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The hypothesis is that because of the very recent interest rate hikes and VC pullback, tech is now over, and the hot money will be in another field. Seems like

The hypothesis is that because of the very recent interest rate hikes and VC pullback, tech is now over, and the hot money will be in another field. Seems like a stretch, why would high tech salaries and another bubble not get created yet again? Already happened with dotcom and then up to now.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
Dot com and the recent boom were because of the introduction of society changing technologies - specifically the internet, and the internet in your pocket. Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). It may be that tech will be like banking is today, still lucrative but not revolutionary/in the public eye as it was (as I understand it, banking went through it's boom in the 80s, hence Wolf of Wall Street, but I'm ready to be corrected on that).
- cma 3y ago
  > no, 'AI' is not it Can you expand on this? The pace of improvement is insane. And we've barely started training on video but that is clearly imminent with big implications for robotics and entertainment.
  - robbyking 3y ago
    I agree 100%! A couple years ago I would have guessed that it would take us decades to get where we are now. The new Copilot integration into Office 365 (I can't believe I'm saying this!) looks fantastic, and even though a lot of my coworkers are skeptical, I really like using AI to help me with dev work. It doesn't do tasks for me, but it definitely helps speeds things along. I think there's going to be a huge demand for engineers who can help integrate AI into software, regardless of the field its used in.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  >no, 'AI' is not it That seems premature. Maybe decoder transformer models aren’t it, but AI is almost absurdly broad as a field hence requires near omniscience to write off wholesale.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    If we define it broadly enough then sure the claim is unfalsifiable.
- cryptoz 3y ago
  AI is already it.
- unoti 3y ago
  > Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). Not sure why you say this; are you sure AI can or should be so easily dismissed out of hand without further thoughts? --- The assertion that "AI is not it" when considering the next revolution is a point of debate. While it's true that AI hasn't yet led to a socio-economic transformation on the scale of the internet or mobile technology, it is still in the early stages of its potential impact. AI and machine learning are already influencing many industries, from healthcare with predictive diagnostics to transportation with autonomous vehicles, and their capabilities are rapidly advancing. The part below "---" above was written by ChatGPT, to help underscore my point.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Yeah, the part below the dashes does seem pretty derivative now that you mention it.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    Most likely LLMs (and this is what we mean when we talk about the latest AI 'craze') will find useful purposes in some situations, almost always as an adjunct to a human (see Centaur Chess). Perhaps LLMs' biggest contribution to social progress will be wrecking social media, as you have kindly demonstrated. Nobody wants to talk to a machine.
    - ianbutler 3y ago
      > "Nobody wants to talk to a machine." "ChatGPT has 180.5 million users, generates $80 million/month revenue, and crossed over 10 billion all-time visits (1.43B visits in August 2023)" If you can't understand why normal people like having a human like chat interface to a machine then you're a bit out of touch.
      - somewhereoutth 3y ago
        I don't actually know any normal (i.e. outside IT) people that have talked to or are even slightly interested in talking to ChatGPT. The user figures will have been inflated as they are with any public facing platform, the money is largely VCs jumping on the hype, and the all-time visits will be pumped by automated services attempting (and likely failing) to demonstrate value.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  I fundamentally disagree. Tech appears to still be in the middle of a decades long information technology revolution. Mobile may be complete, but it was just the latest in a series of computing revolutions. Several more waves appear to be brewing. AI/ML certainly is a candidate for another powerful wave, but so is AR/VR, wearables/ambient. All of this looks to be converging on Human-AI augmentation that appears to be both part of your mind and part of the environment in a way that will radically increase human capability. I wouldn’t be the only person who thinks this, see the Meta Smart Glasses. The first wave of this human-machine hybridization already occurred with smartphones and we are all much changed as a result.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    I'll second this. We've hit peak smartphone and desktop. Next are wearables and AR. After that, maybe directly neural communication. IMO VR is still decade(s) away from being more than a novelty. AR has real practical applications that aren't hamstrung by haptic technology development.
