[flagged]
The blog post might be worth a gander.
From the article in question:
https://explosion.ai/static/1863c4dfa57ad28dbbd68e432bde34e9...
I've done so much work for AI adjacent stuff now that I'm completely numb. There's very little left that is original at a small scale and the actual "good stuff" has a literal army of third worlders behind it working for $2/hr, on demand, for whatever needs adjusting as may be.
There's a massive dark underbelly that no one wants to talk about, so let's just pretend it's all an api :|
There will be waves of innovation in the coming years. Web3 solutions will mostly enrich people or at worst be zero-sum. While AI solutions will redistribute wealth from the working class to the top 1% and corporations, as well as giving people ways to take advantage of vulnerable people and systems at a scale never seen before.
Anyways, incoherence of your argument aside, I'll gladly raise my hand as having a use case that LLMs immediately solved for and it's now a core product feature that performs well.
But I am not even saying that AI is not useful. I am saying that every single time someone pops up on HN to defend AI vs Web3, they only focus on possible upside right now for some people. Even if AI brings 10000x downside at the same time, they would never ever consider mentioning that. But when society adopts a new technology, downsides matter even more than upsides. Loss of income stability and livelihood for many professions, attacks at scale (eg on reputation or truth) by botswarms, etc etc. And that is just what’s possible with current technology.
But most of all, for all its upsides, Web3’s harm is limited to those who voluntarily commit some of their money to a smart contract. AI’s harm on the other hand is far greater and is spread primarily out to those who DIDNT VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE IT or even oppose it. That is not very moral as a society. It may enrich the tech bros further, but just like other tech projects, it will probably come at the expense of many others, especially the working class of society. They will have a rude awakening and will riot. But they aren’t rioting about Web3, because losing money you put at risk in a controlled environment is just not in the same stratosphere.
Expect the government to use AI to control the population more and more as this civil unrest happens. Look to China to see what it would look like. Or Palantir for precrime etc.
Sometimes, unpopular opinion need more explanation. The other two comments are not helpful, this comment is helpful.
AI is already extremely useful. There's zero chance that it's a fad that will fizzle out. I'm not sure how anyone could come to that conclusion.
Also, this idea that just because you say Web3 has no use cases, makes it true, regardless of evidence, is silly.
Try to read what's been said. When did I imply that the two are linked?
> AI has far bigger downsides than Web3, Web3 at worst is zero-sum and people voluntarily choose to engage with it.
Sure. Web3 is a nothing. At worst it will change nothing. But it is at worst. It changes nothing.
> That’s what you call useful?
AI can be abused, but that obviously doesn't mean that it isn't useful. I did not call the abuse of AI useful. Who is arguing against straw men now?
> Also, this idea that just because you say Web3 has no use cases, makes it true, regardless of evidence, is silly.
Please tell me one practical use of Web3. I did actually google it and it returned this list:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/tip/8-top-Web-30-use-ca...
1. Flexible and secure smart contracts - nobody really wants this; they don't want to lose all their money due to a bug with no recourse.
2. Trusted data privacy - this isn't anything concrete.
3. Highly targeted [advertising] content - erm I thought you said web3 has no downsides?
4. Automated content creation and curation - another hand wave.
5. Unique loyalty programs - ha, come on, really?
6. Increased community building - ... this list is exactly what I expected ...
7. Better omnichannel experiences - ??!?
8. Wider use of augmented reality - what has this even got to do with web3?
Please point me to a realistic use case for web3.
https://intercoin.org/applications
Would love to see the same type of reaction by numbered point by point as you did above
Could you perhaps pick one or two from that list that you think are the best and explain why they can only be implemented with smart contracts?
I mean, take voting for example. You can do voting with a web 1.0 website. The challenge is always going to be preventing vote stuffing, and the only real way to prevent that is to associate votes with real world IDs. How would web3 help with that? The proper solution is government issued key pairs, but that doesn't sound very web3 to me.
Voting can be done with Web 1.0 and in fact is done with StackExchange sites. But how do you know someone didnt go into the database and change the votes and results? What good are elections if you can’t trust them?
The only thing I've heard of it recently is that 4chan is still doing good business selling ads for NFT and coin scams.
https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2023/03/22/263...
Expected to hit $50 billion by 2030
https://www.emergenresearch.com/amp/industry-report/web-3-ma...
And for example $1.1 Billion in India
https://m.economictimes.com/tech/technology/indian-web3-indu...
The definition of "web3" is too vague to have a correct estimation: it will be $50B according to your second link; $44B by 2031 according to your first link; $33B according to [1]; $45 according to [2]; $16B according to [3].
[1]: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-web-3...
[2]: https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/industry-report/web-30...
[3]: https://www.skyquestt.com/report/web-3-0-blockchain-market