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

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

#191

Post by DrewADesign »

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.

Bad faith argument. Did the printing press write shitty books? No. It didn’t even write books. Does AI write shitty books? Yes. Constantly. Millions.

Books took exactly the same amount of time to write before and after the printing press— they just became easier to reproduce. Making it easier to copy human-made work and removing the humanity from work are not even conceptually similar purposes.

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

#192

Post by Havoc »

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…

Yeah that seems accurate.

I mainly use AI for selfhosting/homelab stuff and the leverage there is absolutely wild - basically knows "everything".

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

#193

Post by Eisenstein »

Ygg2 wrote: post #163
XenophileJKO wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you value self expression? I literally mean creating music for MYSELF. I don't really care if anyone else "values" it. I like to listen to it and I enjoy spending an evening(or maybe 10 minutes if it is just a silly idea) to create a song. But this means my incentive to "buy" music is greatly decreased. This is the trend I think we'll see increasing in the near future. Examples: https://suno.com/s/0gnj4aGD4jgVcpqs…

> Do you value self expression? Did you train the AI yourself? On your own music? Or was music scrapped from Net and blended in LLM?

Do you believe that music made from samples is not original?

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

#194

Post by quantum2022 »

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

Yes, maybe what people create with it will be more basic. But is 'good enough' good enough? Will people pay for apps they can create on their own time for free using AI? There will be a huge disruption to the app marketplace unless apps are so much better than an AI could create it's worth the money. So short Apple? :) On the other hand, many, many more people will be creating apps and charging very little for them (because if it's not free or less than the value of my time, I'm building it on my own). This makes things better for everyone, and there'll still be a market for apps. So buy Apple? :)

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

#195

Post by benoau »

DrewADesign wrote: post #80
benoau wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep this is a huge enabler - previously having someone "do art" could easily cost you thousands for a small game, a month even, and this heavily constrained what you could make and locked you into what you had planned and how much you had planned. With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art, audio etc it's an incremental cost if any, you can explore ideas, you can throw art out, pivot in new directions.

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

Imagine if you had to hire a designer if you wanted to build a web application or mobile app, at a cost of perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands.

Would we be better off?

I doubt it.

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

#196

Post by fulafel »

DrewADesign wrote: post #191
fulafel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all started going wrong with the printing press.

Bad faith argument. Did the printing press write shitty books? No. It didn’t even write books. Does AI write shitty books? Yes. Constantly. Millions. Books took exactly the same amount of time to write before and after the printing press— they just became easier to reproduce. Making it easier to copy human-made work and removing the humanity from work are not even conceptually similar purposes.

Nitpick: the press of course did remove the humanity from book-copying work, before that the people copying books often made their own alterations to the books. And had their own calligraphic styles etc.

But my thought was that the printing press made the printed work much cheaper and accessible, and many many more people became writers than had been before, including of new kinds of media (newspapers). The quality of text in these new papers was of course sloppier than in the old expensive books, and also derivative...

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

#197

Post by benoau »

risyachka wrote: post #168
benoau wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep this is a huge enabler - previously having someone "do art" could easily cost you thousands for a small game, a month even, and this heavily constrained what you could make and locked you into what you had planned and how much you had planned. With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art, audio etc it's an incremental cost if any, you can explore ideas, you can throw art out, pivot in new directions.

It’s enabler for everyone, so you still don’t have any advantage just like you didn’t before that. The only difference is you spend less on art but will spend same in other areas. Literally nothing changed

The difference is you have autonomy now - the same autonomy as a person building a web application or app able to put together a serviceable UI/UX without any other person - without the sacrifice of "programmer art" or cobbling together free asset packs.

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

#198

Post by namdnay »

zwnow wrote: post #148
namdnay wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the same if it’s a human doing the learning? If I spend my youth looking at art, I’d any work I then do “theft”?

If you copy an artists style with extreme precision without their consent, yes.

I don’t think that’s what we were talking about here - it was using AI to replace graphic designers at startups

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

#199

Post by pixl97 »

oblio wrote: post #149
chii wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ironic if AI actually ended up destroying economic activity that's not destroying economic activity - it's removing a less efficient activity and replace it with a more efficient version. This produces economic surplus. Imagine saying this for someone digging a hole, that if they use a mechanical digger instead of a hand shovel, they'd destroy economic activity since it now cost less to dig that hole!

If AI concentrates economic activity and leads to more natural monopolies (extremely likely), yeah, the lower level activity becomes more efficient but the macro economy becomes less efficient due to lower competition. Software has basically done the same thing, where we do things faster and the fastest thing that happens is accumulation of power and a lower overall quality of life for everyone due to that.

I mean, since we're in tech here we like pointing out that software has done this....

But transportation technology has done this readily since the since ICE engines became wide spread. Pretty much all cities and towns and to make their 'own things' since the speed of transpiration was slow (sailing ships, horses, walking) and the cost of transportation was high. Then trains came along and things got a bit faster and more regular. Then trucks came along and things got a bit faster and more regular. Then paved roads just about everywhere you needed came along and things got faster and more regular. Now you could ship something across the country and it wouldn't cost a bankrupting amount of money.

The end result of technology does point that you could have one factory somewhere with all the materials it needs and it could make anything and ship it anywhere. This is why a bit of science fiction talks about things like UBI and post-scarcity (at least post scarcity of basic needs). After some amount of technical progress the current method of work just starts breaking down because human labor becomes much less needed.

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

#200

Post by Mistletoe »

AI made me this summary (I’ve grown quite weary of reading AI think pieces) and it seems like a really good comparison.

>The article "AI Will Not Make You Rich" argues that generative AI is unlikely to create widespread wealth for investors and entrepreneurs. The author, Jerry Neumann, compares AI to past technological revolutions, suggesting it's more like shipping containerization than the microprocessor. He posits that while containerization was a transformative technology, its value was spread so thinly that few profited, with the primary beneficiaries being customers.

>The article highlights that AI is already a well-known and scrutinized technology, unlike the early days of the personal computer, which began as an obscure hobbyist project. The author suggests that the real opportunities for profit will come from "fishing downstream" by investing in sectors that use AI to increase productivity, such as professional services, healthcare, and education, rather than investing in the AI infrastructure and model builders themselves.

I used to be the biggest AI hater around, but I’m finding it actually useful these days and another tool in the toolbox.

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