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Paragone ,

Realistically, it’ll take 2 decades to hammer-out AI to the level that it’s truly-mission-trustworthy.

Right now, everybody’s “high”.

It’s the same with all technologies…

Remember a few years ago, when somegody discovered you could power things with steam?

Remember the hype?

The whole coal industry, remember that?

The business with the invention of the horseless carriages?

The invention of the wheel was before my time, but I’m sure it was hyped on Myspace or something, back in the day…

ozoned ,

The next big thing is moving all of your servers to the cloud!

The next big thing is moving all of your software to containers!

The next big thing is moving all of your money to crypto!

The next big thing is moving everything to AI!

Yes we’re in ANOTHER tech gold rush. Not saying these things don’t have their place, but the tech industry is infatuated with the next big thing and burning through money and the ones that get burnt are the average working folks. Ask me how I know, currently in year two of a hiring and pay freeze as AWS isn’t as cheap as predicted… Who could have fucking guessed? They mean besides everyone but the CTO that’s fucking who!

ozoned ,

Oh shit, already forgot

The next big thing is “investing” in NFTs!

Voroxpete ,

This is really the crazy part; tech is basically operating a stream of bubbles, endlessly collapsing one into the next in the search for infinite growth. It’s gotten to the point where the bubble collapse barely even seems to matter anymore unless you’re one of the suckers going down with it. The industry as a whole has basically embraced perpetual collapse as its fundamental structure.

realharo , (edited )

But the cloud thing and the container thing actually happened. Not 100%, but it is basically the standard these days.

Of the things you mentioned, only crypto is mostly bullshit tech with no actual use.

ozoned ,

Not all companies NEED cloud and containers. But execs push it anyway. That’s my point. As I said, they have actual use, but not EVERYONE NEEDS this shit. It’s just tech-bros telling us we need it and execs being too stupid to know otherwise.

Cringe2793 ,

They don’t NEED it, sure. But it sure makes life a lot easier. It makes the software easier to maintain and scale.

Ibaudia ,
@Ibaudia@lemmy.world avatar

Yes. Tech is a hype-based sector where the actual value of products is obfuscated by marketing. When the AI craze settles down, hopefully we’ll stop seeing it injected into everything.

Croquette ,

It will be like the IoT bloom of 2015ish where everyone and their mother had a new IoT product on Kickstarter.

I just hope it dies fast so that we can concentrate on the actual utility of LLMs and other AI sectors.

afraid_of_zombies ,

By everything do you mean 1/3 lemmy.world articles and comments or?

Ibaudia ,
@Ibaudia@lemmy.world avatar

I mean AI bullshit like Copilot being added to Windows then quietly paywalled, ridiculous products like the Rabbit R1, and the arms race involving products that aren’t ready for market or produced ethically. LLMs still just make shit up a lot of the time.

olutukko ,

is thst even a question?

Psythik ,

Yeah seriously. This is 1998 all over again.

sirboozebum ,

I remember 1998.

It wasn’t as dumb as this shit.

And these dorks should have learnt from the dot com and crypto-currency crashes.

MehBlah ,

Of course we are. Its really all a hype of half ass helpful prototypes at the moment.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

Betteridge’s Law + YT vid with 1 minute of info = fuck off

Kanda ,

How can there be a bubble when there are no AI products?

AnarchistArtificer ,

Eh, it depends on what we count as “AI”. I’m in a field where machine learning has been a thing for years, and there’s been a huge amount of progress in the last couple of years[1]. However, it’s exhausting that so much is being rebranded as “AI”, because the people holding the purse strings aren’t necessarily the same scientists who are sick of the hype.

[1] I didn’t get into the more computational side of things until 2021 or so, but if I had to point to a catalyst for this progress, I’d say that the transformer mechanism outlined in the 2017 paper “Attention is all you need”, by Google scientists.

