> Just that it really isn't so different than the printing press.
The part that makes the goals of the AI crowd an entirely different beast from things like the printing press is that the printing press doesn't think for anyone. It just lets people reproduce their own thoughts more widely.
The printing press lets people reproduce other people's thoughts more widely. As to reproducing your own thoughts more widely, this is why I was describing a cultural "canon" as being the foundation upon which new ideas can be built. In the AI world, the "new" idea is effectively just the prompt (and iterative direction); everything else is a remix of the canon. But pre-AI, in order for anyone to understand your new idea, you had to mix it into the existing canon as well.
Edit: to be abundantly clear, I'm not exactly hoping AI can do very well. It seems like it's going to excel at automating the parts of software development that I legitimately enjoy. I think that's also true for other creator-class jobs that it threatens.
The part that makes the goals of the AI crowd an entirely different beast from things like the printing press is that the printing press doesn't think for anyone. It just lets people reproduce their own thoughts more widely.