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I'm very curious to what degree there even is an AI boom right now, vs. AI and machine learning going through a phase as the buzzwords du jour used in corporate

by mwfunk 10y ago

I'm very curious to what degree there even is an AI boom right now, vs. AI and machine learning going through a phase as the buzzwords du jour used in corporate PR. People have doing all sorts of fascinating things with machine learning for decades, and (for example) Google has been arguably an AI-focused company from day one. In the tech press recently, I keep hearing how every huge tech company needs to have some sort of AI strategy going forward, so they don't miss out on an industrywide windfall, or even become irrelevant because they didn't hop on the AI bandwagon. I suspect that there are a few more people working in AI nowadays than we're doing so 10 years ago, but that quite a bit of the narrative surrounding AI in the press is some combination of corporate marketing and journalists eager to have something to write about. I'm not saying AI isn't important, rather that it's an important field that's only a little more important than it already was 10 years ago. The difference seems to be how often it pops up in PR and tech journalism vs. 10 years ago. Just a theory of course; I would love to know what the reality is.

sprobertson 10y ago
It does seem largely a media boom, maybe somewhat due to the recent generative models that are much more interesting to include in an article.
randcraw 10y ago
I work at a large pharma, and from what I've seen in this business and anywhere else where data is important (like R&D), deep learning is perceived to be revolutionary. I think most of the rise in DL's corporate mindshare is the potential it has for disruption of the status quo. Business folks hate game changing tech. It destabilizes the priorities and practices they understand, and dishevels the grand hierarchy of corporate command and control they know and love. If DL really does reinvent any significant fraction of their part of the business, they know 1) they won't know what to do in response, and 2) their daily competition is going to get even more challenging until a new status quo emerges. And both of which may cause them to lose their tenuous position/status in the company hierarchy, much less, lose their very job.

by mwfunk 10y ago

sprobertson 10y ago

It does seem largely a media boom, maybe somewhat due to the recent generative models that are much more interesting to include in an article.

randcraw 10y ago

I work at a large pharma, and from what I've seen in this business and anywhere else where data is important (like R&D), deep learning is perceived to be revolutionary. I think most of the rise in DL's corporate mindshare is the potential it has for disruption of the status quo. Business folks hate game changing tech. It destabilizes the priorities and practices they understand, and dishevels the grand hierarchy of corporate command and control they know and love. If DL really does reinvent any significant fraction of their part of the business, they know 1) they won't know what to do in response, and 2) their daily competition is going to get even more challenging until a new status quo emerges. And both of which may cause them to lose their tenuous position/status in the company hierarchy, much less, lose their very job.