an AI pessimist because they think automating tasks like "converse intelligently about nearly any subject at length" and "drive my car anywhere while I sleep in the back" isn't an impressive AI achievement, then I think our disagreement pertains to our ambitions for the field, and lies outside the realm of the technical.

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