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Like all hype bubbles except blockchain, AI will be big in 10 years, it’s just hype because it’s too early. Web 2.0, e-commerce, mobile, etc all grew into their

by ponker 6y ago

Like all hype bubbles except blockchain, AI will be big in 10 years, it’s just hype because it’s too early. Web 2.0, e-commerce, mobile, etc all grew into their hype.

icoder 6y ago
Funny thing I: I added some AI to my CS curriculum in Uni. They said back then: "20 years ago, they made a lot of AI predictions, but they obviously did not happen, but 20 years from _now_ : oh boy". That was 20 years ago, and well, history seems to repeat itself. We'll see. Maybe with Moore's law alikes pushing the processing capacities and a separate 10x improvement in the mechanics (ie 'how' AI learns).
- ivalm 6y ago
  Machine translation, search, recommendation, face/object detection, image processing are just a subset of very real technologies broadly deployed today that benefit from machine learning (a subset of AI).
  - acdha 6y ago
    AI does suffer from the problem where the term seems to be defined as “what we can't do now”. That said, I think those are also good examples of why it's important to be realistic – good translation has been significant, especially for travelers, but search, recommendations, face detection, etc. have been modest incremental improvements. That's great to have but a lot of people aren't content with that billing and create problems by overselling it as game-changing.
    - csours 6y ago
      Exactly. - "In my experience and opinion, as soon as something is well defined it becomes Artificial Narrow Intelligence - Vision systems, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Neural Networks - it loses the name "AI" and gets its own specific name." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24767341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24767341
    - ponker 6y ago
      Face detection is really valuable to me. I have cameras on the front of my house and I get an alert on my phone when someone unrecognized comes up to the house. It sometimes false triggers on me and my wife but it let us know 1) when a package is delivered 2) when our kids wander out to the front yard 3) hasn't happened yet, but if a sketchy person came onto our property.
      - acdha 6y ago
        Yes, and it's gotten better than the older CV approaches. My point is that it's nice but it didn't significantly transform your life the same way, say, a smartphone did.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  I've worked on very real problems where AI provided an improvement over alternatives. That said, 90+% of AI products have AI because it sells well, not because it's better than alternatives.
jonny_eh 6y ago
> Like all hype bubbles except blockchain And VR.
- delecti 6y ago
  VR isn't a hype bubble at all though. It's just that graphics tech has only recently gotten powerful enough to pull it off, but it's still expensive. It'll come down in price and get better in quality, while probably staying relatively small due to the setups needed. It's just like any high-end gaming setups. Most people are fine with simple gaming on their phone (Angry Birds or whatever is popular these days), some want consoles, some want powerful PCs, some are satisfied with Oculus Quest type VR devices, and some want quite powerful PCs for VR. VR is growing way too slowly and steadily to really characterize as "hype".
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I've been playing "VTOL VR", and it's really showcasing the potential of VR for things like training. Whats more, it's one of those games that could conceivably run on a very cheap VR headset in the next few years.
    - ponker 6y ago
      VR is already widely used in industrial training. Send a forklift driver through VR training and the safety lessons might stick a little bit better, so your insurance company will cut you a discount and it can pay for itself.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Indeed. That being said, I think it has even more potential in making more adaptable simulators of things that we couldn't simulate well or dynamically enough before.
- jcims 6y ago
  Games are huge and, as a result, VR as a vehicle for delivering games will be huge. IMHO the world-changer is going to be AR, and the two will likely retain many complementary objectives in hardware/software/skillsets.
fakedang 6y ago
It's funny how people attributed a ton of value to block chains and crypto currency, when most of crypto's value as an alternative to government fiat only came about because of its ability to mask illicit payments for drugs, weapons and contract killings. People went all in on Bitcoin in 2017, when the FBI had shut down Silk Road, the main Bitcoin mover for a long time, in 2014.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
Two years ago all I heard in the health care industry was how awesome blockchain would be for our industry. Lots of presentations by big knockers in the company, big time investments and initiatives like our company was going to be the "tech leader" in the space, blah blah blah. Two years on and you can't find any mention of it on any of the internal websites, all the PPT's and videos have been scrubbed from the NAS drives they were once promoting people to go watch and learn from. All the supposed "partnerships" have been dissolved, or never took off in the first place. Two years later and blockchain is nothing but a memory at the company I work at. Just as fast as it arrived, it disappeared without so much as a trace of it ever existing in the first place.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Blockchain is a triple ledger so the question is, "Does this problem require a triple ledger?" I could see the triple ledger being promising in freight for example.
rsynnott 6y ago
I think you're being selective in what hype you remember, here...
ashtonkem 6y ago
Survivorship bias.

