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The latest LLMs are remarkable, but I think the AI Doomer claims are still a reach. My prediction is that the current AI boom will fizzle out into a handful of

The latest LLMs are remarkable, but I think the AI Doomer claims are still a reach. My prediction is that the current AI boom will fizzle out into a handful of useful products and a lot of smoke from VC cash. Where are the moon bases? Supersonic jets? Asteroid mines? Self driving cars? We’ve gotten over excited so many times in the past.

FeepingCreature 3y ago
To be fair, none of those are ultimately a matter of "can't" so much as "don't really want to." When we got a billionaire who wanted serious space colonization, we got SpaceX, which is currently working on a moon lander that qualifies as a base in its own right. And of course, we had supersonic jets, there just wasn't enough demand. People want cheap flights more than super-fast flights. We often get excited about these things, but society usually doesn't. That may be one way in which the current AI boom is different.
- BigJono 3y ago
  Or it might be one way in which it's exactly the same.
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    I think you're underestimating the hype potential of "it's an app that I can have a normal conversation with."
bayindirh 3y ago
They take too long to build and require that thing called engineering which requires blood sweat and tears. On the other hand, you can scrape the internet, build a model, semi-rig a couple of demos, hype the product and earn money. Don't forget, it's all about money. Product is just a means to get money. Building good things and earning good money as a byproduct is a thing of the old. Boomer stuff. Modern people don't do that anymore. It's not efficient, capitalist and quick enough.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  I'm enjoying the irony that a product that relies on scraping the Internet will be undone by the flood of Internet content it generates. I think that's a much more likely outcome than AGI. Even if AGI is possible it's going to be constrained by the training resources thrown at it. Since most of those have been thoroughly enshittified now, the outcome for intelligent AGI isn't looking good. Even if AGI hacks into everyone's camera and messages it's still going to turn into a spam+selfie moster superbot, and not Operation Paperclip 2.0.
rsynnott 3y ago
> Self driving cars? This one in particular, I find fascinating, because we've literally just _had_ a hype cycle over it (I remember people telling me they'd be here any day now a decade ago), and now we're onto another AI hype cycle, almost immediately. Which comes first, AGI, or the self-driving car? :) (I think your other examples are qualitatively different; moon bases, supersonic (passenger) jets and asteroid mining are clearly possible, but impractical for economic reasons; no-one is willing to _pay_ for them. Plenty of people are willing to pay for both self-driving cars and AGI, but there is just no clear route to achieving either.)
- rwmj 3y ago
  We have self-driving cars already, but they're not evenly distributed ... and they have an unsatisfying amount of human input behind the scenes.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Well, I mean, if you're willing to stretch the definition to beyond breaking, sure, but we don't have anything that the average person in the street would think of as a self-driving car. Anyone claiming a self-driving car today is a bit high on their own marketing, and there's no clear route to getting beyond that point.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      I summon a Waymo car every few days, and it takes me from point A to point B for about the same price as an Uber or Lyft. This only works so long as point A and B are both in San Francisco, but for an average person in San Francisco with access to the app, self-driving cars are already here. You can argue that person isn't average for a number of reasons, but the cars are real and giving rides to members of the general public. https://youtu.be/-Rxvl3INKSg https://youtu.be/-Rxvl3INKSg is a news reporter's video of taking a ride in one, so you can see what it's like to ride in one. She's a news reporter and thus not your average person because she has access to Waymo because she's a reporter, but members of the general public are also getting access and are able to do this as well. After watching that, I think a reasonable average person could believe that self driving cars are here. As was said upthread, the future is here but unevenly distributed.
tiborsaas 3y ago
> Where are the moon bases? Supersonic jets? Asteroid mines? In the latent spaces of Stable Diffusion and friends.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
M4v3R 3y ago
> Where are the moon bases? Supersonic jets? Asteroid mines? Self driving cars? First three are purely hardware problems, among other things (like profitability). But asking where are the self driving cars in 2023 is a bit disingenuous. Yes, we don't have Level 5 autonomy accessible by everyone for the general public, but we already have Waymo and other cars already driving on public streets, and we do have Tesla with their FSD that some people are using for 90+% of their daily commutes. So yeah, it took longer then some people anticipated (and will still take a bit longer until these systems are widely deployed, bulletproof and affordable), but we're definitely getting there.
DebtDeflation 3y ago
This entire space has devolved into a false dichotomy between "the singularity is near" and "Third AI Winter is coming" in the popular press. Meanwhile, I'm getting paid to build domain specific chatbots for large companies and couldn't care less about "AGI".
098799 3y ago
Why would you need it? All you need is one machine capable enough that it will run it's own alphafold-3 to correctly predict the sequence of an appropriately deadly virus, pay some lab to synthesize it and release it to the atmosphere. Or create a dead man switch to do so, at which point you have to start treating it as north korea, sooner or later it will build the capabilities it needs and release it anyway.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Assumes the existence of such a virus (and that it cannot be treated/mitigated).
tomatotomato31 3y ago
Tesla just showed their new bot and it's trained by ai. We will continue integrating ai in all products for the next year's to come. The money invested and what it opens up is still huge and it pointed a lot of people to this area for very good reasons. But after the hype the work is there and now takes time. Copilot rollout in my company (100k people) is only happening right now

FeepingCreature 3y ago

To be fair, none of those are ultimately a matter of "can't" so much as "don't really want to." When we got a billionaire who wanted serious space colonization, we got SpaceX, which is currently working on a moon lander that qualifies as a base in its own right. And of course, we had supersonic jets, there just wasn't enough demand. People want cheap flights more than super-fast flights. We often get excited about these things, but society usually doesn't. That may be one way in which the current AI boom is different.

