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Comment by prox | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately what we see so often is that a lot of money is being poured into something that is just a sinkhole. Take NFTs for instance. People get swept up by fads far easier than by genuine improvements.

I am actually in favor of a global debate on AI at this point, probably led by the UN so to reach as much nations as possible. Because we already know this is going to be needed as the year rolls on. Because the ball is moving fast.

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NFTs are still happening, but the insane multi-million dollar monkey jpegs are not really happening anymore. At GDC this year web3 had a big presence, most firms are investigating or starting it in some way.

Like all tech there is hype then trough of disillusionment. NFTs are in the trough and AI chat tools will get there soon, just like self driving cars are in it right now.

> NFTs are still happening, but the insane multi-million dollar monkey jpegs are not really happening anymore

I think all the high valuations are money laundering. You create a pre-order system and get your friends on it, then buy their monkey pics for your near-stolen (FTX, etc) crypto and they give some back under the table.

> web3 had a big presence

The NFT tech is pretty cool. It lets (by packaging a friendly UI around it) people be their own identity providers.

>I think all the high valuations are money laundering

Yes, but the same can be said of most of the art world, and that has survived for Millenia.

I am hopeful that NFTs along with zero knowledge proofs will enable completely open markets with no intermediary for the transfer of digital goods and maybe even services. That is very cool and more important than just monkey jpegs.

Crypto saw a very slow reaction, and you'd think something that might disrupt the global financial system would be a big deal.

Why would their response to AI be any different?

It is one of those crystal ball moments, nobody really knows what impact it’s going to have and at what speed. Will my job (frontend dev) be gone by years end? Maybe, maybe not.

But if the numbers do get scary, I think we do need to have a collective sit down as societies come under stress of job loss.

I’d say approximately nobody believed NFTs had any value or invested any money. AI seems quite different.

that's definitely not true. Unstoppable raised like 70 million and that was a single company.

Plenty of people thought they did, esp. hucksters and rubes.

There is a use for NFTs, and I could see implementations being a thing in industries like title insurance and deeds. But as it stands, right now it's mostly bag holders and money laundering.

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