Jumbo Jet for the Mind
A tech founder recently one-upped Steve Jobs [jobs-bicycle] by describing AI as “like a jumbo jet for the mind” 1.
What does that mean? To me, Steve Jobs comment that “a computer is like a bicycle for the mind” was about improved intellectual efficiency. Over 30 years later, this is still a fantastic analogy.
But a jumbo jet isn’t efficient - the amount of energy it takes to move a human from point A to point B is astronomically higher if they were to take jumbo jet, than if they were to go by foot. So the human wins on energy efficiency there. The jumbo jet wins on time efficiency.
Did the founder mean that AI, like the jumbo jet, is flashy and powerful? Did he mean that AI, like the jumbo jet, will be managed and flown by large, faceless corporations paying bespoke operators?
Did he mean that AI will replace our need to actually think? Perhaps so, similar to how a piloted jumbo jet replaces all of our needs to know how to do anything more than 1. swipe a credit card, 2. sit in a chair.
Or is this an excessively cynical? That founder might have just been making a point about magnitude - the leap between walking and cycling was much smaller than the leap between cycling and flying through the air at the speed of sound. So that’s what AI is offering - the ability to stop walking with computers, and start flying…with AI.