Todays scraps are yesterdays state-of-the-art, and that's very logical and applies to far more than just AI applications. It's the way research and development result in products and the subsequent optimization. This has been true since the dawn of time in one form or another. At some point stone tools were high tech and next to affordably. Then it was bronze, then iron, and at some point we finally hit steam power. From there to the industrial revolution was a relatively short span and from there to electricity, electronics, solid state, computers, personal computers, mobile phones, smartphones and so on in ever decreasing steps.
If anything the steps are now so closely following each other that we have far more trouble tracking the societal changes and dealing with them than that we have a problem with the lag between technological advancement and its eventual commoditization.
If anything the steps are now so closely following each other that we have far more trouble tracking the societal changes and dealing with them than that we have a problem with the lag between technological advancement and its eventual commoditization.