In his recent post on X, Andrej Karpathy uses the funnel as an analogy for the AI understanding gap — that gap being largely one of scale in terms of population exposure to the models. The same analogy also helps illustrate the cost and benefit gaps, the inverted nature of which are colliding with popular acceptance of AI.
As shown in the exhibits below, this same model can be applied to the benefit and cost gaps experienced by the same populations.
I think it’s important to understand that the popular adoption, or uptake, of this technology will depend on the actual benefits and costs to the larger population — as they see them. The current pitch from the hyperscalers is that the benefits will come “in the future,” so just wait, while the majority of the world enjoys higher electricity bills and the destabilizing effects of rogue agents and AI-generated propaganda.
