Blockchain was a complete bust, and middle managers need buzzwords to sell senior leadership.
That’s my personal take on the current wave.
That’s my personal take on the current wave.
Though it'd be hard to copyright any code small enough to fit on a flash card.
As someone who have been very anti-crypto for a long time, it wasn't always a complete scam.
The first wave of the crypto boom, before anyone that wasn't a programmer had even heard of it, there was a lot of real work being done that very much mirrors current AI work. Lot's of very sharp developers learning about block chain, figuring out how to implement things, experimenting with ideas. Back then everyone owned their own wallet and you would meet at coffee shops to exchange cash for BTC.
Most of the serious engineers that were really into crypto during the first crypto boom of 2012 left in disgust when the second boom came around.
Having worked in AI/ML for a long time, I myself can start to see how they felt. We do have some really cool technology in front of us, I think it has a lot of potential, but so many of the loudest voices in this space are entirely out of touch with what's possible, and far more interested in hype and making money than the underlying technology.
That isn't true.
You can use it anywhere that irreversibility matters. Suppose you're going to commit significant resources to the customer's request, so you charge them, commit the resources, deliver the goods, and then discover that they gave you a stolen credit card and you get a chargeback. Cryptocurrency avoids that.
You can use it to accept payments from all over the world. Someone in Asia or Africa may not be able to open a US bank account or get a US credit card, but if they can find a Bitcoin ATM to put their local currency into, they can pay you, or vice versa.
It allows you to pay for something over the internet without giving your name. There are situations where this is important.
The main impediment to using it is, ironically, regulatory. The IRS decided that it's an investment and not money so every time you want to use it for what it's actually supposed to be for, they treat it like a securities transaction where you have to fill out paperwork, even if you're just buying a pack of gum. Which makes it much less convenient for ordinary people to use than cash or credit cards which don't require this -- presumably on purpose in order to destroy its utility in the US.
But it can still be useful for people in countries that don't do this, or in the US if a less explicitly antagonistic regulatory environment could be established.
I was not talking about crypto. Blockchain “solutions” in enterprise were spinning up all over the place for non-crypto applications. In particular, in you work financial, supply chain, government or random startups, you probably heard blockchain a lot in non-crypto contexts.
It doesn't follow that when new tech arrives, the post hype everything goes back to status quo. Typically after the hype, the new tech just grows or gets absorbed a little more quietly, in un-foreseen ways, and does end up having a big impact. Just when the impact is stretched out a little, people stop noticing.
Like replacing drive through ordering with GPT like tools. Kind of under-radar, not fancy, not flashy. At some point you'll notice that the drive through you are talking too isn't a human, and go 'huh, that's interesting'. But, big impact on jobs, so nobody is hyping it.
People/Companies are already using AI to replace or augment Graphic Artists, Coding, etc... etc... That is happening, not just a power point from a middle-manager.