    - somewhereoutth 3y ago
      Except I'm struggling to see what those real practical applications might be outside of a few niche fields. Even the idea of 'seeing all the pipes in the ground/wall' neglects the hard part - which is getting quality data in the first place. As for direct neural communication, see how text replaced voice as soon as mobile devices could do it properly - nobody phones anybody nowadays. People have a tendency to take what they want from tech, and discard the rest.
      - packetlost 3y ago
        > Except I'm struggling to see what those real practical applications might be outside of a few niche fields I, for one, would be all over a permanent HUD, even just for messages and biometric data (as long as I have reasonable control over what pops up). I suspect the broader market would too if the tech gets there and the glasses don't look dorky. My point isn't that we're there yet, it's that AR is more useful and has less fundamental hurdles to wide-spread adoption than AR. I can think of many practical applications that could be made possible or enhanced with AR capabilities, but I struggle to think of any for VR that aren't just games and entertainment until we figure out strong haptic feedback systems.
- ianbutler 3y ago
  With the increasing pace of LLMs and the general integration of them I'm seeing in industry as well as the level of political activity around AI, and the level of innovation I see almost on the daily you really need to cite something here other than "Nyeh, I don't like it" for this to be substantive at all. I however am looking forward to citing this comment in 5 years just like the "Dropbox is just rsync" comment.
  - Animats 3y ago
    > "Nyeh, I don't like it" Much of that reaction at the political levels comes from the fact that LLMs are good at the stuff Ivy League graduates are taught. The value of grammatically correct, well-referenced blithering has dropped considerably in the last two years.
I_Am_Nous 3y ago
There's a lot of places software can go, but currently hardware is pretty incrementally better and better. We are also getting close to the limit of how small circuits can be so the visible "runway" of tech doesn't appear to be as profitable as it once was. So now the focus of the people in the markets appears to be expanding their existing business, rather than building entire new market segments with a new killer app/product. We are in the "boring, reliable" hardware stage where nothing is very exciting in addition to the rate hikes, so there isn't as much willingness to invest in anything risky. Pushing entrenched businesses to raise rates and enshitify is much easier to do than getting them to actually invent something new or worthwhile. Of course, we couldn't have conceived of today's technology 100 years ago, so in 100 years we may have discovered some novel material that allows for tighter circuitry OR we'll move to biological computers or something similar.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  We already have discovered such a material and it's hardly exotic. Graphite chips can be clocked a couple orders of magnitude faster than silicon. The issue is manufacturing them.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    That sounds like relevant tech that could take off if there's enough investment, but isn't likely to see returns for years to come...the exact kind of thing VC seems allergic to. The bleeding edge is expensive to cut and companies are still reeling from their overly enthusiastic hiring sprees so I hope in a couple of years they will have sorted house and start paying people to play with the future.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      I’m still disappointed we’re not exploring photonic circuitry or DNA computing or all the gee whiz speculative fiction post-silicon ideas from twenty years ago.
      - 3y ago
Der_Einzige 3y ago
Generative AI is immune to high interest rates.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