ChanSecodina ,

Anyone remember the dotcom boom (and bust)? The AI hype bubble reminds me a lot of that. It ticks all the same boxes: wild new tech showing up all the time, stratospheric hype, corporate FOMO, a money spigot that seems to be spraying investments at any company with AI in the name, business plans that lose money per unit sold but plan to “make it up at scale.” And unlike the last 16 years this is all happening when interest rates are non-zero so money actually costs something.

When I think about the dotcom boom and bust I tend to group the companies into 3 or so broad categories:

  • Companies that were doing the right thing at the right time. These are the companies that weren’t necessarily pushing the envelope from a technology perspective; they were building a business model on where the technology was at the time but that could improve as the technology did. In the dotcom days the business model that most exemplifies that was e-commerce. Amazon and eBay grew up in the dotcom era and survived the bust no problem because they were already profitable by the time the investment money stopped flowing.
  • Companies that were way too early. These are the ones that had a great vision but that were too far ahead of the technology curve. Did you know we had online grocery delivery in 1999? Webvan tried to move fast and corner the market but due to mismanagement and the tech and market not being ready they crashed hard in 2001. Grocery delivery is of course totally commonplace today, but even if Webvan wasn’t mismanaged I find it highly unlikely that they could have succeeded when less than half the country even had dialup and the common wisdom of the day was to not type your credit card number online.
  • And last but not least, you’ve got the startups that never really had a business plan and the existing companies just jumping on the hype train because of FOMO. Startups were getting investment dollars just to … build a website. Big companies were putting up totally contentless “web experiences.” Suddenly every breakfast cereal had a website. Did it have nutrition information? No. Online ordering? No. Mostly it was just marketing drivel and maybe a recipe for snack mix if you’re lucky. These are the ones I think of when I hear that Taco Bell is going “AI-First.”

Anyways, there’s more I could say about why I think this will play out faster than crypto did but this is already a wall of text. For all the people who missed the dotcom boom: Enjoy the hype cycle. It’ll be a smoking crater before you know it. :)

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

I was in high school during the boom and my career plan was:

  1. Go work for a startup doing computer stuff
  2. Get stock options
  3. Retire before 30 when it goes public

The landscape after graduating college was… different.

geography082 ,

Making it a question, makes me question in which reality the autor lives

pewgar_seemsimandroid OP ,

it’s tl;dr news so normal.

moitoi ,
@moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It always has been

admin ,
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

Ai isn’t the bubble, that’ll keep on improving, although probably not at this rate.

The hype bubble is companies adding AI to their product where it offers very little, if any, added value, which is incredibly tedious.

The latter bubble can burst, and we’ll all be better for it. But generative AI isn’t going anywhere.

DudeDudenson ,

Nah but once the put AI on everything bubble bursts companies will have a sour taste on it and won’t be so interested in investing into it.

I believe we’ll get a lot of good improvements over it but in people’s minds AI will be that weird thing that never worked quite right. It’ll be another meme like Cortana on windows so it won’t drive stock price at all unless you’re doing something really cutting edge.

And good luck competing with the tech giants

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

This

AI is actually providing value and advancing to a huge rate, I don’t know how people can dismiss that so easily

lemmyvore ,

How has it helped you personally in every day life?

And if it’s doing some of your job with prompts that anybody could write, should you be paid less, or should you be replaced by someone juggling several positions?

egeres , (edited )
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

I’m using LLMs to parse and organize information in my file directory, turning bank receipts into json files, I automatically rename downloaded movies into a more legible format I prefer, I summarize clickbaity-youtube-videos, I use copilot on vscode to code much faster, chatGPT all the time to discover new libraries and cut fast through boilerplate, I have a personal assistant that has access to a lot of metrics about my life: meditation streak, when I do exercise, the status of my system etc and helps me make decisions…

I don’t know about you but I feel like I’m living in an age of wonder

I’m not sure what to say about the prompts, I feel like I’m integrating AI in my systems to automate mundane stuff and oversee more information, I think one should be paid for the work and value produced

afraid_of_zombies ,

Your question sounds like a trap but I found a bunch of uses for it.

