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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

The current AI craze doesn’t feel like it’s really about AI. It’s Silicon Valley being desperate for (growing) growth and shareholder value.

Another obvious aspect it that it may help do work that could be done by people, thus helping to keep the worker class - that’s you! - subdued, fighting amongst yourselves.

Meanwhile the ‘good stuff’ can only be offered by those large companies, who have the power to make them ‘good enough’ thus making the rest more dependent.

It’s been a while since 2007, all the incentives are there to keep the ball rolling, but it will stop at some point.

Then we IT people with six figure salaries will learn that we should have listened more to David Graeber.

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Don't you think people will get bored of it? I am starting to.

Apple has a few new cool AL based components in iOS 18. But one of the ones they've spent the past year harping on is the Cowboy frog emoji generator.

Getting bored of it isn't the same as having no use for it. This stuff is 2 years old; we haven't figured it all out. Even if all development on the actual models stopped now, we'd still be seeing new uses of LLMs emerging for years to come.

We have no use for crypto-currency or Carriages. In 1910 there were 240,000 carriage manufactures in the U.S, only 4 years later, there were 5. There are still 2. Technology does that. It does not matter how old... If its useless, its useless. Did we figure a use for the appendix?

> Did we figure a use for the appendix?

We did. It's a kind of safe house for gut flora. Not as important to modern humans, but it allows some of your gut flora to survive dysentery, cholera, etc. It's also a place for your immune system to get acquainted with the beneficial bacteria in your gut flora, and seems to fulfill a number of other roles in the immune system

More to the point of AI: this may also be like the dotcom bubble. Lots of hype that far outstrips the capabilities of the technology, but the technology is ultimately useful and impactful. Few companies survived the dotcom crash, and a lot of the tech companies with the biggest impact were only founded in the decade after the crash, when the technology was more mature and expectations more realistic

> In 1910 there were 240,000 carriage manufactures in the U.S, only 4 years later, there were 5.

This makes no sense. Carriages weren't invented in the 1900s. They were displaced by a new technology. LLMs are not the carriages of our world, they are the cars.

> We have no use for crypto-currency

You have no use for it, but a lot of people do (not just for speculation).

> But one of the ones they've spent the past year harping on is the Cowboy frog emoji generator.

You know it sounds like a line from a David Foster Wallace novel, but nope it’s real life. I get that a lot these days.

>The current AI craze doesn’t feel like it’s really about AI. It’s Silicon Valley being desperate for (growing) growth and shareholder value.

Isn't this true statement about literally any other technology? Do you think the railroad craze[1] was really about railroads?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania

>Another obvious aspect it that it may help do work that could be done by people, thus helping to keep the worker class - that’s you! - subdued, fighting amongst yourselves.

>Meanwhile the ‘good stuff’ can only be offered by those large companies, who have the power to make them ‘good enough’ thus making the rest more dependent.

If you replaced the preceding paragraphs to be about weaving machines, this could pass for ned ludd's writings.

I think the point is that it isn't really about creating something people want; it's about creating something that inevitably becomes a necessity for life and work whether you like it or not.

Twenty years ago we had the iPod, and 'tech' consisted of exciting consumer products we all wanted in our pockets and services that would enrich our lives by enabling our creativity and connecting us. Of course in business one aims to make a profit, but one could hope to do so simply by making things people wanted. Today, it doesn't feel like that. Sure — recent AI developments are hugely impressive, but what value are companies like OpenAI creating and who, other than AI geeks and researchers, is really hankering for this stuff? It feels more like an arms race towards something completely unknown. It's a collective panic that AGI (read: God) is just around the corner and whoever gets there first wins everything.

There was no such insanity in previous 'tech' eras. There's always been competition and hype, but the prospect of unlocking the technology to end all technologies has never before been credible enough.

>I think the point is that it isn't really about creating something people want; it's about creating something that inevitably becomes a necessity for life and work whether you like it or not.

Sounds like something that would apply to tractors or looms as well. Do you think farmers or textile makers had a choice on whether to use those technologies or not?

>Sure — recent AI developments are hugely impressive, but what value are companies like OpenAI creating and who, other than AI geeks and researchers, is really hankering for this stuff? It feels more like an arms race towards something completely unknown. It's a collective panic that AGI (read: God) is just around the corner and whoever gets there first wins everything.

>There was no such insanity in previous 'tech' eras. There's always been competition and hype, but the prospect of unlocking the technology to end all technologies has never before been credible enough.

So which one is it? In the first half you're implying AI doesn't create value and that nobody actually wants it, but then in the second half you're saying it could be the "technology to end all technologies", which has obvious value.

When I say ‘tech’, I’m not just using it as a synonym for technology — I’m talking about the last fifty years or so of consumer, largely opt-in, technology like entertainment devices and social networks.

> So which one is it? In the first half you're implying AI doesn't create value and that nobody actually wants it, but then in the second half you're saying it could be the "technology to end all technologies", which has obvious value.

Yeah. I thought this could be confusing. What I mean is not that such technology is likely to appear any time soon; rather that it’s thought to be likely. It would certainly create value if it came along, but it’d also be the end of the world as we know it.

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