alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure I grasp the analogy to the invention of calculus. Calculus helped us solve new and interesting math/physics problems. Repeated for emphasis: helped *us* solve.
This technology is solving interesting math/physics problems for us, which is completely different.
Before the discovery of the fundamental theorem of calculus, enormous ingenuity and whole careers were spent doing calculations which the fundamental theorem trivialized. To be clear, I'm not just saying that the people involved were doing lots of mechanical arithmetic (though they did that, too). I'm saying they did creative, inspired, nontrivial mathematics to calculate certain things, all of which was then trivialized and made obsolete by the fundamental theorem of calculus.