by ponker 6y ago

Like all hype bubbles except blockchain, AI will be big in 10 years, it’s just hype because it’s too early. Web 2.0, e-commerce, mobile, etc all grew into their hype.

icoder 6y ago

Funny thing I: I added some AI to my CS curriculum in Uni. They said back then: "20 years ago, they made a lot of AI predictions, but they obviously did not happen, but 20 years from _now_ : oh boy". That was 20 years ago, and well, history seems to repeat itself. We'll see. Maybe with Moore's law alikes pushing the processing capacities and a separate 10x improvement in the mechanics (ie 'how' AI learns).

ivalm 6y ago
Machine translation, search, recommendation, face/object detection, image processing are just a subset of very real technologies broadly deployed today that benefit from machine learning (a subset of AI).
- acdha 6y ago
  AI does suffer from the problem where the term seems to be defined as “what we can't do now”. That said, I think those are also good examples of why it's important to be realistic – good translation has been significant, especially for travelers, but search, recommendations, face detection, etc. have been modest incremental improvements. That's great to have but a lot of people aren't content with that billing and create problems by overselling it as game-changing.
  - csours 6y ago
    Exactly. - "In my experience and opinion, as soon as something is well defined it becomes Artificial Narrow Intelligence - Vision systems, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Neural Networks - it loses the name "AI" and gets its own specific name." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24767341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24767341
  - ponker 6y ago
    Face detection is really valuable to me. I have cameras on the front of my house and I get an alert on my phone when someone unrecognized comes up to the house. It sometimes false triggers on me and my wife but it let us know 1) when a package is delivered 2) when our kids wander out to the front yard 3) hasn't happened yet, but if a sketchy person came onto our property.
    - acdha 6y ago
      Yes, and it's gotten better than the older CV approaches. My point is that it's nice but it didn't significantly transform your life the same way, say, a smartphone did.
amznthrwaway 6y ago
I've worked on very real problems where AI provided an improvement over alternatives. That said, 90+% of AI products have AI because it sells well, not because it's better than alternatives.

jonny_eh 6y ago

> Like all hype bubbles except blockchain And VR.

delecti 6y ago
VR isn't a hype bubble at all though. It's just that graphics tech has only recently gotten powerful enough to pull it off, but it's still expensive. It'll come down in price and get better in quality, while probably staying relatively small due to the setups needed. It's just like any high-end gaming setups. Most people are fine with simple gaming on their phone (Angry Birds or whatever is popular these days), some want consoles, some want powerful PCs, some are satisfied with Oculus Quest type VR devices, and some want quite powerful PCs for VR. VR is growing way too slowly and steadily to really characterize as "hype".
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I've been playing "VTOL VR", and it's really showcasing the potential of VR for things like training. Whats more, it's one of those games that could conceivably run on a very cheap VR headset in the next few years.
  - ponker 6y ago
    VR is already widely used in industrial training. Send a forklift driver through VR training and the safety lessons might stick a little bit better, so your insurance company will cut you a discount and it can pay for itself.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Indeed. That being said, I think it has even more potential in making more adaptable simulators of things that we couldn't simulate well or dynamically enough before.
jcims 6y ago
Games are huge and, as a result, VR as a vehicle for delivering games will be huge. IMHO the world-changer is going to be AR, and the two will likely retain many complementary objectives in hardware/software/skillsets.

fakedang 6y ago

It's funny how people attributed a ton of value to block chains and crypto currency, when most of crypto's value as an alternative to government fiat only came about because of its ability to mask illicit payments for drugs, weapons and contract killings. People went all in on Bitcoin in 2017, when the FBI had shut down Silk Road, the main Bitcoin mover for a long time, in 2014.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

Two years ago all I heard in the health care industry was how awesome blockchain would be for our industry. Lots of presentations by big knockers in the company, big time investments and initiatives like our company was going to be the "tech leader" in the space, blah blah blah. Two years on and you can't find any mention of it on any of the internal websites, all the PPT's and videos have been scrubbed from the NAS drives they were once promoting people to go watch and learn from. All the supposed "partnerships" have been dissolved, or never took off in the first place. Two years later and blockchain is nothing but a memory at the company I work at. Just as fast as it arrived, it disappeared without so much as a trace of it ever existing in the first place.

sjg007 6y ago
Blockchain is a triple ledger so the question is, "Does this problem require a triple ledger?" I could see the triple ledger being promising in freight for example.

rsynnott 6y ago

I think you're being selective in what hype you remember, here...

ashtonkem 6y ago

Survivorship bias.