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> Some people think artificial intelligence will be the most important technology of the 21st century. I don’t, I think a workable fusion reactor will be the most important technology of the 21st century.
The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…
Odd way to describe ChatGPT which has >1B users.
AI overviews have rolled out to ~3B users, Gemini has ~200M users, etc.
Adoption is far from low.
The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…
Where's the business value? Right now it doesn't really exist, adoption is low to nonexistent outside of programming and even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers. I have a friend who works at PwC doing M&A. This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. PwC has an internal AI chat implementation. Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of progr…
Perhaps worth remembering that 'over-enthusiasm' for new technologies dates back to (at least) canal-mania: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Revolutions_and_... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Mania
Most new tech is like that - a period of mania, followed by a long tail of actual adoption where the world quietly changes
Every financial bubble has moments where, looking back, one thinks: How did any sentient person miss the signs?
The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…
In the last few months, every single non-programmer friend I've met has ChatGPT installed on their phone (N>10).
Out of all the people that I know enough to ask if they have ChatGPT installed, there is only one who doesn't have it (my dad).
I don't know how many of them are paying customers though. IIRC one of them was using ChatGPT to translate academic writing so I assume he has pro.
The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…
Have you ever used an LLM? I use it every day to help me with research and completing technical reports (which used to be a lot more of my time).
Of course you can't just use it blindly, but it definitely adds value.
I don't think it'll contract. The people dumping their money into AI think we are at end of days, new order for humanity type point, and they're willing to risk a large part of their fortune to ensure that they remain part of the empowered elite in this new era. It's an all hands on deck thing and only hard diminishing returns that make the AI takeoff story look implausible are going to cause a retrenchment.
So just the “it’s different this time” mentality shared by all bubbles. Some things never change.
There were people telling me during the NFT craze that I just don't get it and I am dumb. Not that I am comparing AI to it directly because AI has actual business value but it is funny to think back. I felt I was going mad when everyone tried to gaslight me
We're just at 25% of it. Raising such a claim is foolish at least. People will be tinkering as usual and it's hard to predict the next big thing. You can bet on something, you can postdict (which is much easier), but being certain about it? Nope.
The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…
[even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers.] Try building something new in claude code (or codex etc) using a programming language you have not used before. Your opinion might change drastically. Current AI tools may not beat the best programmer, they definitely improves average programmer efficiency.
But why would I do that? Either I'm learning a new language in which case I want to be as hands-on as possible and the goal is to learn, not to produce. Or I want to produce something new in which case, obviously, I'd use a toolset I'm experienced in.