  • Rewriting emails
  • Learning quickly how to get popular business software to do stuff
  • Wherever I used to use a search engine
  • Setup study sessions on a topic I knew very little about. I scan the text. Read it. Give it to the AI/LLM. Discuss the text. Have it quiz me. Then move to the next page.
  • Used it at a poorly documented art collection to track down pieces.
  • Basically everything I know about baking. If you are curious my posts document the last 7 months or so of my progress.
  • Built a software driver (a task I hate) almost completely by giving it the documentation
  • Set it up so it can make practice tests for my daughters school work
  • Explored a wide range of topics

Now go ahead and point out that I could have done all this myself with just Google, the way we did back in the day. That’s the thing about this stuff. You can always make an argument that some new thing is bad by pointing out it is solving problems that were already solved or solving problems no one cares about. Whenever I get yelled at or hear people complain about opposite things I know that they just want to be angry and they have no argument. It’s just rage full throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

lemmyvore ,

You can always make an argument that some new thing is bad by pointing out it is solving problems that were already solved or solving problems no one cares about.

That’s not the issue. I’m not a luddite. The issue is that you can’t rely on its answers. The accuracy varies wildly. If you trust it implicitly there’s no way of telling what you end up with. Human learning process normally involves comparing information to previous information, some process of vetting, during which your brain “muscles” are exercised so they become better at it all the time. It’s like being fed in bed and never getting out to do anything by yourself, and to top it off you don’t even know if you’re being fed correct information.

afraid_of_zombies ,

The issue is that you can’t rely on its answers.

Cough… Wikipedia…cough. You remember being told how Wikipedia wasn’t accurate and the only true sources were books made by private companies that no one could correct?

Human learning process normally involves comparing information to previous information, some process of vetting, during which your brain “muscles” are exercised so they become better at it all the time. It’s l

Argument from weakness. Classic luddite move. I am old enough to remember the fears that internet search engines would do this.

In any case no one is forcing you to use it. I am sure if you called up Britianica and told them to send you a set they would be happy to.

lemmyvore ,

Improving but to what end? If it’s not something that the public will ultimately perceive as useful it will tank no matter how hard it’s pushed.

I saw a quote that went something like, “I want AI to do my laundry so I can have time for my art, not to do art while I keep doing laundry”.

Art vs laundry is an extreme example but the gist of it is that it should focus on practical applications of the mundane sort. It’s interesting that it can make passable art but ultimately it’s mediocre and meaningless.

jj4211 ,

We referred to the dotcom bubble as the dotcom bubble, but that didn’t mean that the web went away, it just meant that companies randomly tried stuff and had money thrown at them because the investors had no idea either.

So same here, AI bubble because it’s being randomly attempted without particular vision with lots and lots of money, not because the technology fundamentally is a bust.

admin ,
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

That’s a good thing to put it in perspective, yeah. The amount of people who think AI is just a fad that will go away is staggering.

jj4211 ,

Yeah, right now the loudest voices are either “AI is ready to do everything right now or in a few months” or “This AI thing is worthless garbage” (both in practice refer to LLM specifically, even though they just say “AI”, the rest of AI field is pretty “boringly” accepted right now). There’s not a whole lot of attention given to more nuanced takes on what it realistically can/will be able to do or not do. With proponents glossing over the limitations and detractors pretending that every single use of LLM is telling people to eat rocks and glue.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Yeah, I’m super salty about the hype because if I had to pick one side or the other, I’d be on team “AI is worthless”, but that’s just because I’d rather try convincing a bunch of skeptics that when used wisely, AI/ML can be super useful, than to try talk some sense into the AI fanatics. It’s a shame though, because I feel like the longer the bubble takes to pop, the more harm actual AI research will receive

TubularTittyFrog ,

it’s a fad in terms of the hype and the superstition.

it won’t go away. it will just become boring and mostly a business to business concern that is invisible to the end consumer. just like every other big fad of the past 20 years. ‘big data’, ‘crypto’, etc.

