If it is a pop how can Big Tech walk it back? Am I overreacting here or have companies like Google and Microsoft pimped out their reputations in an irreversible fashion?
The most vulnerable Big Tech organization are the ones like OpenAI and Anthropic that are swollen with investment specifically for AI but need to find a business or growth plan that can sustain that investment, plus the smaller and startup companies that have bet the farm on AI before it matured. But these same companies are the ones that have the potential to win big if there's another key breakthrough on either capabilities or product insight.
They really don't need to walk back anything. If the features are too expensive to support and ultimately unused, then they'll just quietly kill them off. Otherwise, it'll just be another feature in the feature lists. Not something that really buys anything but also not something making them a lot of money.
As for crypto, I probably should have said blockchain instead. There was one point recently where everything was block chained.
Web 2.0 was "social web", wikis, AJAX requests, and the move towards SPAs. It's very much still the reigning paradigm.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
I don't think I need to elaborate this quotation?
But if I do, note the domain I'm quoting from and the website in which you are reading this comment from me.
Big tech wasn't invested in crypto in the way it is in AI. For a few days Meta pretended they were going to launch a cryptocurrency, but that's kinda it. Whereas in this case all the biggest tech players are making a lot of noise about how AI is The Future and investing a tremendous amount of resources into trying to make their AI be The Future.
Big tech investment into machine learning didn't need walking back because machine learning morphed smoothly into AI.
Big tech investment into "Web 2.0" didn't need walking back because "Web 2.0", to whatever extent it was a definite specific thing, was a huge success and now we just call it the web. (If you meant "Web 3.0", that didn't need walking back for the same reason as crypto didn't: it was never a very big thing for very big tech.)
So I'm not seeing how any of those things was like AI today. If it turns out that present-day AI is a bubble and it bursts, it will not be like crypto or "Web 3.0" for the big tech companies because those were only ever fads that the big tech companies didn't particularly tie themselves to. It won't be like machine learning because it will be the same bubble, just later on. And it won't be like "Web 2.0" because that wasn't a bubble and didn't burst.
With blockchain technology there were many people prepared to die on that hill. It was going to solve world hunger albeit not the obesity epidemic. It also had all of its own lingo for not selling or buying the dip.
I remember people saying how things would be replaced with blockchain technology such as ecommerce, and apps 'on the chain' would find many thousands of uses. People were quite insistent.
On HN you risked getting modded down to hell and shadowbanned for life if you said anything wrongful about crypto. It was bizarre.
With AI we don't have this level of zealotry. You can say it is a load of rubbish and nobody wants to kill you. Weird, but indicative that AI has found some use, even if it is for 'art' and just marketing.
Nonetheless, if someone does get a bit zealous about it, I can tell them that I have all problems solved already with blockchain technology apps, just for trolling value.
Or they’ll use it to make stuff like Cortana (or whatever they are calling it now) slightly less useless.
Because current AI is effectively being pitched as assistants 2.0, I don’t see them wiping AI from their lineup, but letting it rot is a possibility as they all have done for their v1 assistants.
Due to the attention economy, most aren’t going to care within a year. Google is still a dominant company despite killing off beloved services so if they can do that, the others certainly can weather failed AI products.
There might be some exceptions like Adobe, it depends on what they do. That’s my take on it anyways, in general there was just way too much pumped into AI without much thorough thought. The fact that Rabbit was even a thing people got hyped over speaks volumes to how out of touch with reality current AI pushes are.