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Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

joincolossus.com

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Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#151

Post by oblio »

LtWorf wrote: post #122
ares623 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if taxi companies could build their own Uber in house I’m sure they’d love to and at least take some customers from Uber itself. A lot of startups are middlemen with snazzy UIs. Middlemen won’t be in as much use in a post AI world, same as devs won’t be as needed (devs are middlemen to working software) or artists (middlemen to art assets)

But it's not technical, it's due to uber having spent incredible amounts of money into marketing.

It is technical :-) The Uber app is a lot more polished (and deep) than the average taxi app.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#152

Post by another_twist »

I guess one flaw in the argument about success leading to failure due to model providers eating the product layer, esp for B2B, is it ignores switching costs. B2B integrations such as Glean or Abridge which work with an existing infrastructure setup are hard to throw away and there's little incentive to do so. So in that sense, I dont think AI providers will manage to eat this layer completely without bloating themselves to an unmanageable degree. As an analogy, while Google / Apple control the entire mobile ecosystem, they dont make the most valuable apps. Case in point, gaming apps such as Fortnite who have made billions in microtransactions while running on platforms controlled by other behemoths. They are good investments too.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#153

Post by oblio »

RataNova wrote: post #143
Waterluvian wrote: post #17

I 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…

Totally agree that what AI is doing right now feels more like the GarageBand/iMovie moment than the iPhone moment. It's democratizing creativity, not necessarily creating billion-dollar companies. And honestly, that's still a big deal

The thing is... Elbow grease makes the difference.

If you're just generating images using AI, you only get 80% there. You need at least to be able to touch up those images to get something outstanding.

Plus, is getting 1 billion bytes of randomness/entropy from your 1 thousand bytes of text input really work?

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#154

Post by ACCount37 »

RataNova wrote: post #144
lemonberry wrote: post #137

I can see AI helping some businesses do really well. I can also see it becoming akin to mass manufacturing. Take furniture for example, there's a lot of mass produced furniture of varying quality. But there are still people out there making furniture by hand. A lot of the hand built furniture is commanding higher prices due to the time and skill required. And people buy it! I think we'll see a ton of games produced b…

There's always going to be a market for things that feel personal, intentional, and imperfect in a way that only human creators can deliver

Like there's market for hand-made, artisanal spoons and forks.

Is it a large market though?

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#155

Post by oblio »

fulafel wrote: post #82
DrewADesign wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing better than a substandard, derivative, inexpertly produced product is 10x more of it by 10x more people at the same time.

It all started going wrong with the printing press.

Scale matters. We're probably producing 100x content than we were making in the 1990s and 1 billion x more than in the 1690s.

We have probably greatly increased quality volume since then, but not 100x or 1 billion x.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#156

Post by dottjt »

oblio wrote: post #153
RataNova wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree that what AI is doing right now feels more like the GarageBand/iMovie moment than the iPhone moment. It's democratizing creativity, not necessarily creating billion-dollar companies. And honestly, that's still a big deal

The thing is... Elbow grease makes the difference. If you're just generating images using AI, you only get 80% there. You need at least to be able to touch up those images to get something outstanding. Plus, is getting 1 billion bytes of randomness/entropy from your 1 thousand bytes of text input really work?

For now. Eventually it will get you 100% of the way there and we'll have the tooling for it as well.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#157

Post by evrimoztamur »

oblio wrote: post #153
RataNova wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree that what AI is doing right now feels more like the GarageBand/iMovie moment than the iPhone moment. It's democratizing creativity, not necessarily creating billion-dollar companies. And honestly, that's still a big deal

The thing is... Elbow grease makes the difference. If you're just generating images using AI, you only get 80% there. You need at least to be able to touch up those images to get something outstanding. Plus, is getting 1 billion bytes of randomness/entropy from your 1 thousand bytes of text input really work?

Pollock can get uncountable bytes of entropy from a skilful swing of a bucket.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#158

Post by watwut »

lemonberry wrote: post #137

I can see AI helping some businesses do really well. I can also see it becoming akin to mass manufacturing. Take furniture for example, there's a lot of mass produced furniture of varying quality. But there are still people out there making furniture by hand. A lot of the hand built furniture is commanding higher prices due to the time and skill required. And people buy it! I think we'll see a ton of games produced b…

> But there are still people out there making furniture by hand.

That is fairly insignificant segment of the market.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#159

Post by oblio »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #157
oblio wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is... Elbow grease makes the difference. If you're just generating images using AI, you only get 80% there. You need at least to be able to touch up those images to get something outstanding. Plus, is getting 1 billion bytes of randomness/entropy from your 1 thousand bytes of text input really work?

Pollock can get uncountable bytes of entropy from a skilful swing of a bucket.

Most art isn't like that. I would argue most people dislike that kind of art.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#160

Post by grues-dinner »

jcelerier wrote: post #114
59nadir wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't cost less to get the thing you actually want in the end anyway, no one in their right mind would actually launch with the founder's AI-produced assets because they'd be laughed out of the market immediately. They're placeholders at best, so you're still going to need to get a professional to do them eventually.

You say this but I see ai generated ads, graphics, etc. daily nowadays and it doesn't seem like it affects at all people going or not going to buy what these people are proposing.

In the context of the hole digging analogy, it seems like a lot of holes didn't need to be carefully hand-dug by experts with dead straight sides. Using an excavator to sloppily scoop out a few buckets in 5 minutes before driving off is good enough for dumping a tree into.

For ads especially no one except career ad-men give much of a shit about the fine details, I think. Most actual humans ignore most ads at a conscious levels and they are perceived on a subconscious level despite "banner-blindness". Website graphics are the same, people dump random stock photos of smiling people or abstract digital image into corporate web pages and read-never literature like flyers and brochures and so on all the time and no one really cares what the image actually are, let alone if the people have 6 fingers or whatever. If Corporate Memphis is good enough visual space-filling nonsense that signals "real company literature" somehow, then AI images presumably are too.

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