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You mean the output of VC firm and Silly Con Valley marketing centipedes isn't strictly true? Perish the thought! Next thing you know, you'll be telling me the

You mean the output of VC firm and Silly Con Valley marketing centipedes isn't strictly true? Perish the thought! Next thing you know, you'll be telling me the advocates of strong-AI, 3-d printing, Virtual Reality and Drones as revolutionary technology might not be exactly accurate.

chungus_khan 7y ago
Turns out you can't make ridiculously complicated autonomous tech that interacts with the real world in an incredibly nuanced and varied way out of pure VC hype.
ghaff 7y ago
I do wonder how much of the self-driving narrative at the peak of inflated expectations was the result of 1. Wild optimism fueled by how rapid the progress of ML had been in certain domains over the course of a few years combined with a lot of hype and general SV techno-optimism. (And the fact that a certain demographic so desperately wanted a robo-chaffeur to drive them around.) vs. 2. Hypesters and scammers who knew it was mostly smoke and mirrors but it didn't matter so long as they got their payday.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  In the case of 1. I'm certain a whole bunch of it is people getting high on their own supply; aka pay a marketer to hype your thing, your competitor does same, then you become afraid of all the progress your competitor has made (which is imaginary marketing hype). I've actually seen this dynamic at work in "AI" land; it's gotten me work. I've even seen it happen within the same company: marketing dude talks to engineer, gets it all wrong and exaggerates capabilities; then CEO demands to know why the capabilities in his sales literature don't exist in the product. I call it "human informational centipede." Hypesters and scammers always around; excepting in Theranos type cases, they mostly don't really push the needle. Pretty sure Irene Aldridge didn't change perceptions of HFT much, for example.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    You definitely get into feedback loops. And if "everyone" is saying self-driving is right around the corner you also begin to doubt your own skepticism especially if you think others should be in a better position to know the reality than you are. To your first point, I agree there was something of a big game of topper going on for a while. If anyone came out and said that they weren't going to have production self-driving for 10 years (much less 20 or 30). A lot of people, including on boards like this, would nod their heads sadly about how far behind $COMPANY was compared to a certain other car company that was already supposedly selling self-driving-capable vehicles.

chungus_khan 7y ago

Turns out you can't make ridiculously complicated autonomous tech that interacts with the real world in an incredibly nuanced and varied way out of pure VC hype.

ghaff 7y ago

I do wonder how much of the self-driving narrative at the peak of inflated expectations was the result of 1. Wild optimism fueled by how rapid the progress of ML had been in certain domains over the course of a few years combined with a lot of hype and general SV techno-optimism. (And the fact that a certain demographic so desperately wanted a robo-chaffeur to drive them around.) vs. 2. Hypesters and scammers who knew it was mostly smoke and mirrors but it didn't matter so long as they got their payday.

scottlocklin 7y ago
In the case of 1. I'm certain a whole bunch of it is people getting high on their own supply; aka pay a marketer to hype your thing, your competitor does same, then you become afraid of all the progress your competitor has made (which is imaginary marketing hype). I've actually seen this dynamic at work in "AI" land; it's gotten me work. I've even seen it happen within the same company: marketing dude talks to engineer, gets it all wrong and exaggerates capabilities; then CEO demands to know why the capabilities in his sales literature don't exist in the product. I call it "human informational centipede." Hypesters and scammers always around; excepting in Theranos type cases, they mostly don't really push the needle. Pretty sure Irene Aldridge didn't change perceptions of HFT much, for example.
- ghaff 7y ago
  You definitely get into feedback loops. And if "everyone" is saying self-driving is right around the corner you also begin to doubt your own skepticism especially if you think others should be in a better position to know the reality than you are. To your first point, I agree there was something of a big game of topper going on for a while. If anyone came out and said that they weren't going to have production self-driving for 10 years (much less 20 or 30). A lot of people, including on boards like this, would nod their heads sadly about how far behind $COMPANY was compared to a certain other car company that was already supposedly selling self-driving-capable vehicles.