People who say that AI or fusion is impossible because we haven’t managed to do it yet after 50 or 60 years of trying — well, they are very ignorant of history.

A nearly two thousand year span separates the construction of the first primitive steam engines from the first industrial use.

Also the same vast span of time separates geometry and algebra from the concepts of analytic geometry.

There are dozens of examples if one cares to look.

Because something doesn’t happen the moment someone thinks it might be possible means nothing. For AI and fusion, I wouldn’t be surprised if they take one or two thousands years. I don’t expect that, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

That’s how history has moved in the past, after all.