OG computer graphics are always amazing to me. I'm convinced software and hardware both would be entire generations behind where it is without the contributions made for early animation and computer graphics.
Look at NVIDIA. They pretty much just lucked out that the same architectures would be useful for machine learning and "artificial intelligence" in it's initial iteration, but the entire company was founded on computer graphics.
This is not quite right. They did not see AI coming, but Nvidia invested in „compute“ very early on. The current market value is a result of two decades of continually pursuing that vision and executing competently.
Look at NVIDIA. They pretty much just lucked out that the same architectures would be useful for machine learning and "artificial intelligence" in it's initial iteration, but the entire company was founded on computer graphics.