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Are we still doing “AI is the new crypto” here? I’d like to think that we’ve moved past this by now.

inconceivable 4y ago
just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook. 1. dangerous new technology 2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!) 3. do we really know how it works? 4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders 5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI 6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off of it they also used the same playbook against the internet, and open source, and mobile/social networking. probably the original cell phones too, at some point. edit: oh, i almost forgot 7. turning the tables on any goldenboy/girl they previously pumped, then will viciously dump when the going gets tough or the inevitable fraud occurs. (unless of course they donated $40million+ to politicians) i'm under 40 and i've seen this cycle about half a dozen times.
- LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
  That's been the exact playbook. Also mock what it's been used for, find the "worst" example. If not mock, as you say, label it as dangerous.
  - winphone1974 4y ago
    If you want to promote adoption of something like NFTs it's up to you to present the compelling use cases, not get mad at the detractors. The reaction to the reaction here is even more predictable.
- ImaCake 4y ago
  The playbook against NFTs is that they did nothing useful. That seems to still be the case. ChatGPT is useful, some of us are just not sure how useful it is yet.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Of course if your criteria is "do something useful" (whatever that means exactly), a whole lot of things in both the digital and physical worlds would have a hard time justifying their existence.
  - inconceivable 4y ago
    i'm not pro NFT, i wouldn't touch that stuff with a 10 foot pole. consider, however, that "BUT I'M TELLING YOU IT'S USEFUL!!! WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME!!!" is the exact position the FUDsters want to put you in re: AI. they're constantly on the offensive, no matter what the target is.
  - hurril 4y ago
    You're making an analogy with something (ChatGPT) that isn't analogous. ChatGPT kan be useful or useless and NFT:s would have the same value or qualities otherwise. NFT:s can be useful or useless and ChatGPT would have the same value or qualities otherwise. The one playbook that exists here is defending NFT:s in lieu of it defending itself by being actually useful. (Which is not me saying that they are not nor that they couldn't be. Just that shouting that everyone is dumb and that your product is in fact awesome isn't a good look, is it?)
- cableshaft 4y ago
  You're getting downvoted but you shouldn't be. There's already discussion about ChatGPT's energy usage, and once this starts scaling more, there's going to be more and more people concerned. Hell, I'm already a bit concerned with its energy usage, and I'm already struggling being a fan of crypto while also being concerned for the environment (didn't use to have to be, crypto didn't use a ton of energy 8+ years ago). It really hit home to me when I saw something (that I can't find right now for some reason) about ChatGPT-4 being much more complex and would need X times more resources than ChatGPT-3.5 for the same queries (the number I don't actually remember, but I want to say 2 or 3x). Gave me a bit of a pause from me asking it to generate a bunch of sitcom scripts on random silly concepts for my private, personal amusement (Seinfeld in particular seems to work pretty well). I was able to find an article on Bloomberg[1] talking about how the increase in AI is also increasing its carbon footprint, so yeah, it's coming. Also I saw this article[2] that estimates ChatGPT's usage in January alone to be equivalent to he power used by 175,000 people. And that's before ChatGPT-4. People who are fans of AI right now reading this, eventually you're going to have to come to terms with it being responsible for a ton of carbon emissions as well, as it takes up more and more resources and scales to billions of people as they use it more and more in their everyday lives and the models and computation get more complex. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-energy-do-ai-and-chatgpt-use-no-one-knows-for-sure#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-... [2]: https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumption-7873483feac4 https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumpt...
  - currymj 4y ago
    this has always struck me as a weird argument. one could make a very rough comparison to the energy required to run a gaming PC for an hour, and the energy (inference + amortizing the training run) to run a conversation with ChatGPT for an hour, they're probably order-of-magnitude comparable. But there is no serious concern by anyone for the climate impact of PC gaming. It's just fundamentally that computers require electricity to run. If the dreams of companies making large sequence models do come to pass, and they really do scale up to where training and running large sequence models is a significant portion of world electricity usage, then of course it becomes a real problem, but the same would be true for any large electricity-intensive industry.
- hurril 4y ago
  That's just a poor attempt at some cheap poisoning the well from you. The grand difference between the NFT craze and ordinary collecting, is that the latter is not primarily driven by cultish behaviour or the want for Internet Money. I'm sure NFT, just as crypto, apps and The Internet eventually presents new findings or "just" novel ways of doing stuff. But so far, we have people confused by things _they_ don't understand, setting themselves up for a great loss. The cultishness in it is the incessant: this is the way. This is new and nothing like this has ever existed before. When it totally has! Manias and scams have come in all shapes and sizes and will continue to do so. The reason y'all are buying in to this, is because the sucker's goin' up. Just like with crypto. Just like with dotcom stock and a ton of other things. The fact that there _are_ useful things that came out of the dotcom era, is not a proof of the viability of _your_ mania.
kordlessagain 4y ago
Crypto is useful. A very long time ago there was a conversation about killer use cases. People on the ethereum side of the room thought programmable chains were it. People on the Bitcoin side said it was micropayments and script based post dating. I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. Implementing 402s would be that manifest: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both. That said, con artists will still try to hustle others.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. As if we didn't have ways to pay for compute resources already. > Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both. Of course it won't. > That said, con artists will still try to hustle others. Indeed. By saying things like "innovative ways to pay for compute resources" and "our AI-enabled crypto bullshit is a cuting-edge thingamabob"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kordlessagain 3y ago
    I’ve found that when I don’t state things as fact on here that I don’t end up getting as much ire, but sometimes I just know what I do is true and am too lazy to explain it in my glee in seeing it manifest. Time will tell, but as of now there are still no killer uses for crypto, other than hustling others.
rchaud 4y ago
hot air is still hot air. Yahoo! being a useful web directory doesn't mean that Pets.com is going to be good because it's "Web-powered". Right now the majority of AI startups are hypeware.

