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I think crypto, metaverse, and generative AI are all really different -- and I agree with the original poster. Generative AI seems much more likely to be a gam

I think crypto, metaverse, and generative AI are all really different -- and I agree with the original poster. Generative AI seems much more likely to be a game changer. Crypto was something I always struggled to make sense of. My son asked, "why didn't I buy bitcoin when it was a few cents?!" -- The simple answer was it didn't seem like it had much use. The value in crypto eventually came in the form of a pyramid scheme. Admittedly, I do use crypto to do transactions with untrustworthy people (don't have to worry about chargebacks and things like that). But it's hype was around it being a speculative commodity. For normal people -- it's just not all that useful. The metaverse is different in that I do see the theoretical value in it. But it seems a LONG way off. I haven't seen anything that really makes me think, "wow -- this is it". It doesn't seem like we're close. And honestly I think generative AI maybe a prerequisite to deliver a truly valuable metaverse. Generative AI is useful now and represents a huge leap over the state of the art, not that long ago. I worked with RNNs and LSTMs to answer questions not that many years ago, and honestly I wouldn't have predicted this level of effectiveness for LLMs for probably 20 plus years -- and I certainly didn't know how we'd do it. But more importantly I'm finding it valuable today. As I noted in another post -- ChatGPT-4 already has shown better differential diagnosis skills than my family's doctor. I use it literally every day already. There are things that I want it to do that would make my life 10x better -- and I could see a clear path to get there (like, if that was my day job I think I could put together a project plan to deliver it). I just don't think these techs are comparable at all.

thrashh 4y ago
People seem to see new developments as black boxes that you can't analyze. Like they see something new and ask themselves "will it work?" and then say it will work or not based on whether the last thing worked... with zero nuance. Let's try to analyze crypto on its own as an example: yes, crypto was a new frontier in money supply, but what makes it critically different? And are these critical differences actually desired? Crypto was critically different in that it would decentralize the financial system. Was it desired? Centralized institutions are unfair and can be in-equal, but they are actually really great. When the financial becomes unstable, these institutions intervene and settle things down (see the Great Depression). When someone steals from my credit card, I just call up my bank and they fix it. How would crypto handle these situations? No one could figure it out. So if crypto was trying to sell something that no one really wanted, how the heck could it work? ...then it crashed... because there was no centralized control. It's not like we haven't had this happen in history already.
- netsharc 4y ago
  > When someone steals from my credit card, I just call up my bank and they fix it. How would crypto handle these situations? So far the crypto orgs have called a centralized institution called law enforcement...
  - Rantenki 4y ago
    That doesn't return your money to you like the credit card though. The irreversibility 'feature' of most cryptocurrencies makes it really hard to recover funds stolen through fraud... I guess that is a desirable feature for anybody performing fraud though.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Of the things that make cryptocurrency something I want to avoid, the irreversibility part is the biggest problem.
      - astrange 4y ago
        Nothing is ever irreversible, it's just a question of how expensive it is to make the database writes. Ethereum forked the whole currency to undo a write (the DAO hack) and if the legal system can find a hacker they can make them reverse their transaction. …But having someone with admin access over the network and can fix mistakes is just a lot cheaper than refusing to build that in for ideological reasons.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        Most (but not all) things in life are technically reversible. But some things are so difficult or expensive to reverse that they are effectively irreversible nonetheless.
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        I'm guessing you avoid cash for the same reason?
pilooch 4y ago
Generative AI basically unlocks the metaverse, since all the 3D environment can now be generated. The metaverse changes people's context and senses with generated data. Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn and experience new situations more often, more easily on a broader spectrum. Exciting !
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn and experience new situations more often, more easily on a broader spectrum. This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans. We are social animals. Facebook is so successful because it started out as a way to connect more with people you already knew or were acquainted with. The "metaverse" and all its AI-generated worlds add little to no value in that direction. Wake me up when the metaverse makes it trivial to host a garden party and cook for the 5-10 attendees.
  - adriand 4y ago
    > This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans. I think humans want to explore it with intelligent beings, not necessarily “humans”. These new technologies have the potential to create agents in the movie “Her” sense that are compelling to interact with. The metaverse applicability seems clear.
    - kenjackson 4y ago
      Here's another scenario I envision now: You and your friends jump in the metaverse every Tuesday night to play some virtual game, e.g., go hunting or rob a bank. Timmothy is out on vacation this week so won't be joining -- but now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data (see the other HN post about the guy who trained his bot on his friends group chats). Now Timothy is with his friends in this virtual world and he behaves mostly how Timothy does.

thrashh 4y ago

People seem to see new developments as black boxes that you can't analyze. Like they see something new and ask themselves "will it work?" and then say it will work or not based on whether the last thing worked... with zero nuance. Let's try to analyze crypto on its own as an example: yes, crypto was a new frontier in money supply, but what makes it critically different? And are these critical differences actually desired? Crypto was critically different in that it would decentralize the financial system. Was it desired? Centralized institutions are unfair and can be in-equal, but they are actually really great. When the financial becomes unstable, these institutions intervene and settle things down (see the Great Depression). When someone steals from my credit card, I just call up my bank and they fix it. How would crypto handle these situations? No one could figure it out. So if crypto was trying to sell something that no one really wanted, how the heck could it work? ...then it crashed... because there was no centralized control. It's not like we haven't had this happen in history already.

netsharc 4y ago
> When someone steals from my credit card, I just call up my bank and they fix it. How would crypto handle these situations? So far the crypto orgs have called a centralized institution called law enforcement...
- Rantenki 4y ago
  That doesn't return your money to you like the credit card though. The irreversibility 'feature' of most cryptocurrencies makes it really hard to recover funds stolen through fraud... I guess that is a desirable feature for anybody performing fraud though.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Of the things that make cryptocurrency something I want to avoid, the irreversibility part is the biggest problem.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Nothing is ever irreversible, it's just a question of how expensive it is to make the database writes. Ethereum forked the whole currency to undo a write (the DAO hack) and if the legal system can find a hacker they can make them reverse their transaction. …But having someone with admin access over the network and can fix mistakes is just a lot cheaper than refusing to build that in for ideological reasons.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Most (but not all) things in life are technically reversible. But some things are so difficult or expensive to reverse that they are effectively irreversible nonetheless.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      I'm guessing you avoid cash for the same reason?

pilooch 4y ago

Generative AI basically unlocks the metaverse, since all the 3D environment can now be generated. The metaverse changes people's context and senses with generated data. Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn and experience new situations more often, more easily on a broader spectrum. Exciting !

quadrifoliate 4y ago
> Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn and experience new situations more often, more easily on a broader spectrum. This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans. We are social animals. Facebook is so successful because it started out as a way to connect more with people you already knew or were acquainted with. The "metaverse" and all its AI-generated worlds add little to no value in that direction. Wake me up when the metaverse makes it trivial to host a garden party and cook for the 5-10 attendees.
- adriand 4y ago
  > This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans. I think humans want to explore it with intelligent beings, not necessarily “humans”. These new technologies have the potential to create agents in the movie “Her” sense that are compelling to interact with. The metaverse applicability seems clear.
  - kenjackson 4y ago
    Here's another scenario I envision now: You and your friends jump in the metaverse every Tuesday night to play some virtual game, e.g., go hunting or rob a bank. Timmothy is out on vacation this week so won't be joining -- but now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data (see the other HN post about the guy who trained his bot on his friends group chats). Now Timothy is with his friends in this virtual world and he behaves mostly how Timothy does.