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I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we're actually excited about something in tech again. Like for real, not in the "oh thats interesting now how

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we're actually excited about something in tech again. Like for real, not in the "oh thats interesting now how can we make money" kind of way. It's been a long time, well over a decade since that's happened. The energy of SF in the late 2000s with the mobile boom was electric. Would be wonderful to experience that again.

smith7018 3y ago
You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? /s (sorta..)
- ramesh31 3y ago
  > You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? That was the charlatan crap that took over in the last 10 years. Once upon a time, people actually cared about tech for it's own sake, and spent time geeking out and having meetups for the fun of it. Not everything was a "networking opportunity" to grift into a 6 figure PM role. I'd say 2014ish was about the time those things started becoming >50% nontechnicals and recruiters, which was about the same time that every last drop of real culture in that city made an exodus to the east bay.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    >to grift into a 6 figure PM role "six figures" in SF is practically poverty, and thanks to inflation it's hardly even "making it" in flyover country nowadays. wow, some grift, lol. in a world where an average cashier makes $40k/yr, $100k isn't going to be the milestone it once was
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      An average full-time cashier in Columbus, Ohio (a substantial city) earns ~$27k/year and close to zero benefits, according to Indeed. The economy being harder on people making $100k doesn’t somehow mean everyone else is earning way more — their COL is rising way faster than wages too.
  - smith7018 3y ago
    Unfortunately, the same Crypto grifters have fully transitioned into AI thought leaders. We're going to have the same get-rich-quick schemes except this time it'll be VC money going to an extremely novel idea built on top of an OpenAI API instead of virtual real estate or hideous JPEGs of apes.
    - spacemadness 3y ago
      Walking by crypto meetups attended by people that mostly looked like buttoned up bankers sure was… something.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Let’s not try to write off all the ridiculous crypto bullshit as “buttoned up bankers.” There was (and is) plenty of bona fide Silicon Valley nerds in on the cult/con.
        spacemadness 3y ago
        That’s not what I said or meant. At the end of it all the meetups went from nerd to mostly clueless “investors” and apparently we were all suppose to believe the tech utopia narrative that late into the game.
  - xxpor 3y ago
    And this is why Seattle > SF for working on actual tech.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  I think 99% of people who were into that just wanted to get rich quick when the crypto prices went apeshit. Recent AI feels like crazy sci-fi stuff on its own merit, whether it makes money or not.
  - danielbln 3y ago
    That's it, total scifi stuff. Every day when I get output from these models, at least once I tell myself "man, this is so futuristic, how do we even have this", and that's after 3 years of working with gen AI. Even if it never makes another dime, I still have some local models to play with, and that makes me happy.
gumballindie 3y ago
Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  You cannot expect to be paid the same amount of money by the same size audience when the supply increases dramatically. Recording industry got this lesson 20 years back.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    On the contrary, I think of AI as a form of shrinkflation. Consumers will probably pay roughly the same for inferior content. AI companies will capture the excess profits.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  >Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon. It isn't necessarily or fundamentally, though. Public data was just the most accessible training corpus for the POC phase of adoption. Getty just released their first licensed model, and I suspect things like that will pick up steam as the tech has rapidly commoditized. That being said we will probably end up with a supreme court ruling on this in the next five years, and I strongly believe it will come down on the side of fair use.
- visarga 3y ago
  Technically it is only taking gradients from the training text, not the text itself. And those gradients are all added up so the contribution of any one of them is diluted to almost nothing.
- wilg 3y ago
  What if what you can build based on humanity's collective "intellectual property" is worth the discomfort of not "owning" the work you release into the world?
kiernanmcgowan 3y ago
Having energy and money go to something that is not crypto is so refreshing. I’m having conversations about how to use technology to make things cheaper and easier again!

smith7018 3y ago

You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? /s (sorta..)

ramesh31 3y ago
> You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? That was the charlatan crap that took over in the last 10 years. Once upon a time, people actually cared about tech for it's own sake, and spent time geeking out and having meetups for the fun of it. Not everything was a "networking opportunity" to grift into a 6 figure PM role. I'd say 2014ish was about the time those things started becoming >50% nontechnicals and recruiters, which was about the same time that every last drop of real culture in that city made an exodus to the east bay.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  >to grift into a 6 figure PM role "six figures" in SF is practically poverty, and thanks to inflation it's hardly even "making it" in flyover country nowadays. wow, some grift, lol. in a world where an average cashier makes $40k/yr, $100k isn't going to be the milestone it once was
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    An average full-time cashier in Columbus, Ohio (a substantial city) earns ~$27k/year and close to zero benefits, according to Indeed. The economy being harder on people making $100k doesn’t somehow mean everyone else is earning way more — their COL is rising way faster than wages too.
- smith7018 3y ago
  Unfortunately, the same Crypto grifters have fully transitioned into AI thought leaders. We're going to have the same get-rich-quick schemes except this time it'll be VC money going to an extremely novel idea built on top of an OpenAI API instead of virtual real estate or hideous JPEGs of apes.
  - spacemadness 3y ago
    Walking by crypto meetups attended by people that mostly looked like buttoned up bankers sure was… something.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Let’s not try to write off all the ridiculous crypto bullshit as “buttoned up bankers.” There was (and is) plenty of bona fide Silicon Valley nerds in on the cult/con.
      - spacemadness 3y ago
        That’s not what I said or meant. At the end of it all the meetups went from nerd to mostly clueless “investors” and apparently we were all suppose to believe the tech utopia narrative that late into the game.
- xxpor 3y ago
  And this is why Seattle > SF for working on actual tech.
chpatrick 3y ago
I think 99% of people who were into that just wanted to get rich quick when the crypto prices went apeshit. Recent AI feels like crazy sci-fi stuff on its own merit, whether it makes money or not.
- danielbln 3y ago
  That's it, total scifi stuff. Every day when I get output from these models, at least once I tell myself "man, this is so futuristic, how do we even have this", and that's after 3 years of working with gen AI. Even if it never makes another dime, I still have some local models to play with, and that makes me happy.

gumballindie 3y ago

Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon.

thriftwy 3y ago
You cannot expect to be paid the same amount of money by the same size audience when the supply increases dramatically. Recording industry got this lesson 20 years back.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  On the contrary, I think of AI as a form of shrinkflation. Consumers will probably pay roughly the same for inferior content. AI companies will capture the excess profits.
ramesh31 3y ago
>Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon. It isn't necessarily or fundamentally, though. Public data was just the most accessible training corpus for the POC phase of adoption. Getty just released their first licensed model, and I suspect things like that will pick up steam as the tech has rapidly commoditized. That being said we will probably end up with a supreme court ruling on this in the next five years, and I strongly believe it will come down on the side of fair use.
visarga 3y ago
Technically it is only taking gradients from the training text, not the text itself. And those gradients are all added up so the contribution of any one of them is diluted to almost nothing.
wilg 3y ago
What if what you can build based on humanity's collective "intellectual property" is worth the discomfort of not "owning" the work you release into the world?

kiernanmcgowan 3y ago

Having energy and money go to something that is not crypto is so refreshing. I’m having conversations about how to use technology to make things cheaper and easier again!