AI washing: Silicon Valley's big new lie | Hacker News Reader

AI washing: Silicon Valley's big new lie

computerworld.com

32 pointssharpshadow13 comments

It kind of just strikes me as too much money sloshing around too few actually good ideas. Sure, AI is a significant improvement on crypto, but that doesn’t stop “Synergy Guy” from trying to use the latest buzzword to separate fools from their money. Anyone who considers themselves an expert in VR, blockchain, and AI is immediately a red flag. Actual expertise takes time and hard work, not just smiling and nodding at the right time.

At the end of the day, everything can’t be a B2B SaaS company. The companies that “leverage AI” were already doing that before LLMs came out. As the I will piledrive you guy said, if AI is coming for your business, a 3 hour Monday morning pep talk that boils down to import openai will not save your business.

> Anyone who considers themselves an expert in VR, blockchain, and AI is immediately a red flag

Unless you’re looking for a GPU salesperson, in which case hire them immediately.

It seems like it's hard to describe the world where this AI can't directly people but where it still transforms things.

Unfortunately, one aspect of such a new world is an increase in the production of all content that's a vacuous, mediocre average of existing content. And that doesn't bode well for the quality of this new life.

Before calling Amazon Just Walk Out "AI washing" one should show where Amazon touted this tech as "AI".

> Generative AI and other technologies behind Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology are making checkout lines a thing of the past.

Took me 5 seconds to find posts from Amazon touting it as "AI".

Yet Amazon mentions AI not even once in the sales pitch https://justwalkout.com/ .

Yes Amazon have a few blog posts mentioning it, but nothing that can fairly be called AI washing.

My quote above is 2 clicks away from your link. If your definition for AI washing is higher than most then that's fine.

Also going on wayback machine for your link and I find this:

> We built Just Walk Out technology leveraging the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning.

They changed and back peddled. Presumably as they had to face reality that the technology wasn't ready to deliver on its promise anytime soon.

What two clicks, please?

> They changed and back peddled.

I'd like to see that change. Re mention or not of "AI", the text you quoted is no different from that currently at the page I linked to.

Dig in -> "An update on Amazon's plans for Just Walk Out and checkout-free technology"

That was literally the whole point. The fact that there were no humans was the selling point

The sales pitch doesn't say no humans. https://justwalkout.com/

1000 people remotely for 44 stores. That's easily human beings that could have been hire to actually man those stores.

Sure remote is cheaper, but AI this was not. And it was touted as such. That was the whole point of the "walk out stores" concept.

Amazon says the staff in India just annotate video images. It has denied the report it "added workers in India to watch the cameras in Amazon Fresh stores and even add shopper's items to their virtual cart."

I guess you are saying you reject this denial?

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