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It is fascinating how the whole thing is following the classical hype cycle. This and blockchain will tank, and, then come back at a later stage, hopefully, mat

by baxtr 8y ago

It is fascinating how the whole thing is following the classical hype cycle. This and blockchain will tank, and, then come back at a later stage, hopefully, matured. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. I did my masters' thesis in 2004 using evolutionary algorithms. No ordinary person would talk to me about that, even worse, I was easily labeled an outsider and a nerd. Today, people having AI skills are the cool kids on the block. That's the good side of the hype: it's bringing all these nerd topics into the mainstream.

slivym 8y ago
I don't think it's right to say they will tank and then come back. In terms of opinion they went 'This is an idea' -> 'This will solve everything' -> 'Hang on that's rubbish, they won't solve anything!' -> 'Oh, yeah that's just another thing that exists in the world'. Meanwhile, in reality, they went from 'This is an idea' -> 'Hey, we can solve a few interesting problems with this' and then split. The people who know how to develop technology built some interesting limited applications, and then scaled into more powerful stuff. The people who don't really know anything about technology will have bought into overhyped projects, they'll never go anywhere and get canned. The second one is a pretty reasonable way for technology to evolve, the problem is that people aren't looking at what's happening, they're looking at 'influencers' and 'commentators' who are more interested in selling their opinions than talking about the technology.
gaius 8y ago
This and blockchain will tank, and, then come back at a later stage, hopefully, matured I think it's a mistake to conflate the two, they are unrelated and orthogonal to each other. AI has a whole raft of problems waiting to be solved as soon as it develops enough but blockchain is very much a solution in search of a problem that only it can solve. Every proposed application of it eventually requires a "trusted third party" and then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. In a former role I sat in on many fintech pitches where painfully earnest people from outside the industry proposed solutions to problems that they only imagined existed... I mean at the level of claiming that only blockchain can do something that actually the Medicis were doing in the 15th century...

by baxtr 8y ago

slivym 8y ago

I don't think it's right to say they will tank and then come back. In terms of opinion they went 'This is an idea' -> 'This will solve everything' -> 'Hang on that's rubbish, they won't solve anything!' -> 'Oh, yeah that's just another thing that exists in the world'. Meanwhile, in reality, they went from 'This is an idea' -> 'Hey, we can solve a few interesting problems with this' and then split. The people who know how to develop technology built some interesting limited applications, and then scaled into more powerful stuff. The people who don't really know anything about technology will have bought into overhyped projects, they'll never go anywhere and get canned. The second one is a pretty reasonable way for technology to evolve, the problem is that people aren't looking at what's happening, they're looking at 'influencers' and 'commentators' who are more interested in selling their opinions than talking about the technology.

gaius 8y ago

This and blockchain will tank, and, then come back at a later stage, hopefully, matured I think it's a mistake to conflate the two, they are unrelated and orthogonal to each other. AI has a whole raft of problems waiting to be solved as soon as it develops enough but blockchain is very much a solution in search of a problem that only it can solve. Every proposed application of it eventually requires a "trusted third party" and then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. In a former role I sat in on many fintech pitches where painfully earnest people from outside the industry proposed solutions to problems that they only imagined existed... I mean at the level of claiming that only blockchain can do something that actually the Medicis were doing in the 15th century...