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Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
21–30 of 377 posts
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#22There are plenty of companies making money. We are using several “AI powered” job aids that are leading to productivity gains and eliminating technical debt. We are licensing the product via subscription. Money is being made by the companies selling the products.
Example
https://specinnovations.com/blog/ai-tools-to-support-require...
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Is there somehow a glaring vulnerability/missed opportunity in modern capitalism that billions of people somehow haven't discovered yet? Absolutely with 150% certainty yes, and probably many. The www started April 30, 1993, facebook started February 4, 2004 - more than ten years until someone really worked out how to use the web as a social connection machine - an idea now so obvious in hindsight that everyone pro…
There's a lot that goes into it. Before Facebook was Friendster. Which failed spectacularly because they tried to have some sort of n-squared graph of friends that took thw whole thing down. What FB got right in the early days was it didn't crash. We take that for granted now in the age of cloud everything. Also, there was Classmates.com. A way for people to connect with old friends from high school. But it was a sub…
There's always a trail of competitors who almost got the magic formula right, but for some feature or luck or timing or money or something.
The giant win comes from many stars aligning. Luck is a factor - it's not everything but it plays a role - luck is the description of when everything fell into place at just the right time on top of hard work and cleverness and preparedness.
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Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead? That's what normal people might consider doing if they had a lot of money. The kind of people who actually seem to get really wealthy often have... other pursuits that are often not great for society.
Like building a rocket that can relocate us to another planet when shit hits the fan?
Like adjusting the algorithms of a social network such that far-right posts are shown to users more frequently.
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#25Counterpoint: those engineers who get paid millions to work on AI.
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead? That's what normal people might consider doing if they had a lot of money. The kind of people who actually seem to get really wealthy often have... other pursuits that are often not great for society.
Like building a rocket that can relocate us to another planet when shit hits the fan?
You mean like building rockets that commoditise space so that they can pollute even more, making things worth on Earth while relocating us to another planet is absolutely preposterous and will never be a thing?
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#27I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…
I have been doing the exact same thing with assets and also it has helped me immensely with mobile development.
I am also starting to get a feel for generating animated video and am planning to release a children’s series. It’s actually quite difficult to write a prompt that gets you exactly what you want. Hopefully that improves.
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead? That's what normal people might consider doing if they had a lot of money. The kind of people who actually seem to get really wealthy often have... other pursuits that are often not great for society.
Like building a rocket that can relocate us to another planet when shit hits the fan?
What makes you think we can survive on another planet when we can't figure out how to live sustainably in our natural habitat?
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#29I don't think most commenters have read the article. I can understand, it's rambly and a lot of it feels like they created a thesis first and then ham-fisted facts in later. But it's still worth the read for the last section which is a more nuanced take than the click-bait title suggests.
Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?
#30You can't make such generalized statements about anything in computing/business. The AI revolution has only just got started. We've barely worked out basic uses for it. No-one has yet worked out revolutionary new things that are made possible only by AI - mostly we are just shoveling in our existing world view.
The point though is AI wont make you rich. It is about value capture. They compare it to shipping containers.
I think AI value will mostly be spread. Open AI will be more like Godaddy than Apple. Trying to reduce prices and advertise (with a nice bit of dark patterns). It will make billions, but ultimately by competing its ass off rather than enjoying a moat.
The real moats might be in mineral mining, fabrication of chips etc. This may lead to strained relations between countries.