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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

#41

Post by opportune »

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…

Big data and AV were overhyped buzzwords at the time, but they’re both actual technology that are slowly reaching normalcy.

Plenty of people are using Spark and Databricks, plenty of people are using more abstracted products like Bigquery. No, people developed the good sense not to try to run clusters of janky and poorly documented Apache big data software as if it were “free” (except in maintenance… and bugs… and lack of feature support…) but big data is absolutely a thing. It’s just lost its buzzwordiness in the same way Web 2.0 has.

I’m actually surprised that the AV hype has died down so much because there are actual L5 AV products (Waymo, Cruise) regular people (in SF) can use now. We’re in like the original iPhone stage. They’re having their moment.

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

#42

Post by wussboy »

Animats wrote: post #34

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 an…

> VR is stuck because the headgear remains clunky

It could be stuck for more than one reason. I would find VR repugnant even if it were as easy to wear as a contact lens.

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

#43

Post by kaashif »

tonypags wrote: post #25
HPsquared wrote: post #6

What does he mean by "bad"? What would a "good" tech economy look like? Hard to define. Easy to misinterpret and argue over our different understandings of what he meant.

I would define a "bad" company as one that puts profits over people. People includes customers (incl b2b) and employees. A "good" company is one that realizes treating people with respect is a long-term profit driver.

The way you've phrased that, the good companies still put profit first, it's just that they have a different strategy - treating people well to build loyalty etc.

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

#44

Post by Minor49er »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #12
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…

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

What is being stolen, exactly?

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #9
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#46

Post by autokad »

SmoothBrain12 wrote: post #14
softwaredoug wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well "Internet" went through its own boom and bust crash during the dotcom era. With lots of dumb money chasing dumb investments. My hypothesis would be that cycle is going to be very heavily accelerated due to the current economy. Many companies aren't operating from a position of strength, but more of desperation. Some tiny few will do well. Many announcing their "AI thing" suddenly becoming AI companies overnight…

Your thoughts are valid. AI.com is the Pets.com of this generation

We are in a 2nd bigger 'tech' bubble. I hear lots of funny thing said about the era and now' "today is nothing like the dot com bubble, pets.com ... PETS DOT COM!". and I am like, pets.com had a max valuation of 400 million for like a hot minute. Today we have over 1,000 never made a profit tech unicorns. One thousand companies with a market cap of 1 billion+ that has never (and probably never will) made a profit.

"you just got to find a company with a strong balance sheet, one that makes money, one that sells the shovels". Had you invested your money in CISCO back then, you'd still be in the red over 23 years later.

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

#47

Post by josh_cutler »

oh_sigh wrote: post #39
demondemidi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

C3 IOT I'm guessing

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

#48

Post by raincole »

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…

Yes because the past data is so good to predict the future.

I guess technical analysis isn't that bad!

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

#49

Post by ahhfhando6698 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #33
softwaredoug wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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

#50

Post by winternett »

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…

In shot form -- The same people that heavily marketed Crypto and NFTs (Which didn't work as promised) are now the same people over-marketing deeply flawed Ai tools for monthly subscriptions.

You can literally develop a front end for an Ai tool and connect it to a social media scraping back-end service in a day, and then hide it behind a subscription pay wall. This is what is driving the flood of tools right now, not well thought out and unique truly Artificial Intelligence-driven projects.

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