just wait until they start really attacking AI. they'll roll out the same playbook. 1. dangerous new technology 2. that uses far too much energy (more than the entire country of X!) 3. do we really know how it works? 4. controlled by a shadowy cabal of super-coders 5. followed by a litany of anecdotal stories about victims of AI 6. and increasingly frequent and increasingly negative coverage of those getting rich off of it they also used the same playbook against the internet, and open source, and mobile/social networking. probably the original cell phones too, at some point. edit: oh, i almost forgot 7. turning the tables on any goldenboy/girl they previously pumped, then will viciously dump when the going gets tough or the inevitable fraud occurs. (unless of course they donated $40million+ to politicians) i'm under 40 and i've seen this cycle about half a dozen times.

LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
That's been the exact playbook. Also mock what it's been used for, find the "worst" example. If not mock, as you say, label it as dangerous.
- winphone1974 4y ago
  If you want to promote adoption of something like NFTs it's up to you to present the compelling use cases, not get mad at the detractors. The reaction to the reaction here is even more predictable.
ImaCake 4y ago
The playbook against NFTs is that they did nothing useful. That seems to still be the case. ChatGPT is useful, some of us are just not sure how useful it is yet.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Of course if your criteria is "do something useful" (whatever that means exactly), a whole lot of things in both the digital and physical worlds would have a hard time justifying their existence.
- inconceivable 4y ago
  i'm not pro NFT, i wouldn't touch that stuff with a 10 foot pole. consider, however, that "BUT I'M TELLING YOU IT'S USEFUL!!! WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME!!!" is the exact position the FUDsters want to put you in re: AI. they're constantly on the offensive, no matter what the target is.
- hurril 4y ago
  You're making an analogy with something (ChatGPT) that isn't analogous. ChatGPT kan be useful or useless and NFT:s would have the same value or qualities otherwise. NFT:s can be useful or useless and ChatGPT would have the same value or qualities otherwise. The one playbook that exists here is defending NFT:s in lieu of it defending itself by being actually useful. (Which is not me saying that they are not nor that they couldn't be. Just that shouting that everyone is dumb and that your product is in fact awesome isn't a good look, is it?)
cableshaft 4y ago
You're getting downvoted but you shouldn't be. There's already discussion about ChatGPT's energy usage, and once this starts scaling more, there's going to be more and more people concerned. Hell, I'm already a bit concerned with its energy usage, and I'm already struggling being a fan of crypto while also being concerned for the environment (didn't use to have to be, crypto didn't use a ton of energy 8+ years ago). It really hit home to me when I saw something (that I can't find right now for some reason) about ChatGPT-4 being much more complex and would need X times more resources than ChatGPT-3.5 for the same queries (the number I don't actually remember, but I want to say 2 or 3x). Gave me a bit of a pause from me asking it to generate a bunch of sitcom scripts on random silly concepts for my private, personal amusement (Seinfeld in particular seems to work pretty well). I was able to find an article on Bloomberg[1] talking about how the increase in AI is also increasing its carbon footprint, so yeah, it's coming. Also I saw this article[2] that estimates ChatGPT's usage in January alone to be equivalent to he power used by 175,000 people. And that's before ChatGPT-4. People who are fans of AI right now reading this, eventually you're going to have to come to terms with it being responsible for a ton of carbon emissions as well, as it takes up more and more resources and scales to billions of people as they use it more and more in their everyday lives and the models and computation get more complex. