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Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

Its the next hype train since the blockchain/crypto/nft's hype train. The crypto train has arrived at its overheated, decentralized set of train stations that all have remnants of fraudsters, high end GPU boxes scattered about, torn up flyers with the promise of untold riches, people scampering about in the shadows muttering "defi" to themselves, people getting carted off in handcuffs.

Where will the AI hype train go? The internet as we know it already has so much SEO engineered content and content producers chasing that sweet, sweet advertising money that they could all be replaced by mediocre, half-true, outdated content created by bots. So do we have to wait until our refrigerators are "AI powered, predicts your groceries for you!" in order to see the usefulness?

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>Its the next hype train since the blockchain/crypto/nft's hype train.

It really isn't. The business use cases even with current tech are pretty obvious. The problem with crypto/blockchain stuff was that it was useless. An emperor with no clothes.

Is there a more legitimate argument for why they're similar other than "hype" or am I missing something?

It is not about whether or not there's viable use cases or not. It is the hype added on top. Hype cycles are as old as IT. XML, Semantic Web, SOAP, Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Service Buses, Big Data, Serverless .. they all got their hype phase where you are bombarded with them to death, and then finally when that dies down some good applications remain.

I don't really understand your argument. Because other tech has been hyped in the past and let you down you think that will therefore extend to AI because...it just will? What precisely links AI to the semantic web or SOAP?

(and it's always about business use cases)

I didn't mean to say that the tech necessarily will let you down, just that the hype is a common phenomenon, even when there are already viable applications. AI hype cycle is peaking, and I have no doubt that disruptive tech comes forth from it after it subsides.

> The business cases are pretty obvious

??? What are they?

- bad code, with non obvious bugs? I would prefer the original slashdot/GitHub/blog post. Google used to do that.

- chat bots? The customer service will still be shit. Your problem will still not be solved. But I guess some call center staff can be fired. Customers will be very happy to never be able to speak to a human.

- Writing mediocre overlong content for google to place ads in? Just what the internet needs. It’s already day time tv.

Any more?

Think every day office jobs and try to figure out where you can use it as a productivity multiplier. You can figure out Microsoft's next step from there.

I'd be interested to know what productivity areas Microsoft identified before launching Teams.

“Quick, figure out how to make the corpse of Skype even worse!”

Yes, it is a productivity multiplier. By a negative number. Microsoft's next step is to sell access to it, preferably inside overpriced Microsoft Azure. And continue to brainwash people in media by making them to think that it will solve a single problem better than people.

> Is there a more legitimate argument for why they're similar other than "hype" or am I missing something?

The tech industry runs on hype, so much so that analysts are told to evaluate them separately. Growth now, profit later, here's $2bn from Softbank, yada yada yada.

Companies like Theranos specifically positioned themselves as 'tech' so as to escape press scrutiny, particularly in sensitive industries like healthcare.

Emperors with no clothes can get very far; see Brian Armstrong and SBF (pre-collapse, but still not in jail). Can you imagine how far a well-funded AI hustler could get?

Its the hype cycle. Other hype cycles were things like the dot com boom (and bust). I don't mean it as a comparison of technology merits just that we sometimes have to live through a hype cycle to get to a real understanding of where the technology might be actually useful. My snarky comment implies that we will have to wait until someone is advertising their AI powered refrigerator (i.e. get out of the hype cycle) to understand what real use cases are out there.

A symptom of our bubble-powered economy in general.

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