Hank: like the telegraph, AI will be a very big deal with impacts much weirder than we think (2025)
prediction · status: unresolved · last event: repeated (2026-04-24) · owner: Hank
In October 2025 Hank compared AI to the telegraph: a very big deal with impacts much weirder than we think. In April 2026 he repeated that AI is a big deal that will change a lot of things.
About: artificial intelligence, telegraphy
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-10-17 | predicted | Hank says that, like the telegraph, AI will be a very big deal with impacts much weirder than we think. | We Never Know What Anything Means 00:03:33 |
| 2026-04-24 | repeated | Hank thinks AI is a big deal that is going to change a lot of things. | The AI Question that No AI Person Asks 00:00:00 |
What is said about it
4 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank learned from the episode that passenger pigeons could not have gone extinct without the telegraph. — 00:01:03
- 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank: Once the telegraph spread across the eastern US, people sent word of where the birds were and hunted them en masse; with canning and rail reaching distant markets, this did the passenger pigeon in. — 00:01:41
- 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank says nobody who created the telegraph imagined its effect on passenger pigeons; their ideas about how it would change the world were short-term, and the bird question was an idea not being had. — 00:02:05
- 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank says the telegraph also awakened global awareness, extended our circle of care, required the first digital encoding system, and may have helped create the very idea of humanity. — 00:04:35