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It would seem quite predictable that AI is going to follow the same trend as all disruptive technologies: * First hundreds of companies rush into the new space

by hooby 3y ago

It would seem quite predictable that AI is going to follow the same trend as all disruptive technologies: * First hundreds of companies rush into the new space * Then market leaders do emerge * Then the market consolidates And in the end, only a few of those hundreds will remain - and most will go under, and in many cases the founders of those that did went under will then - with the power of hindsight - admit, that they never had a plausible shot at becoming market leader in the first place. Isn't that just how it always goes?

naveen99 3y ago
Hindsight probability = Bayesian oxymoron
deadbabe 3y ago
Yup. This is how it happened with social networks, mobile apps…
nostrademons 3y ago
Except it's not really a disruptive technology. It's (primarily) a sustaining technology. In Clayton Christensen's original work, disruptive innovations are worse than existing alternatives in the dimensions that existing markets care about, but they're either cheaper (think of microcomputers vs. minicomputers) or have same other attribute that makes them appeal to a new market segment (think of portability for laptops & cell phones, or ease of publishing for social media). This makes them create new market segments among new customers doing new things - think of how crypto's use cases have been DeFi protocols and NFTs, while it's utterly failed as a currency. Sustaining innovations, by contrast, are ones that deliver better performance for an existing customer's existing use cases. Think of faster CPU speed, bigger hard drive capacity, more pixels on a camera. If a technology is better at any use case that people are already making money off of, it's not a disruptive technology, because by definition those are worse at existing use cases but let people do things they haven't been doing before. There are probably some AI-related disruptive startups out there that will apply it to use-cases that are not currently computerized. But by-and-large, it targets existing use-cases, for the simple reason that you need training data to build the AI in the first place. That gives an advantage to incumbents who have the training data and massive amounts of capital to train the AIs in the first place.
- golergka 3y ago
  > think of how crypto's use cases have been DeFi protocols and NFTs, while it's utterly failed as a currency That’s a first world centric view. Many, if not most people in my social circle use crypto for transfers of significant sums and as store of value pretty much all the time.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Also a disruptive innovation. Those are new customers who turn to it because existing incumbents (whether governments or financial institutions) don't serve a specific population.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Which part of the world is that? If there are portions of the world where crypto is used as mainstream currency it certainly hasn't been televised, as far as I know.
    - golergka 3y ago
      I'm in Argentina right now, and most of my social circle have immigrated out of Russia to a variety of different countries across the world in the last couple of years.
- hn8305823 3y ago
  From the perspective of a worker being replaced by AI, and having to re-train for a new career it is extremely disruptive.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    That's not what "disruptive technology" means though. There's a very specific book [1] that described a specific dynamic to new technology innovations, and you lose a lot of precision by generifying the term. In the colloquial sense, most workers jobs' get disrupted by garden variety financial innovation anyway. It doesn't really matter whether your job can be done by machine, the PE firm or corporate finance types will just lay you off, leave your job undone, and boost margins so they can unload the stock before customers realize they're not getting anything for their money. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation-dp-1633691780/dp/1633691780/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Manag...

by hooby 3y ago

naveen99 3y ago

Hindsight probability = Bayesian oxymoron

deadbabe 3y ago

Yup. This is how it happened with social networks, mobile apps…

nostrademons 3y ago

Except it's not really a disruptive technology. It's (primarily) a sustaining technology. In Clayton Christensen's original work, disruptive innovations are worse than existing alternatives in the dimensions that existing markets care about, but they're either cheaper (think of microcomputers vs. minicomputers) or have same other attribute that makes them appeal to a new market segment (think of portability for laptops & cell phones, or ease of publishing for social media). This makes them create new market segments among new customers doing new things - think of how crypto's use cases have been DeFi protocols and NFTs, while it's utterly failed as a currency. Sustaining innovations, by contrast, are ones that deliver better performance for an existing customer's existing use cases. Think of faster CPU speed, bigger hard drive capacity, more pixels on a camera. If a technology is better at any use case that people are already making money off of, it's not a disruptive technology, because by definition those are worse at existing use cases but let people do things they haven't been doing before. There are probably some AI-related disruptive startups out there that will apply it to use-cases that are not currently computerized. But by-and-large, it targets existing use-cases, for the simple reason that you need training data to build the AI in the first place. That gives an advantage to incumbents who have the training data and massive amounts of capital to train the AIs in the first place.

golergka 3y ago
> think of how crypto's use cases have been DeFi protocols and NFTs, while it's utterly failed as a currency That’s a first world centric view. Many, if not most people in my social circle use crypto for transfers of significant sums and as store of value pretty much all the time.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  Also a disruptive innovation. Those are new customers who turn to it because existing incumbents (whether governments or financial institutions) don't serve a specific population.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Which part of the world is that? If there are portions of the world where crypto is used as mainstream currency it certainly hasn't been televised, as far as I know.
  - golergka 3y ago
    I'm in Argentina right now, and most of my social circle have immigrated out of Russia to a variety of different countries across the world in the last couple of years.
hn8305823 3y ago
From the perspective of a worker being replaced by AI, and having to re-train for a new career it is extremely disruptive.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  That's not what "disruptive technology" means though. There's a very specific book [1] that described a specific dynamic to new technology innovations, and you lose a lot of precision by generifying the term. In the colloquial sense, most workers jobs' get disrupted by garden variety financial innovation anyway. It doesn't really matter whether your job can be done by machine, the PE firm or corporate finance types will just lay you off, leave your job undone, and boost margins so they can unload the stock before customers realize they're not getting anything for their money. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation-dp-1633691780/dp/1633691780/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Manag...