5 years ago everyone was suddenly a ‘data scientist’. where are they now? yeah… exactly.

afraid_of_zombies ,

5 years ago everyone was suddenly a ‘data scientist’. where are they now? yeah… exactly.

Quants. They make more money than most doctors. I know one who is 39 and is retiring.

aphlamingphoenix ,

Some of it is a fad that will go away. Like you indicated, we’re in the “Marketing throws everything at the wall” phase. Soon we’ll be in the “see what sticks” phase. That stuff will hang around and improve, but until we get there we get AI in all conceivable forms whether they’re a worthwhile use of technology or not.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I just plan to keep using it. Also interesting thing at work I had an idea about a year ago for a sensing system that could predict when the machinery we sell needed some maintenance. No one thought it would work. This past month the CEO told me to go ahead with “his AI idea” and plans for us to file a patent. Be my second.

My point is if nothing else this raised the bar that much higher.

BrightCandle ,

Pretty much all technology goes through the same odd shape of adoption.

infusedinnovations.com/…/Screen-Shot-2020-10-10-a…

What is often really hard to tell is where you are until your definitely in the trough of Disillusionment. We could be practically very early on the way up and human level or above AI is coming or near the peak of Inflated expectations and its about to crash down before finally finding a use that is less hype and more worthwhile. The regulation will certainly slow things down a bit towards the peak.

I am not sure whether slightly better chat bots that still lie and image generators that do look reasonably good is the peak or just the beginning. Progress has been dramatic in the past years since invention but the cost of training is now immense and it requires a breakthrough to make big steps of improvement and I am not sure if we are going to make that. A lot of billionaire money riding on it.

barsoap ,

The trough of disillusionment is definitely already there in academia but the market forces that be override that with massive amounts of hype, silicon, and YOLO. Billionaire capital and attitude can provide that, it can’t provide basic research, because velocity is valued way higher than going anywhere sensible.

polysics ,

Yes

PenisWenisGenius ,

Remember how smartwatches were a big deal and now no one cares? That’ll probably happen with ai. Hopefully in 10 or so years whatever losses corporations suffer when all the money they’ve invested goes to waste will help the common person somehow. Maybe gpus and computer parts will stop costing so much for example. Maybe their leadership will collapse, things will change and the tech industry will be a good place to work again.

jj4211 ,

Probably more like the Internet boom of the late 90s. It will crash but some very big parts will persist, perhaps one day overcoming even the expectations of the boom, but more gradually than investors imagined.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, and no.

The tech is absolutely astounding. Somebody posted a random idea on Facebook and it caused me to make it have a conversation between Fred Rogers and Steve Irwin and it absolutely nailed it. I’ve had it look at pictures of memes it got details like one person looking at another person.

The power wise, it’s rather unsustainable. There’s a real cost associated with each one of these queries were running and the price to train it with all the data. There are many jobs at which it makes financial sense to pay for it is a service but the vast majority of work or sending off to AI is nothing that anyone is willing to pay for.

We’re in an AI bubble because we can only make queries against AI as long as Microsoft and Google decide that it’s in their plans to allow us to do it for free.

postscarce , (edited )

You’re forgetting about models that are open source and able to run locally. Llama3 is not the best model, but it’s still very useful and will continue to get better along with the top closed source models.

aesthelete ,

This round of technology reminds me of when Google was the shiniest thing on the block, and everyone was trying to cram a site specific search engine into their website.

This resulted in open source projects such as Lucene, which is incredibly useful, but is not in reality anything like Google. Over time interest in these projects faded and now they’re just another pretty optional component of a website (many sites just use SQL queries rather than a search engine).

I think chatbots are pretty similar. The premier versions of these things cost way too much to run to be practical for most sites, so they’ll play with the scaled down, easier versions for a time before abandoning the functionality entirely over time unless it’s found to be actually useful.

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