The big AI push we’re seeing right now feels like nothing so much as a bunch of executives realizing the bottom is about to totally drop outta this thing because the product sucks and no one likes it, so they’re either desperately trying to make fetch happen or wring the last drips of value from it
that's 100% what is happening right now (also why they keep dialing back what they promise it can do from "a godlike consciousness" to "a fully functioning AI that can write novels and screenplays" to "a digital assistant like Siri but 10% better maybe"
I kinda feel it's making fetch happen by tacking it (poorly) to as many things as possible and when it's clear none of it works properly they'll just raise their hands and say "well, it's too integrated with the services, [lie] can't just pull the plug".
I really hope this is the case because the amount of blind trust of AI generated bullshit I’m seeing among people I think should know better is seriously disturbing.
In a conversation about the NC mask bill the other day someone shared with me a chatGPT generated summary of the bill. That’s not remotely the same as the expert legal analysis I was looking for!
This just seems like the latest in a line of hype trains for solutions to non-existent problems. I'm curious to see what's next after we toss ChatGPT into the bin with NFTs and the Metaverse.
The crazy thing to me is that all of the current AI push is tied to something operating on the same legal basis at the original Napster.
Can you imagine all the crap these companies are going to have to yank out of their systems should the courts find the business model illegal?
Tbf “skirt the law and hope you can stack vc money high enough to keep the prosecutors at bay” is the model since at least Uber, but they ran out of useful ideas ages back.
"hey, remember when we invested in all that processing for mininf crypto and then crypto crashed? Well YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS, but we just happened to come up with ANOTHER revolutionary, epoch-pivoting technology that also JUST HAPPENS to use tons of processing. Wild, right?"
So important to note there. That is very true for grifter tech bro types. That absolutely was not true at all for most large tech or financial institutions who saw crypto as an obvious ponzi scheme and would not touch it. But big tech corps are all in on this, hoping to make the next Windows.
Cut and paste journalism, clueless news media and politicians have the non-tech public thinking C-3PO will be taking their job next week.
It will have good applications in some areas, eventually, like 3D printing which was also supposed to be a new dawn for humanity.
The funniest angle is AI guys saying oooh it's spooky what if the ai takes over the planet. Like that's a pitch for how good their product would be. But if the ai says "give money to poor people", nobody is scared about turning it off
Gotta sell it before the promised productivity gains of 50, 60, 70% end up saving a few people 5% of their inconvenience time and most everyone else takes 2x longer trying to figure out how to write the prompt right.
I understand the hate and am sick of the hype. On the other hand, at the core, it is something that has never existed before in the history of humans, and this is going to take some time to play out.
It seems that way but I doubt think it is. Seeing how it is discussed internally, I think it is the usual culprits that played fast and loose with data privacy trying to naturally extend that, while actual good B2B products are still being developed with RAG and vector databases
