> In so glad your point was that it’s not a scam
Except it sort of is. It needs AI to be hyped and propped up, so that all those silly companies spending in GCP can continue to do so for a wee bit longer.
Except it sort of is. It needs AI to be hyped and propped up, so that all those silly companies spending in GCP can continue to do so for a wee bit longer.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse.
Big cloud providers will push anything that would make them money. That’s just what marketing is.
AI was exciting long before big cloud providers even existed. Once it was clear that a product could be made, they started marketing it and selling the compute needed.
What’s the scam?
To be clear, it's not to say that AI itself is a scam, but that the finance departments are kind of misrepresenting the revenue on their balance sheets and that may be security fraud.
All those things would change the world, and nothing would ever be the same, and would disrupt everything. Except they wouldn't and they didn't.
The scam is that those companies don't want to be seen as mature companies, they need to justify valuations of growth companies, forever. So something must always go into the hype pyre.
By all means, I hope the scam goes on for longer, as it indirectly benefits me too. But I don't have it in my heart to be a hypocrite. I will call a pig a pig.
The LLMs and image generation models have obvious utility. They’re not AGI or anything wild like that, but they are legitimately useful, unlike crypto.
VR didn’t fail, it just wasn’t viral. Current VR platforms are still young. The internet commercially failed in 2001, but look at it now.
Crypto the industry, imo, is a big pyramid scheme. The technology has some interesting properties, but the industry is scammy for sure.
Metaverse wasn’t even an industry, it was a buzzword for MMOs during a time when everyone was locked at home. Not really interesting.
I don’t think it’s wise to lump every market boom together. Not everything is a scam.
A lot of folks here seem to look at AI through examples of YC companies apparently. Step back and look instead at the kind of projects technology consultancies are taking up instead - they are real world examples of AI applications, many of which don't even involve LLMs but other aspects such as TTS/STT, image generation, transcription, video editing, etc. Way too many freelancers have begun complaining about how their pipelines have been zilch in the past two years.
Don’t forget about writers and designers losing jobs as well. If you’re not absolute top and don’t use AI, AI will replace you.