somewhereoutth 3y ago

Dot com and the recent boom were because of the introduction of society changing technologies - specifically the internet, and the internet in your pocket. Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). It may be that tech will be like banking is today, still lucrative but not revolutionary/in the public eye as it was (as I understand it, banking went through it's boom in the 80s, hence Wolf of Wall Street, but I'm ready to be corrected on that).

cma 3y ago
> no, 'AI' is not it Can you expand on this? The pace of improvement is insane. And we've barely started training on video but that is clearly imminent with big implications for robotics and entertainment.
- robbyking 3y ago
  I agree 100%! A couple years ago I would have guessed that it would take us decades to get where we are now. The new Copilot integration into Office 365 (I can't believe I'm saying this!) looks fantastic, and even though a lot of my coworkers are skeptical, I really like using AI to help me with dev work. It doesn't do tasks for me, but it definitely helps speeds things along. I think there's going to be a huge demand for engineers who can help integrate AI into software, regardless of the field its used in.
l33t7332273 3y ago
>no, 'AI' is not it That seems premature. Maybe decoder transformer models aren’t it, but AI is almost absurdly broad as a field hence requires near omniscience to write off wholesale.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  If we define it broadly enough then sure the claim is unfalsifiable.
cryptoz 3y ago
AI is already it.
unoti 3y ago
> Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). Not sure why you say this; are you sure AI can or should be so easily dismissed out of hand without further thoughts? --- The assertion that "AI is not it" when considering the next revolution is a point of debate. While it's true that AI hasn't yet led to a socio-economic transformation on the scale of the internet or mobile technology, it is still in the early stages of its potential impact. AI and machine learning are already influencing many industries, from healthcare with predictive diagnostics to transportation with autonomous vehicles, and their capabilities are rapidly advancing. The part below "---" above was written by ChatGPT, to help underscore my point.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Yeah, the part below the dashes does seem pretty derivative now that you mention it.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  Most likely LLMs (and this is what we mean when we talk about the latest AI 'craze') will find useful purposes in some situations, almost always as an adjunct to a human (see Centaur Chess). Perhaps LLMs' biggest contribution to social progress will be wrecking social media, as you have kindly demonstrated. Nobody wants to talk to a machine.
  - ianbutler 3y ago
    > "Nobody wants to talk to a machine." "ChatGPT has 180.5 million users, generates $80 million/month revenue, and crossed over 10 billion all-time visits (1.43B visits in August 2023)" If you can't understand why normal people like having a human like chat interface to a machine then you're a bit out of touch.
    - somewhereoutth 3y ago
      I don't actually know any normal (i.e. outside IT) people that have talked to or are even slightly interested in talking to ChatGPT. The user figures will have been inflated as they are with any public facing platform, the money is largely VCs jumping on the hype, and the all-time visits will be pumped by automated services attempting (and likely failing) to demonstrate value.
dougmwne 3y ago
I fundamentally disagree. Tech appears to still be in the middle of a decades long information technology revolution. Mobile may be complete, but it was just the latest in a series of computing revolutions. Several more waves appear to be brewing. AI/ML certainly is a candidate for another powerful wave, but so is AR/VR, wearables/ambient. All of this looks to be converging on Human-AI augmentation that appears to be both part of your mind and part of the environment in a way that will radically increase human capability. I wouldn’t be the only person who thinks this, see the Meta Smart Glasses. The first wave of this human-machine hybridization already occurred with smartphones and we are all much changed as a result.
- packetlost 3y ago
  I'll second this. We've hit peak smartphone and desktop. Next are wearables and AR. After that, maybe directly neural communication. IMO VR is still decade(s) away from being more than a novelty. AR has real practical applications that aren't hamstrung by haptic technology development.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    Except I'm struggling to see what those real practical applications might be outside of a few niche fields. Even the idea of 'seeing all the pipes in the ground/wall' neglects the hard part - which is getting quality data in the first place. As for direct neural communication, see how text replaced voice as soon as mobile devices could do it properly - nobody phones anybody nowadays. People have a tendency to take what they want from tech, and discard the rest.
    - packetlost 3y ago
      > Except I'm struggling to see what those real practical applications might be outside of a few niche fields I, for one, would be all over a permanent HUD, even just for messages and biometric data (as long as I have reasonable control over what pops up). I suspect the broader market would too if the tech gets there and the glasses don't look dorky. My point isn't that we're there yet, it's that AR is more useful and has less fundamental hurdles to wide-spread adoption than AR. I can think of many practical applications that could be made possible or enhanced with AR capabilities, but I struggle to think of any for VR that aren't just games and entertainment until we figure out strong haptic feedback systems.
ianbutler 3y ago
With the increasing pace of LLMs and the general integration of them I'm seeing in industry as well as the level of political activity around AI, and the level of innovation I see almost on the daily you really need to cite something here other than "Nyeh, I don't like it" for this to be substantive at all. I however am looking forward to citing this comment in 5 years just like the "Dropbox is just rsync" comment.
- Animats 3y ago
  > "Nyeh, I don't like it" Much of that reaction at the political levels comes from the fact that LLMs are good at the stuff Ivy League graduates are taught. The value of grammatically correct, well-referenced blithering has dropped considerably in the last two years.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago

There's a lot of places software can go, but currently hardware is pretty incrementally better and better. We are also getting close to the limit of how small circuits can be so the visible "runway" of tech doesn't appear to be as profitable as it once was. So now the focus of the people in the markets appears to be expanding their existing business, rather than building entire new market segments with a new killer app/product. We are in the "boring, reliable" hardware stage where nothing is very exciting in addition to the rate hikes, so there isn't as much willingness to invest in anything risky. Pushing entrenched businesses to raise rates and enshitify is much easier to do than getting them to actually invent something new or worthwhile. Of course, we couldn't have conceived of today's technology 100 years ago, so in 100 years we may have discovered some novel material that allows for tighter circuitry OR we'll move to biological computers or something similar.

fallingknife 3y ago
We already have discovered such a material and it's hardly exotic. Graphite chips can be clocked a couple orders of magnitude faster than silicon. The issue is manufacturing them.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  That sounds like relevant tech that could take off if there's enough investment, but isn't likely to see returns for years to come...the exact kind of thing VC seems allergic to. The bleeding edge is expensive to cut and companies are still reeling from their overly enthusiastic hiring sprees so I hope in a couple of years they will have sorted house and start paying people to play with the future.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    I’m still disappointed we’re not exploring photonic circuitry or DNA computing or all the gee whiz speculative fiction post-silicon ideas from twenty years ago.
    - 3y ago

Der_Einzige 3y ago

Generative AI is immune to high interest rates.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]