I think the fact that OpenAI fired the starting gun is a bigger factor than an industry wide conspiracy.
The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#12Not 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…
only if they can keep training from the commons and stealing other people's work.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#13Low effort post. An AI probably wrote it because it’s full of meaningless platitudes.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#14The real engine behind “internet” is the bad tech economy. Vendors need something to sell, companies need to show results to investors, team leads need to justify staffing, devs need to stand out to avoid layoffs. Insert any buzzy topic into this mix it will get eviscerated by the starving packs of tech jackals… regardless of what actual users want. I’m excited about the potential behind the technology. But we’re in…
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
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#15Not 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…
There may be many dumb VCs, but both Mark Zuckerberg and Paul Graham have more money than I ever will. Whatever they're doing - and in Mark's case it might be evil - I wouldn't call it dumb.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#16Not 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…
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.
But this is how it's always been. Someone could have funded AI heavily (and a few did) during the web 3.0 hype but most went with the crowd. Same with streaming video services, social media companies, hardware companies, MMOs, search engines, cloud, etc.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#17Not 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…
> 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.
What makes you think that AI/LLM tech is going to result in a single winner? That revenue might be split between a few hundred thousand companies.
Unlike the product from the current tech giants, there is no network effect AI stacks, there is no lockin, and there is absolutely no way to build a moat that can't be crossed with minimal capital.
This probably why Google sat on this for so long and refused to make any progress forward. It took openai to take Google's research and actually implement it. Google weren't going to do it because there's no moat to speak of
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#18Earlier 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.
Even looking at a world where training data, models, etc. are all public domain or otherwise free to use for commercial purposes, you will still see a huge number of companies that specialize in AI "as-a-service" simply due to the size of the ML talent pool, the desire to mitigate risk and purchase a known quantity rather than "roll your own AI", and the nature of how new technology is implemented at scale.
Edit: and if copyright laws strike down current AI models and require some kind of BOM with established 'rights' to the data used to train models, you'll just end up with some variant of a gray market for training data that allows big corporations to do what they want with whatever data they can get their hands on, delegating risk to middle-man brokers making access to trained models EVEN MORE restricted to highly funded ventures.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#19I'm as much of a skeptic on "AI" as any. It's important to stay grounded and realistic to not unnecessarily create fear.
But you can't toss aside the entire space either. It's clear there are many useful ideas and improvements. For example, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) when done right is ready for production apps. Vector search clearly can find matches that BM25 can't. Generative text-to-image models are enabling many to be creative in ways not possible before.
The last year+ has produced tools when used right can be quite useful to many.
Re: The real engine behind "AI" is the bad tech economy
#20But that is a good!
Contrast that with other countries where the financial landscape is super conservative when it comes to investment and innovation, like in many EU countries. Economic growth is lower, jobs are fewer, and salaries are lower, and there are less exciting jobs where you can truly build the future.
Americans do not appreciate what they have. You do not want the alternative!
Appreciate your overly optimistic dumb money. It is a good thing for everyone.