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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#11

Post by jerf »

zemo wrote: post #7
Zealotux wrote: post #4

I'm currently looking for sort of niche clothes for an event and it's the first time I had to give up on buying online because of the sheer amount of AI-generated pictures. Going to a physical store was just a much better experience, I can't recall the last time this happened, almost all sellers on Etsy are using AI for their pictures.

full disclosure I work at Whatnot but that sort of thing is a large part of the appeal of Whatnot to me, that people are showing off the stuff live on stream and you can ask questions about it

AI is in spitting distance of being able to do that too.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#12

Post by schnitzelstoat »

jemmyw wrote: post #8

The question it raises is if this is the fake surge, the one we see, what is the real one we don't see? Renewable energy comes to mind. Robotics too but maybe that's too tied up with AI.

I think robotics will be the next surge for sure. But I don't think it's really tied up with the LLM stuff either and it could be decades away.

In the end, it'll probably require something like model-based RL like Yann LeCun talks about and that's totally different to the LLMs.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#13

Post by dasil003 »

It seems really premature to talk about AI being the end of anything. What’s at an end stage is adoption of smart phones and monetizing human attention. That’s been the fuel that powered the last quarter century of tech gains, and while still huge in absolute terms it has been running out of steam as a growth engine and facing cultural pushback (eg. Social media lawsuits) for a while.

AI so far has really only shown massive utility for programming. It has broad potential across almost all knowledge work, but it’s unclear how much of that can be fulfilled in practice. There are huge technical, UX and social hurdles. Integrating middle brow chatbots everywhere is not the end game.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#14

Post by Cilvic »

jmstfv wrote: post #2

tangentially related, but as someone who built multiple internet businesses -- mostly unsuccessful, some mildly successful -- I barely have any new ideas to work on. I don't know if this is the effect of relying on AI too much in my day-to-day work or leading a more monotonous life as of late, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. Lots of ideas that I could have built before LLMs took over now seem trivial to build with…

I can relate to this, in the past I felt like I could write down pages of projects to try if only I had time. Now my mind immediately goes towards "do I want to manage this long term after the initial spark".

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#16

Post by awongh »

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things:

1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around

but- it will also be

2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities

The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the losses of the former. History says these transitions aren't easy on society.

But also, the AI pessimism is hard to understand in this context- do people really believe no novel things will be unlocked with this tech? That it's all about cost-cutting?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#17

Post by embedding-shape »

neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Really? How long you've been a developer? I've been almost exclusively doing "agent coding" for the last year + some months, been a professional developer for a decade or something. Tried just now to write some random JavaScript, C#, Java, Rust and Clojure "manually" and seems my muscle memory works just as well as two years ago.

I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced ones?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#19

Post by whizzter »

jemmyw wrote: post #8

The question it raises is if this is the fake surge, the one we see, what is the real one we don't see? Renewable energy comes to mind. Robotics too but maybe that's too tied up with AI.

Space (Space-X showed that reusable rockets are feasible), Programmable health (Covid vaccine and remember that mRNA curing that dog?),etc.

Sadly, I think there's a risk we might also be heading towards a dark age with few advances since fundamental research has been squeezed away for being unprofitable or hobbled by a industrialized publishing/review-system for a while now and we've been coasting along on profitable applications rather than (expensive) breakthroughts in basics.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#20

Post by HWR_14 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #6
bearjaws wrote: post #5

I could totally see it, recently there has been a social club opened near me and it has 100+ people attending weekly. All younger, 20-30 year olds in their early career. Separately, I have a local camera repair shop and my friend told me its 2 months backlog to get your film based camera worked on. Ultimately if the deal we get online is infinite tracking, infinite scrolling and infinite enshittification, real life s…

Going to the local movie rental shop with my kids is the highlight of my week. What a bizarre sentence to write in 2026 but it’s absolutely 1000% better than modern streaming (outside of my Plex setup). I gladly pay the (modest/token) late fees to help keep them open at this point. If someone set up a local arcade man…I’d be in heaven ha

> I gladly pay the (modest/token) late fees to help keep them open at this point

Keeping movies longer and paying late fees may be hurting them more than helping them. It's entirely possible that the late fees are underpriced to avoid scaring away customers. New customers going away disappointed they movie they want wasn't returned on time hurts them more than your late fees help.

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