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Unlike crypto, AI already has very strong real world use cases and has been wholly embraced by the public. It’s an unfortunate reality that one of crypto’s lon

Unlike crypto, AI already has very strong real world use cases and has been wholly embraced by the public. It’s an unfortunate reality that one of crypto’s long term side effects is instilling a strong tech-cynicism in a large amount of people. This is a consequence of the deluge of bad actors that capitalized on crypto’s inherent ability to enable fraud and speculative “investing” at unprecedented scales.

aurareturn 3y ago
Well said. It's a lazy comparison between crypto and AI. Crypto is a bunch of scammers selling securities in an unregulated market. It exists simply because politicians move too slow. GenAI is more like the invention of electricity or internet. People will figure out ways to build on top of the invention. I'm sure you can go back to the 70s/80s and find that many people have said the bubble would burst or that the technology would never be useful.
- colesantiago 3y ago
  They are both the same. Both have breathless hype. Both are extremely overvalued and are a solution looking for a problem. Both aren't really useful unless you're (trying to count generating cat memes and broken hallucinating code a use case, it isn't). And last and the most important of all: Both of these waste a ton of energy either by training or running the software and are unlikely to make startups money due to it's rapid commoditization. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863.pdf https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watt...
  - LordKeren 3y ago
    I use ChatGPT and Copilot embedded my IDE every day. I can review my commits from the past year objectively say that these tools have increased my code output and quality. So reading that AI is useless seems like a stark denial of plain facts. People are already getting plenty of real world use and productively increases from AI
    - colesantiago 3y ago
      Using AI to objectively on average churn out broken and unreadable code to increase technical debt on your team isn't a use case or at all useful. https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/01/25/copilot-research.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/01/25/copilot... I also missed out another close similarity AI has with crypto. Both of them aren't regulated. Both of them unfortunately cannot be stopped.
    - tim333 3y ago
      >Just like crypto, AI has recently seen a seismic grift shift Also seems to miss the fact that crypto was grifty from near the start. I don't think it's quite as bad now as it was in the 2017 ICO boom.
- skmurphy 3y ago
  There is a distinction between "the technology would never be useful" and "we are in a bubble that will burst." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter for many examples of the latter with regard to various incarnations of "AI."

aurareturn 3y ago

Well said. It's a lazy comparison between crypto and AI. Crypto is a bunch of scammers selling securities in an unregulated market. It exists simply because politicians move too slow. GenAI is more like the invention of electricity or internet. People will figure out ways to build on top of the invention. I'm sure you can go back to the 70s/80s and find that many people have said the bubble would burst or that the technology would never be useful.

colesantiago 3y ago
They are both the same. Both have breathless hype. Both are extremely overvalued and are a solution looking for a problem. Both aren't really useful unless you're (trying to count generating cat memes and broken hallucinating code a use case, it isn't). And last and the most important of all: Both of these waste a ton of energy either by training or running the software and are unlikely to make startups money due to it's rapid commoditization. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863.pdf https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watt...
- LordKeren 3y ago
  I use ChatGPT and Copilot embedded my IDE every day. I can review my commits from the past year objectively say that these tools have increased my code output and quality. So reading that AI is useless seems like a stark denial of plain facts. People are already getting plenty of real world use and productively increases from AI
  - colesantiago 3y ago
    Using AI to objectively on average churn out broken and unreadable code to increase technical debt on your team isn't a use case or at all useful. https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/01/25/copilot-research.aspx https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/01/25/copilot... I also missed out another close similarity AI has with crypto. Both of them aren't regulated. Both of them unfortunately cannot be stopped.
  - tim333 3y ago
    >Just like crypto, AI has recently seen a seismic grift shift Also seems to miss the fact that crypto was grifty from near the start. I don't think it's quite as bad now as it was in the 2017 ICO boom.
skmurphy 3y ago
There is a distinction between "the technology would never be useful" and "we are in a bubble that will burst." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter for many examples of the latter with regard to various incarnations of "AI."