BigJono 3y ago
Or it might be one way in which it's exactly the same.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  I think you're underestimating the hype potential of "it's an app that I can have a normal conversation with."

bayindirh 3y ago

They take too long to build and require that thing called engineering which requires blood sweat and tears. On the other hand, you can scrape the internet, build a model, semi-rig a couple of demos, hype the product and earn money. Don't forget, it's all about money. Product is just a means to get money. Building good things and earning good money as a byproduct is a thing of the old. Boomer stuff. Modern people don't do that anymore. It's not efficient, capitalist and quick enough.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
I'm enjoying the irony that a product that relies on scraping the Internet will be undone by the flood of Internet content it generates. I think that's a much more likely outcome than AGI. Even if AGI is possible it's going to be constrained by the training resources thrown at it. Since most of those have been thoroughly enshittified now, the outcome for intelligent AGI isn't looking good. Even if AGI hacks into everyone's camera and messages it's still going to turn into a spam+selfie moster superbot, and not Operation Paperclip 2.0.

rsynnott 3y ago

> Self driving cars? This one in particular, I find fascinating, because we've literally just _had_ a hype cycle over it (I remember people telling me they'd be here any day now a decade ago), and now we're onto another AI hype cycle, almost immediately. Which comes first, AGI, or the self-driving car? :) (I think your other examples are qualitatively different; moon bases, supersonic (passenger) jets and asteroid mining are clearly possible, but impractical for economic reasons; no-one is willing to _pay_ for them. Plenty of people are willing to pay for both self-driving cars and AGI, but there is just no clear route to achieving either.)

rwmj 3y ago
We have self-driving cars already, but they're not evenly distributed ... and they have an unsatisfying amount of human input behind the scenes.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Well, I mean, if you're willing to stretch the definition to beyond breaking, sure, but we don't have anything that the average person in the street would think of as a self-driving car. Anyone claiming a self-driving car today is a bit high on their own marketing, and there's no clear route to getting beyond that point.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    I summon a Waymo car every few days, and it takes me from point A to point B for about the same price as an Uber or Lyft. This only works so long as point A and B are both in San Francisco, but for an average person in San Francisco with access to the app, self-driving cars are already here. You can argue that person isn't average for a number of reasons, but the cars are real and giving rides to members of the general public. https://youtu.be/-Rxvl3INKSg https://youtu.be/-Rxvl3INKSg is a news reporter's video of taking a ride in one, so you can see what it's like to ride in one. She's a news reporter and thus not your average person because she has access to Waymo because she's a reporter, but members of the general public are also getting access and are able to do this as well. After watching that, I think a reasonable average person could believe that self driving cars are here. As was said upthread, the future is here but unevenly distributed.

tiborsaas 3y ago

> Where are the moon bases? Supersonic jets? Asteroid mines? In the latent spaces of Stable Diffusion and friends.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

M4v3R 3y ago

> Where are the moon bases? Supersonic jets? Asteroid mines? Self driving cars? First three are purely hardware problems, among other things (like profitability). But asking where are the self driving cars in 2023 is a bit disingenuous. Yes, we don't have Level 5 autonomy accessible by everyone for the general public, but we already have Waymo and other cars already driving on public streets, and we do have Tesla with their FSD that some people are using for 90+% of their daily commutes. So yeah, it took longer then some people anticipated (and will still take a bit longer until these systems are widely deployed, bulletproof and affordable), but we're definitely getting there.

DebtDeflation 3y ago

This entire space has devolved into a false dichotomy between "the singularity is near" and "Third AI Winter is coming" in the popular press. Meanwhile, I'm getting paid to build domain specific chatbots for large companies and couldn't care less about "AGI".

098799 3y ago

Why would you need it? All you need is one machine capable enough that it will run it's own alphafold-3 to correctly predict the sequence of an appropriately deadly virus, pay some lab to synthesize it and release it to the atmosphere. Or create a dead man switch to do so, at which point you have to start treating it as north korea, sooner or later it will build the capabilities it needs and release it anyway.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Assumes the existence of such a virus (and that it cannot be treated/mitigated).

tomatotomato31 3y ago

Tesla just showed their new bot and it's trained by ai. We will continue integrating ai in all products for the next year's to come. The money invested and what it opens up is still huge and it pointed a lot of people to this area for very good reasons. But after the hype the work is there and now takes time. Copilot rollout in my company (100k people) is only happening right now