Will the bubble burst for AI in 2025, or will it start to deliver?
economist.com
economist.com
How much would you be willing to pay for this service as it is now?
Asking ChatGPT it seems to be about $0.10 a query? I guess if you only ask 10 questions a day it works out? Is OpenAI profitable now?
Having an infinitely patient expert (who's occasionally fuzzy on the details) summarize absolutely any topic and answer questions about it is so overwhelmingly valuable to me it's a little nuts.
Even when they're only acting as competently as a university student, they're doing that at dozens of subjects which I stopped doing at 16, plus some more I stopped at 18*, and they know at least some stuff about subjects I never studied like the Swedish or Oromo languages, or agriculture, or the history of Djibouti — though I have yet to find a professional use for all this breadth of knowledge, the fact they're so general means I don't have to worry, just ask and see what they come up with.
Even in my own domain, software development, I can take their mediocre code as a starting point to build upon because the better LLMs know all the different libraries that are meant to help with different tasks in the main languages, all the things that changed in python or CSS since I last used them professionally, even a few things I've never learned about iOS despite having been in that sub-field since 2010 — and sure, the code ChatGPT produces is merely OK, not great, but I can fix that up just like I can actually work with humans whose code or architecture I don't approve of**.
And when I think the AI is wrong about code, 1 time in 10 it's actually me that made the mistake — so a learning opportunity.
Back in 2004-2005, I was an intern; if I remember right I was paid £1000/month, and if I was indeed useful at that point, I would expect the best LLMs today to be similarly valuable (inflation adjusted) despite the much lower cost.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCSE and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-level
** well… mostly.
There's been a few humans so bad I gave up in disgust, for example because they were duplicating files instead of sub-classing and then not understanding the criticism they got for doing so — but even that took over a year for me to give up on them, despite the warning signs being visible in the first week.
Additionally, one-third of American employees now use AI for work at least once a week, with even higher adoption rates in certain roles. A recent study reveals that 78% of software engineers in the U.S. utilize AI weekly, up from 40% in 2023, while 75% of HR professionals do the same, an increase from 35%.
I use copilot with Claude for software development, I cannot see myself going back to traditional autocomplete.
However, I do not see how else AI will revolutionize anything else especially now that they've hit the limits of what is currently possible with the technology of our time.
Increasing use in customer service will be massive annoyance and great business success.
I suspect that sometimes it will be a massive annoyance and sometimes it will be great.
I have been massively annoyed many times by conventional customer service, most of all when having to stay on the phone for a long time waiting for a human operator to answer a simple question. When such questions can be answered by an AI that responds immediately, I will be more than happy. And I will probably use customer service more; currently, I often hesitate to make phone calls to customer service because I don’t know how long the conversations will take.
Of course, there will also be times when the voice recognition fails or the bot can’t understand the problem. Those cases will indeed be massively annoying.
a college teacher next door to your left is saying… :)
The college teacher is saying “this is ridiculous, kids can’t think for themselves these days, I’m so sick of grading obviously ai generated slop.” (That’s a quote from a college teacher friend of mine)
AI hallucinates with everything, coding in particular as well. By your rationale no developer should be using AI either but you will soon be unable to keep your employment (in many places we are already there) without it.
I have already used AI for legal things that would have cost me thousands and thousands of dollars and lawyers are using LLMs daily for all kinds of sh*t...
I might have been particularly unlucky, but on the other hand, my understanding of the law is that passing the bar exam (the standard that ChatGPT reached) is for humans just the metaphorical foot in the door to allow on the job training.
Of course, if you are a lawyer and you have the skill and means to check the output, then it will likely still help you for the same reason someone fresh out of law school would still help you, and for the same reason that I would describe ChatGPT's code as "intern to fresh graduate" and yet still use it.
For a lot of the engineering profession, engineering design work was still being done on paper--CAD was not yet readily available--and everyone was familiar with those processes that had existed for decades. CAD was expensive and it didn't fit the workflow.
In the early 90's, things really started to change rapidly. Engineers had to completely change the way they worked. Those who didn't or couldn't moved to other jobs.
But even in 1995, a mix of economic, social and technology experts were doubtful that the Internet would ever have an impact on our economy or the way we live.
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2016/08/25-years-h...
The stock markets didn't ignore the changes. The late 90's was a great time to be in the market.
But in 1999, the stock market bubble burst (the Dot-Com crash). The profit projections were just too optimistic. For those who got out, it was party time.
Despite the crash, it turned out that the technology (computers, networks , software, and then phones) was real and incredibly disruptive--just not as profitable as the market was predicting.
Nevertheless, companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon (and others) grew to become the backbone of our economy. The capability that grew out of that era killed a lot of jobs (e.g. mall jobs), but opened up entirely new economic opportunities, e.g. social media and software cybersecurity.
AI is just the next disruptive phase of this technology timeline. Jobs that were common 20 years ago will become less common, and professionals will need to learn to find new ways to work, make money and build careers--probably using some form of AI.
Yes, AI will be transformative and there is no reason to think it won't be if you pay attention to the history of the past 3 or 4 decades. Will the stock market bubble burst? Maybe...I am certainly paying attention.