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The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

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Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#31

Post by nologic01 »

People have short memories. A few years ago hypes like big data and machine learning, blockchain and autonomous cars were pushed relentlessly. The consultants would confidently predict 300 gazillion profits by 2030, everybody would lose their job etc.

Then the pandemic happened, momentarily some candid voices admitted that all this digi-crap does not help an iota with our quality of life (or life, period) but the digital WFH hype found just the right meme to sell.

Then the pandemic receded but the LLM breakthrough was compiled just-in-time to rekindle the AGI hyperventilation...

There is no respite. The tech economy is like the fabled sharks: needs to keep inventing hypes or it will implode.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#32

Post by kaashif »

lalaithion wrote: post #26
KittenInABox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, despite having less jobs and lower salaries, many countries of europe tend to have less signs of poverty: women are less likely to die in childbirth, there's less gun violence, less homeless and child hunger...

The US has half the homelessness rate of the UK or France. Childbirth is due to lack of universal health care and gun violence is due to the massive number of guns – not the tech economy.

That might be right, but bear in mind the UK counts temporarily housed people (e.g. people couch surfing) as homeless, not just people literally on the streets. These stats may not be directly comparable.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#33

Post by denton-scratch »

softwaredoug wrote: post #7
luma wrote: post #3

Not really sure what exactly the author is getting at but let's be real: the IT industry is awash with investor dollars hoping to fund the next facebook. AI enters and it starts doing actual, useful work, and now there are a zillion VCs dumping out their wallets trying to get a piece of the next facebook. None of this means that AI is dumb, rather, VCs are dumb and will chase literally anything that smells like money…

Independent of the "real" value of AI My argument would be the sudden pivot of EVERYONE to AI is more indicative of a lack of good prospects for investments, rather than companies actually discovering products users want and like. Of course there's real value, but I'd believe the hype more in a strong tech economy, and am distrustful of every company becoming an AI expert overnight in our current weak tech economy.

> indicative of a lack of good prospects for investments

This is what it looks like to me, too. Also, all the money that poured into "crypto" enterprises and schemes. People are inventing $THING_TO_INVEST_IN out of nothing, and capital piles in.

I'm no economist, but this seems like the result of there being too much investor money chasing too few investment opportunities. Why's there too much money? I'd speculate that QE caused this.

I've always thought that QE was nuts; the present global inflation scenario was entirely predictable.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#34

Post by Animats »

There was a desperate attempt to find something, anything, which was a "must have" item. This fueled the VR boom of 2019 and the metaverse boom of 2021. Both sort of worked technically but turned out to not be that compelling. It's not yet clear how the "AI" boom works out.

It may just be too soon. VR is stuck because the headgear remains clunky. The metaverse is stuck because the initial implementations were crap and you need a serious gamer PC to really make it work. AI is now running into the problem that large language models are expensive enough to run that they can't be ad-supported. All three may pay off as the technology progresses.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#35

Post by GreedClarifies »

lelanthran wrote: post #17
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And i wouldn't even say VCs are dumb because they keep hitting success chasing that money. It's why they have this money to throw around. The labor market is USD$144 trillion worldwide in salary. Automate a fraction of a percentage of the worldwide labor? You have a company with more annual revenue than Apple. Is it that hard to understand? Can people not think of scenarios where the current generation of AI may be a…

> The labor market is USD$144 trillion worldwide in salary. Automate a fraction of a percentage of the worldwide labor? You have a company with more annual revenue than Apple. What makes you think that AI/LLM tech is going to result in a single winner? That revenue might be split between a few hundred thousand companies. Unlike the product from the current tech giants, there is no network effect AI stacks, there is n…

I don't think that's why Google sat on it. My guess is that it was hubris of the key researchers. They all had these castles in the sky of how it was "supposed to work" and then all that is required for quite powerful systems is scaling.

Only Ilya seemed to lack hubris and followed the path of scaling.

As for their being no moat, we don't know that. We are seeing a number of attempts at replicating GPT3/4 and there has been some success which is indicative that there is no moat, but this is a really new field.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#36

Post by VoodooJuJu »

theLiminator wrote: post #5
luma wrote: post #3

Not really sure what exactly the author is getting at but let's be real: the IT industry is awash with investor dollars hoping to fund the next facebook. AI enters and it starts doing actual, useful work, and now there are a zillion VCs dumping out their wallets trying to get a piece of the next facebook. None of this means that AI is dumb, rather, VCs are dumb and will chase literally anything that smells like money…

Are they dumb or are they good at investing in stuff on very favorable terms for them and then pumping and dumping their portfolio of hype companies on the unsuspecting masses at a major premium to their initial investment?

Can be both dumb and "good" at investing.

>If you're so rich, why aren't you so smart?

This is a question I wish people would ask more often, but instead, determinism has people associating wealth with merit, and even worse, absence of wealth with absence of merit.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#37

Post by demondemidi »

nologic01 wrote: post #31

People have short memories. A few years ago hypes like big data and machine learning, blockchain and autonomous cars were pushed relentlessly . The consultants would confidently predict 300 gazillion profits by 2030, everybody would lose their job etc. Then the pandemic happened, momentarily some candid voices admitted that all this digi-crap does not help an iota with our quality of life (or life, period) but the di…

If I had a dime for every conference I went to from 20010-2015 that said "IoT will be a 20 trillion dollar market in 10 years", I'd be retired.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#38

Post by waffletower »

afpx wrote: post #30
pluto_modadic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if they can keep training from the commons and stealing other people's work.

Pretty soon, we'll be forced to wear glasses so that companies get revenue when we look at something copyrighted. I understand copyright holder's complaints. Maybe we can meet in the middle - reduce copyright to 5-10 years.

Indeed, the current trajectory of discrediting the public domain leads towards a pay-per-thought society.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#39

Post by oh_sigh »

demondemidi wrote: post #37
nologic01 wrote: post #31

People have short memories. A few years ago hypes like big data and machine learning, blockchain and autonomous cars were pushed relentlessly . The consultants would confidently predict 300 gazillion profits by 2030, everybody would lose their job etc. Then the pandemic happened, momentarily some candid voices admitted that all this digi-crap does not help an iota with our quality of life (or life, period) but the di…

If I had a dime for every conference I went to from 20010-2015 that said "IoT will be a 20 trillion dollar market in 10 years", I'd be retired.

I can't remember the name of the company, but they sponsor CPR(Colorado-area NPR affiliate), but they went from being "an IoT company", to "an IoT blockchain company", to an "IoT blockchain with AI" company.

Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy

#40

Post by autokad »

nologic01 wrote: post #31

People have short memories. A few years ago hypes like big data and machine learning, blockchain and autonomous cars were pushed relentlessly . The consultants would confidently predict 300 gazillion profits by 2030, everybody would lose their job etc. Then the pandemic happened, momentarily some candid voices admitted that all this digi-crap does not help an iota with our quality of life (or life, period) but the di…

I think you got your timeline a bit mixed up. the EV and blockchain craze happened during and BECAUSE of the pandemic. It was the rise of inflation that brought everything down starting in February of 2021. (yes, blockchain had a previous bubble, but that ended in 2018).

This is why bitcoin and the nasdaq both peaked in December 2021. But those EV spacs were already in a world of hurt since Feb.

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