Can you imagine explaining to someone from the 1800s that we've created a fully generative virtual world experience and the demo was "painting a wall blue"
There's an old documentary where a film crew transported some of those "uncontacted tribe" guys to central London. Rather than being in awe of jet engines or networked internet, the tribesmen guys spent most of their time admiring house construction. "You're telling me there's METAL inside these walls?" I guess we tend to appreciate what we can understand.
The documentary is real. I don't remember a house construction scene but it's been over 10 years since I watched it. It's not an uncontacted tribe, but tribes from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
Reading works of early computer scientists (mathematicians?) like Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing it seems to me that they would be a lot less surprised than some current observers. The idea of artificial mind comes up a lot and they weren't witness to 30 years of slow and uninspiring NLP developments.
