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Crypto wasn't good enough as a currency, so what was coming in terms of that use case didn't pan out en masse. But it did work to an extent for some people. Cr

Crypto wasn't good enough as a currency, so what was coming in terms of that use case didn't pan out en masse. But it did work to an extent for some people. Crypto's value fluctuation made more sense as a speculative asset class, and it clearly saw most of its traction there. It's potential as a currency did lead to banks, financial institutions and governments taking a hard look at it. And CBDC's are an area of active investigation. So the hyper-optimists may have been off on some of their predictions, but something came out of it. AGI-agencent tools are more grounded. They don't threaten to tear down existing entrenched institutions. They do one thing simple: commoditize and scale some level of intelligence. And they're pretty good at it, hence the hype. Unless humanity develops a deep distaste for many things AI-made, the fascination will wear off and we'll be left with the cold hard truth of raw productivity increase and digital production on an unprecedented scale.

JohnFen 4y ago
> AGI-agencent tools are more grounded. They don't threaten to tear down existing entrenched institutions. I disagree with this part. (I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here). I'm not sure what you mean by "more grounded", but if you mean "more based in reality", I don't think this is clear. But, if what the evangelizers say is correct, it absolutely threatens to tear down entrenched institutions. It even threatens to tear down society itself by destroying what little trust remains.
- wsgeorge 4y ago
  By "grounded", I mean the promises of crypto vs the promises of AI. IIRC, crypto was a little too idealistic in the promise of providing a digital currency without needing a central, trusted authority to back it. From my perspective, AI as we've seen it in the last few months simply provides a tool that can automate intelligent tasks easily. I think the distinction is fuelled more by the companies and leading figures pushing the latter. OpenAI's stewardship, concerns for safety and generally downplaying how amazing these tools are while not ignoring the real effects they could have make AI sound more "grounded" than peak crypto was. Or it could just be the folks I pay more attention to. > I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here I think this rests mostly on the definition of "General" here. Here, I'm talking about LLMs as general task performers, as opposed to models created for more specific tasks. LLMs have proven to be more general purpose, which I'd argue makes them closer to the AGI ideal than, say, a sentiment analysis model.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > By "grounded", I mean the promises of crypto vs the promises of AI. Ah, I see. By that definition, it seems to me that cryptocurrency was actually more grounded than gpt.

JohnFen 4y ago

> AGI-agencent tools are more grounded. They don't threaten to tear down existing entrenched institutions. I disagree with this part. (I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here). I'm not sure what you mean by "more grounded", but if you mean "more based in reality", I don't think this is clear. But, if what the evangelizers say is correct, it absolutely threatens to tear down entrenched institutions. It even threatens to tear down society itself by destroying what little trust remains.

wsgeorge 4y ago
By "grounded", I mean the promises of crypto vs the promises of AI. IIRC, crypto was a little too idealistic in the promise of providing a digital currency without needing a central, trusted authority to back it. From my perspective, AI as we've seen it in the last few months simply provides a tool that can automate intelligent tasks easily. I think the distinction is fuelled more by the companies and leading figures pushing the latter. OpenAI's stewardship, concerns for safety and generally downplaying how amazing these tools are while not ignoring the real effects they could have make AI sound more "grounded" than peak crypto was. Or it could just be the folks I pay more attention to. > I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here I think this rests mostly on the definition of "General" here. Here, I'm talking about LLMs as general task performers, as opposed to models created for more specific tasks. LLMs have proven to be more general purpose, which I'd argue makes them closer to the AGI ideal than, say, a sentiment analysis model.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > By "grounded", I mean the promises of crypto vs the promises of AI. Ah, I see. By that definition, it seems to me that cryptocurrency was actually more grounded than gpt.