I'm not sure why the author thinks parallel processing is a dead end. Most modern supercomputers rely on parallel processing to crunch the data.
VR and AI were overhyped and have not grown as fast as expected, but are still being developed and implemented.
They need to offer more VR programs. I for one would by one if I could use it to visit various locations and places. I'd like to walk down a road in Sicily and down to the beach and into a church for example, or so many other virtual tours.
The article has a lot of interesting facts but off base in enough parts that it casts doubt on some of the info that actually is mostly accurate.
AI is being developed and used so extensively that Global Warmists are now concerned about the amount of energy that is being used building AI models. “electric power use by companies on their AI systems is doubling every 3.4 months. Leading AI companies include vociferously green companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon.”
And Virtual Reality is moving along at a very fast clip as well. I just bought a goofy little 360 camera for $59 to construct a “virtual tour” of the house we will be selling this summer. The videos that it takes are basically crap, and the stills are grainy in the shadows, but you can stick the phone in a goggle type holder that now costs less than $20 and as you move your head around you can see everything in the room you photographed in every direction, up, down, and all around. You can just upload your fresh unedited pictures or video to “the cloud” and share them with all your friends or customers.
I also “had to buy” an adapter for my DSLR camera/camcorder yesterday. My wife gives history presentations at museums and other venues, of course they were all canceled in the last few month because of Covid. Now they all want the presentations in a “virtual” format. The $30 adapter I purchased converts the HDMI output of the camera to a USB input that works the video conferencing software that our “customers” are using so that the image quality will be better than a phone or laptop camera. I already had a better quality HDMI video capture device but it wasn't compatible with the software that the museums and other facilities that we are working with are currently using.
I don't know if I would categorize video conferencing software as Virtual Reality, but that is how the museums and other venues characterize it. Personally I think that it is stupid, but it is what it is, and we have to go along with it if my wife wants to continue doing what she does. The following link is to her first upcoming coming presentation on July 9th. The Museum of Flight in Seattle is currently closed so this is about all that patrons have to look forward to... kind of lame at best... she normally uses live models in the large theater. But we will see how it all turns out.
https://www.museumofflight.org/Plan-Your-Visit/Calendar-of-Events/6173/beauty-and-duty-wwii-edition
If AI is truly dead, IBM and a whole bunch of others got some ‘splainin’ to do.