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To me the analogy is that generic AI techniques with minimal problem domain specific adaptations is providing huge boosts in efficiency on a wide variety of applications. It’s like the steam engine causing mechanical work to become vastly more efficient. AI in many ways is doing the same thing to intellectual work.

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The long-anticipated "mental gym" industry! Where people pay to exercise their atrophied mental muscles the same way they exercise their barely-needed physical muscles now.

With all the associated bullshit and snake oil and romanticizing of the "good old natty days" too, of course.

Big $$$ industry, at least until our brave future does away with voluntary reproduction altogether, being the reason people bother to exercise in the first place.

What are all video games if not mental gyms?

mental cake and junk food

I don't think this analogy works. You spend energy (just a different kind) playing games.

Not everybody is playing factorio or caves of qud. A lot of people are doing color match and fetch quests. It's about as mentally engaging as walking.

you say this as if walking didn’t have plenty of cognitive benefits

I meant the cognitive load of ambulation itself. Not the self reflection time or exercise.

I do hope people choose a nice walk over color match games.

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