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Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

cacm.acm.org

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Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#21

Post by SubiculumCode »

dgfitz wrote: post #13
gopalv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end Tractors and farming. By turning what is traditionally a labour intensive product into a capital intensive one. For now, the farmers who own tractors will beat the farmers who need to hire, house and retain workers (or half a dozen children). This goes well for quite some time, where you can have 3 people handle acres & acres. I'll b…

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that, largely, farmers do not own their equipment. They lease it, and it costs a lot. Edit: Also, 3 people can handle 100 acres of land, given the crop. That happens today.

depends on the crop. Strawberries? No. Wheat, yes.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#22

Post by nyrikki »

Animats wrote: post #19
nyrikki wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite incorrect, even smaller colleges like in Greeley Colorado had Symbolics machines and there are threads of Expert Systems all throughout the industry. The industry as a whole was smaller though. The word sense disambiguation problem did kill a lot of it pretty quickly though.

Threads, yes. We had one Symbolics 3600, the infamous refrigerator-sized personal computer, at the aerospace company. But it wasn't worth the trouble. Real work was done with Franz LISP on a VAX and then on Sun workstations. There were a lot of places that tried a bit of '80s "AI", but didn't accomplish much.

2/3 of the fortune 100 companies used Expert Systems in their daily operations and knowledge bases survived.

I don't know how that can be dismissed as nothing.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#23

Post by svara »

dgfitz wrote: post #3
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #2

every other article these days on this site is about AI. And it's incredibly tedious and annoying. Isn't it enough that clueless marketers who get their Tech knowledge from businessinsider and bloomberg are constantly harping on about AI. Seems we as a community have resigned or given up in this battle against common sense. Maybe long ago. Still there should be some form of moderation penalizing these shill posts tha…

Nah, it’s not just you. AI is really neat. I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. At least crypto cashed out on NFTs for a while.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end.

What issues do you see?

I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent.

I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon.

Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're coming from.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#24

Post by dgfitz »

svara wrote: post #23
dgfitz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it’s not just you. AI is really neat. I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. At least crypto cashed out on NFTs for a while.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. What issues do you see? I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent. I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon. Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're co…

I feel like the raw numbers kind of indicate that the amount of money spent on training, salary, and overhead doesn't add up. "We'll beat them in volume" keeps jumping out at me.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#25

Post by dgfitz »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #21
dgfitz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that, largely, farmers do not own their equipment. They lease it, and it costs a lot. Edit: Also, 3 people can handle 100 acres of land, given the crop. That happens today.

depends on the crop. Strawberries? No. Wheat, yes.

Sure does. I agree. Crop-type wasn't specified.

Edit: Crop-type was specified, I was incorrect.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#26

Post by tdeck »

svara wrote: post #23
dgfitz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it’s not just you. AI is really neat. I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. At least crypto cashed out on NFTs for a while.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. What issues do you see? I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent. I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon. Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're co…

What you're paying for ChatGPT is not likely covering their expenses, let alone making up their massive R&D investment. People paid for Sprig and Munchery too, but those companies went out of business. Obviously what they developed wasn't nearly as significant as what OpenAI has developed, but the question is: where will their pricing land once they need to turn a profit? It may well end up in a place where it's not worth paying ChatGPT to do most of the things it would be transformative for at its current price.

[1]: https://www.fooddive.com/news/sprig-is-the-latest-meal-deliv...

[2]:https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/21/munchery-shuts-down/?gucco...

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#27

Post by goatlover »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #20
gorjusborg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's you. Not just him. > But it's a major focus of the industry right now, involving a genuinely novel and promising new class of tools, so the posts belong here and the high engagement that props them up seems expected. In your opinion (and admittedly others), but that doesn't make the overhype any less tiresome. Yes it is novel technology, but there's alway novel technology, and it isn't all in one area, but you…

I don't know about the professional professionals, but as a science professor, I have to wear a lot of hats, which has required me to gain skills in a multitude of areas outside my area of deep expertise. I use Claude and Chatgpt EVERY DAY. Those services help me run out scripts for data munging, etc etc very quickly. I don't use it for high expertise writing, as I find it takes more than I get back, but I do use it…

Personal anecdotes on the benefits of using LLMs don't address complaints about tedious articles over-marketing AI tech. That LLMs provide benefits is well known at this point, it doesn't mean we can't recognize the latest hype cycle for what it is. There's a long list of previous technologies that were going to "change everything".

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#28

Post by tomrod »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #12
auggierose wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a CACM article. Without having read this one, I'd say CACM articles on HN are absolutely appropriate.

that's not really a justification in my view. The entire education industry is complicit in this circus. It's not just engineers hoping to get a payday it's academics too that are hoping to get funding and tenure. CACM was totally complicit in spreading the blockchain hype: https://cacm.acm.org/?s=blockchain That said, I'm not hating the player, people gotta eat. But I totally lack appreciation for the game.

I've worked in the analytics space for over ten years building what today is called "AI" as a service or product. The hype seems more like pent up release for the valid stuff, and block chain for the tech marketer type stuff.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#29

Post by jchw »

swatcoder wrote: post #9
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #2

every other article these days on this site is about AI. And it's incredibly tedious and annoying. Isn't it enough that clueless marketers who get their Tech knowledge from businessinsider and bloomberg are constantly harping on about AI. Seems we as a community have resigned or given up in this battle against common sense. Maybe long ago. Still there should be some form of moderation penalizing these shill posts tha…

It's you. The AI discussions can indeed be repetitive and tiresome here, especially for regulars, but they already seem to be downweighted and clear off the front page quite fast. But it's a major focus of the industry right now, involving a genuinely novel and promising new class of tools, so the posts belong here and the high engagement that props them up seems expected.

> It's you.

I disagree.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#30

Post by goatlover »

svara wrote: post #23
dgfitz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it’s not just you. AI is really neat. I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. At least crypto cashed out on NFTs for a while.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. What issues do you see? I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent. I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon. Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're co…

Question is whether these companies are profitable off the services they're providing, or still being propped up by all the VC money pouring in.
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