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-energy-do-ai-and-chatgpt-use-no-one-knows-for-sure#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-much-... [2]: https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumption-7873483feac4 https://towardsdatascience.com/chatgpts-electricity-consumpt...
- currymj 4y ago
  this has always struck me as a weird argument. one could make a very rough comparison to the energy required to run a gaming PC for an hour, and the energy (inference + amortizing the training run) to run a conversation with ChatGPT for an hour, they're probably order-of-magnitude comparable. But there is no serious concern by anyone for the climate impact of PC gaming. It's just fundamentally that computers require electricity to run. If the dreams of companies making large sequence models do come to pass, and they really do scale up to where training and running large sequence models is a significant portion of world electricity usage, then of course it becomes a real problem, but the same would be true for any large electricity-intensive industry.
hurril 4y ago
That's just a poor attempt at some cheap poisoning the well from you. The grand difference between the NFT craze and ordinary collecting, is that the latter is not primarily driven by cultish behaviour or the want for Internet Money. I'm sure NFT, just as crypto, apps and The Internet eventually presents new findings or "just" novel ways of doing stuff. But so far, we have people confused by things _they_ don't understand, setting themselves up for a great loss. The cultishness in it is the incessant: this is the way. This is new and nothing like this has ever existed before. When it totally has! Manias and scams have come in all shapes and sizes and will continue to do so. The reason y'all are buying in to this, is because the sucker's goin' up. Just like with crypto. Just like with dotcom stock and a ton of other things. The fact that there _are_ useful things that came out of the dotcom era, is not a proof of the viability of _your_ mania.

kordlessagain 4y ago

Crypto is useful. A very long time ago there was a conversation about killer use cases. People on the ethereum side of the room thought programmable chains were it. People on the Bitcoin side said it was micropayments and script based post dating. I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. Implementing 402s would be that manifest: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both. That said, con artists will still try to hustle others.

illiarian 4y ago
> I said that it was likely paying for compute resources that would be a killer use case. As if we didn't have ways to pay for compute resources already. > Now we’re moving deep into the AI markets, this will be a thing, combining both. Of course it won't. > That said, con artists will still try to hustle others. Indeed. By saying things like "innovative ways to pay for compute resources" and "our AI-enabled crypto bullshit is a cuting-edge thingamabob"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  I’ve found that when I don’t state things as fact on here that I don’t end up getting as much ire, but sometimes I just know what I do is true and am too lazy to explain it in my glee in seeing it manifest. Time will tell, but as of now there are still no killer uses for crypto, other than hustling others.

rchaud 4y ago

hot air is still hot air. Yahoo! being a useful web directory doesn't mean that Pets.com is going to be good because it's "Web-powered". Right now the majority of AI startups are hypeware.