• @shutz@lemmy.ca
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    1671 day ago

    Faraday, after demonstrating how moving a magnet through a coiled wire induced a current in the wire was asked by a visiting statesman what was the use of this.

    Faraday responded, “In twenty years, you will be taxing it”

    Similarly, at a demonstration of hot air balloons in France, Benjamin Franklin was asked “Of what use is this?”

    Franklin replied, “Of what use is a newborn baby?”

    • @GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      1211 hours ago

      “Mr. Franklin, of what use is this hot air balloon contraption?”

      “You can take ladies up in it with a bottle of wine and a blanket and you know, they can’t refuse, because of the implication. Think about it. She’s floating up in the middle of the sky with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around, and what does she see? Nothing but open air. 'Ahhhh! There’s nowhere for me to run. What am I gonna do, say ‘no?’”

        • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          I agree. But don’t really care if people use it, I just cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.

      • @Saleh@feddit.org
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        710 hours ago

        The problem isn’t the “AI”. It is people praising its babbling as the solution for everything.

      • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.

        The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.

        Radio was a fundamental force that always existed around us, we learned to use it the way our ancestors used rivers and waters to move goods and people. AI is completely human-made and doesn’t exist without human engineering, so it’s not neutral, it’s a tool shaped by man to do whatever a man wants with it.

      • @gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        812 hours ago

        Funnily enough, Faraday seemingly also understood that the Electric Field only possesses a potential in the absence of changing magnetic fields. Because only in the absence of changing magnetic fields, the rotation of the Electric Field is zero, and only then it has a potential.