The most obvious kinship between 20th-century dial-up and 21st-century AI is one of look and feel. Since my first encounter with ChatGPT, interacting with the service reminded me of dialing into a BBS... You can even see an AI chatbot's answers arrive character by character, as if you were using a 1200-baud modem.
AI's often plodding performance has less to do with the speed of your internet connection than the fact that it's pulling off astonishing computational magic that taxes even the supercomputers it runs on.
The technology's delayed gratification (or lack of gratification) reminds me of the days when I sometimes decided against doing something online, simply because the payoff wasn't worth the wait.
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