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It seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I see a fundamental difference between useless tech like crypto and hyper useless tech like web3/blockchain and AI. The

It seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I see a fundamental difference between useless tech like crypto and hyper useless tech like web3/blockchain and AI. The fact that I’ve never found a single use for any of the crypto suite tech vs the dozens or more uses I’ve found for LLM, image, multimodal, and time series generative AI tells me that the comparisons aren’t remotely fair. I’m not even a particularly creative person in the realm of such things - but I’ve significantly changed several aspects of my life based on the pretty nascent kit available. I’m not saying the grifters haven’t latched on, but I don’t think it’s fair to equate the shift in conversation with a massive grift that everyone’s involved in. The assumption seems to be that “because X was a grift and Y was a grift all things must be a grift.” That’s not a generalizable statement, and grifts only work because they appear in all ways to be like the real thing, but the real thing is actually fairly rare. In my prior megacorp jobs we were asked to sit down and figure out what to do with crypto, blockchain, web3, etc. We couldn’t come up with a single thing. Our board was convinced we were missing something, but we worked with the other megacorps and no one had a good idea. That’s the sign of a grift. They don’t hold up under scrutiny. In this latest wave with generative AI we literally can’t keep up with the good ideas, and they actually work. That’s not the sign of a grift. It holds up under scrutiny. The “anything anyone is excited about is a grift” meme is the song of jaded souls that build their worth on poopooing anything people are interested in. It’s the sullen teens smoking and making fun of the glee club kids. (I was the sullen teen, I know). This isn’t to say people don’t get carried away, and the grifters really do well on the real thing because reality supports their grift. It doesn’t mean be unmoored and credulous. But it means look a bit closer and don’t do the lazy thing and assume everything is a grift, even if the grifters follow, people are hyperbolic, etc, and all the signs of the prior grifts are manifest.

thoughtpeddler 3y ago
This is such a fantastic comment, thank you! I agree 100%. This moment feels very much like ~15 years ago at the dawn of the app economy. Back then, every boardroom conversation was "We need a mobile app ASAP." Today, every boardroom conversation is "We need to leverage AI/LLMs ASAP." And both sets of conversations are very much grounded in "the real thing", not the grifts.
Ekaros 3y ago
As huge cynic. For me the clear difference between "crypto" and "AI" is that you don't really need the first, as anything else is probably better and it doesn't solve true issues. AI might be overpromising in many areas now, but also it could be solution or be exploited in others. So it actually makes sense to evaluate and test.

thoughtpeddler 3y ago

This is such a fantastic comment, thank you! I agree 100%. This moment feels very much like ~15 years ago at the dawn of the app economy. Back then, every boardroom conversation was "We need a mobile app ASAP." Today, every boardroom conversation is "We need to leverage AI/LLMs ASAP." And both sets of conversations are very much grounded in "the real thing", not the grifts.

Ekaros 3y ago

As huge cynic. For me the clear difference between "crypto" and "AI" is that you don't really need the first, as anything else is probably better and it doesn't solve true issues. AI might be overpromising in many areas now, but also it could be solution or be exploited in others. So it actually makes sense to evaluate and test.