I think people underestimate the intrinsic computational complexity in solving even relatively simple pattern recognition tasks. There are also all sorts of algorithms where you do a heuristic search through some big space and it's particularly interesting to note that a lot of programs for finding proofs or optimizing code are in this class. Anybody who thinks computers today are fast doesn't write enough code.

I have an intuition this particular tech(or related) is going to advance us to the next exponentiating phase of a stacked sigmoid advancement curve that eventually leads to ai.