When I try to explain it to friends, family, and even technical colleagues the result is consistently eyes glazed over.
I've succeeded in getting them excited about other things but this one has proven difficult.
Is it something that people at large don't "get" yet?
Is the singularity upon us? ;)
1- The magnitude of the leap (in technical terms)
2- Its implication for Culture/Economy/Society
Concerning the first point (magnitude of the leap) :
- Friends, family often don't fully understand even how normal computer software work. So they don't have a "mental model” of what a computer can/can't do. As long as it is not 100% quality (like those Stable Diffusion ET hands) they will find a reason to laugh at you.
- Technical colleagues, even Top AI specialists, still view deep learning as a dark art. And it is really difficult to qualify it with terms like "intelligence" and such. So discussions get very muddy.
Concerning the second point (implications) :
- This is just a usual failure of the imagination. How many were impressed by the "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968 ? You tell me.
- For some, it could also be a "psychological repression" as a way to deal with those implications.
AI art tools will go the same route. First decried and ignored, then slowly adopted, and finally expected and relied upon.