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I know this forum is full of businessy types but it's still amazing to me to hear so many people saying crypto has no use cases and AI is already proving useful

I know this forum is full of businessy types but it's still amazing to me to hear so many people saying crypto has no use cases and AI is already proving useful. I have my own healthy skepticisms about both, and see some really interesting use cases in both. Obviously there are and will continue to be donothing hucksters with magic potions, like in any industry, especially new and misunderstood ones. They will do their ruinings with no concern for actual progress. However can we take stock of a few things here? Crypto: - opt-in, democratizing - privacy preserving, data protecting - open, transparent, auditable, provable - peer to peer - extremely cheap to participate AI: - trained and used without consent - massive data ingesting and processing - closed, blackbox, censored, inscrutable - centrally, corporately controlled - prohibitively expensive to participate So when I hear people saying that crypto is dead and has no use cases, and AI is useful already and is solving real world problems, I think I know what kinds of problems they are trying to solve. The examples I'm seeing so far of people getting "real world" uses out of AI are like downright grotesque to me. Writing cover letters? Making "content" for marketing websites? Writing emails? Who wants this? Only the makers of these things want them. Not the receivers. As if the corporate internet couldn't get any more boring and derivative, let's put it all in a big pile and then churn out infinite replicas of it in a vast grey fog.

rnosov 4y ago
There are plenty of LLMs that are completely open source that you can use (like BLOOM for example). There's also a massive original use case of machine translation for LLMs which is a real world problem. AI image generation seems WAY more useful thing to me than say NFTs.
pixl97 4y ago
Crypto has almost no use cases for the average person over the system the average person is already using. Crypto has a huge amount of risk over the average system the average person is already using. This dramatically reduces the perceived value of Crypto. Again, Crypto has uses, but not at the value put on individual tokens when compared to cash. When looking at your AI description, if used in the same light, Linux should have won the world and Windows and all other proprietary software shouldn't exist. And yet here we are with billions/trillions in market value around proprietary software.
- noman-land 4y ago
  Some variation or piece of GNU/Linux is running on the vast majority of computing devices on the planet. One could argue it and its core philosophies have enabled most of the tech industry in part by being free. If that's not winning, I don't know what is. No one has starry eyes about it because people aren't making out like bandits being gate keepers to the tech. It's free, it's open. It's so free and ubiquitous that it's not even considered. It's just a bedrock tool. Like the hammer, or a fire. Has fire "lost" because it has a low market value? Regarding crypto use cases, while they're obviously still being explored, the core features remain: opt-in, democratizing, privacy preserving, data protecting, open, transparent, auditable, provable, p2p, cheap These are things you get when you use an open platform like, say, Ethereum, or whatever next iteration. "The average person," whatever that means on a planet of 8 billion, may not need these things among stable, prosperous governments, with low corruption, upstanding law enforcement, and equal protection under the law, but anyone who lives outside those golden scenarios, either today or in the future, might desire such features. They might even help them survive.
colesantiago 4y ago
At least AI does not lose your money in a random flash crash. There are no legitimate use cases of crypto. End of story.
- noman-land 4y ago
  Then don't opt-in.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    I don't think that large companies or individuals have a choice when ransomware hits them and they need to pay in crypto to save their documents. Definitely not a good look for crypto is it?
    - noman-land 4y ago
      It's kind of a non-sequitur. That's like if I said that Linux is opt-in and then you said "I don't think that individuals have a choice in the matter when they get kidnapped by a drug cartel and forced to run their IT infrastructure". Yeah, nothing is opt-in if you're being forced by a criminal to use it. What?
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        Now what you've just done is a complete fanciful strawman. > It's kind of a non-sequitur. Nope, the difference with my argument is that this is actually happening in the real world. Ransomware gangs trying to destroy companies data and they can only use crypto to save their documents, which is one of the reasons why the crypto is very appealing for criminals. Nothing entirely wrong with that, except that proves my point. There are no legitimate use cases of crypto, and usually the current financial system does better if not more than what crypto tries to make even worse.
ilaksh 4y ago
Upvoted because someone is publicly defending cryptocurrency on HN. I appreciate your bravery. You are right on those points. The AI take has some valid criticisms but overall is the wrong assessment. People can use it to make spam, sure, but they can also use it for a thousand other things. To generate pretty much any type of text content. The only way that is not useful is if you just don't place value on natural language at all. Its a pretty important part of our world. But beyond that it can be used to create a natural language interface to many types of systems that would otherwise need to be programmed by a person.

rnosov 4y ago

There are plenty of LLMs that are completely open source that you can use (like BLOOM for example). There's also a massive original use case of machine translation for LLMs which is a real world problem. AI image generation seems WAY more useful thing to me than say NFTs.

pixl97 4y ago

Crypto has almost no use cases for the average person over the system the average person is already using. Crypto has a huge amount of risk over the average system the average person is already using. This dramatically reduces the perceived value of Crypto. Again, Crypto has uses, but not at the value put on individual tokens when compared to cash. When looking at your AI description, if used in the same light, Linux should have won the world and Windows and all other proprietary software shouldn't exist. And yet here we are with billions/trillions in market value around proprietary software.

noman-land 4y ago
Some variation or piece of GNU/Linux is running on the vast majority of computing devices on the planet. One could argue it and its core philosophies have enabled most of the tech industry in part by being free. If that's not winning, I don't know what is. No one has starry eyes about it because people aren't making out like bandits being gate keepers to the tech. It's free, it's open. It's so free and ubiquitous that it's not even considered. It's just a bedrock tool. Like the hammer, or a fire. Has fire "lost" because it has a low market value? Regarding crypto use cases, while they're obviously still being explored, the core features remain: opt-in, democratizing, privacy preserving, data protecting, open, transparent, auditable, provable, p2p, cheap These are things you get when you use an open platform like, say, Ethereum, or whatever next iteration. "The average person," whatever that means on a planet of 8 billion, may not need these things among stable, prosperous governments, with low corruption, upstanding law enforcement, and equal protection under the law, but anyone who lives outside those golden scenarios, either today or in the future, might desire such features. They might even help them survive.

colesantiago 4y ago

At least AI does not lose your money in a random flash crash. There are no legitimate use cases of crypto. End of story.

noman-land 4y ago
Then don't opt-in.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  I don't think that large companies or individuals have a choice when ransomware hits them and they need to pay in crypto to save their documents. Definitely not a good look for crypto is it?
  - noman-land 4y ago
    It's kind of a non-sequitur. That's like if I said that Linux is opt-in and then you said "I don't think that individuals have a choice in the matter when they get kidnapped by a drug cartel and forced to run their IT infrastructure". Yeah, nothing is opt-in if you're being forced by a criminal to use it. What?
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      Now what you've just done is a complete fanciful strawman. > It's kind of a non-sequitur. Nope, the difference with my argument is that this is actually happening in the real world. Ransomware gangs trying to destroy companies data and they can only use crypto to save their documents, which is one of the reasons why the crypto is very appealing for criminals. Nothing entirely wrong with that, except that proves my point. There are no legitimate use cases of crypto, and usually the current financial system does better if not more than what crypto tries to make even worse.

ilaksh 4y ago

Upvoted because someone is publicly defending cryptocurrency on HN. I appreciate your bravery. You are right on those points. The AI take has some valid criticisms but overall is the wrong assessment. People can use it to make spam, sure, but they can also use it for a thousand other things. To generate pretty much any type of text content. The only way that is not useful is if you just don't place value on natural language at all. Its a pretty important part of our world. But beyond that it can be used to create a natural language interface to many types of systems that would otherwise need to be programmed by a person.