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I wonder if there's something common between crypto and AI leading to the cloud of grift and predation around the ecosystems and common uses of the respective t

I wonder if there's something common between crypto and AI leading to the cloud of grift and predation around the ecosystems and common uses of the respective technologies. Or if this is where society is at now and it will happen with any new technology regardless.

visarga 3y ago
> grift and predation around the ecosystems and common uses We have had web search for 25 years, it could surface any content out of billions of web pages. It's faster than LLMs and the content is written by humans. Why mention AI and crypto and not web search, it empowers people to make derivative works or to use information without compensation, isn't that a form of predation? Add Wikipedia too, it officially discourages any "original research", everything is derived, and most people just read the wiki without ever clicking on the references to the original contents. Wiki takes traffic away from those sources, can we say it is a grifter site? Alternatively, let's tone down the grifting logic. There is nothing LLMs know that search engines and wiki don't, they just save a determined person a couple of clicks and a bit of reading.
nine_zeros 3y ago
There are enough people desperate enough that they will take unusual risks. Some of these people will become successful. Others are the suckers who will spend their lives chasing gold but never reach it.
- Intralexical 3y ago
  If they're all taking "risks", then by definition the result is luck/random. So then what separates your "successful" from your "suckers"?
  - nine_zeros 3y ago
    The only difference between suckers and successful people is the outcome. If the outcome was truly meaningful for the individual, they were successful. Otherwise, they were just a sucker in other individual's games.
rchaud 3y ago
> something common between crypto and AI leading to the cloud of grift and predation Yes, the relentless drumbeat of 'this is the next Internet' hype. With blockchain it was 'money of the future'. Both are things that pique popular interest, but both fail to deliver what the hype promises. What people want is AGI, what they get are LLMs.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >What people want is AGI, what they get are LLMs. I don't know about that. What I want is a local, private, configurable LLM that will act as my agent for actions that can be automated (e.g., ordering groceries based on what's in my refrigerator or paying my bills or noting that my favorite band will be in my town sometime in the future and buying tickets for me or filing my taxes for me or any of thousands of other things) without sharing state or data with anyone. I don't really care about AGI, as it doesn't currently and won't exist for the foreseeable future. And AGI is likely sentient and, as such, should have a choice as to how it expends the CPU/memory/network it is allocated. Perhaps I'm not representative of the "people" you mention, but that's what I want. Edit: Fixed typo.
Intralexical 3y ago
Both ideologies promise to replace social systems built around trusting people with technical systems run by machines, and in doing so they reduce people to the moral worthlessness of machines. No need to trust your shopkeeper to be honest or build a relationship with your contractor, the Blockchain/LLM will handle that interaction for you! Cry some more, artist, GenAI is inevitable so you're out of a job! Naturally, the individuals which are attracted to such an idea tend to… not be the most… prosocial or empathetic bunch. And some fraction of those take that to the degree of engaging in actively predatory and abusive behaviors in order to amass their own wealth. The hype cycle, and other prevailing economic conditions, are definitely a part of it too. But frankly, you don't see quite so many scams with other widely hyped technologies.

visarga 3y ago

> grift and predation around the ecosystems and common uses We have had web search for 25 years, it could surface any content out of billions of web pages. It's faster than LLMs and the content is written by humans. Why mention AI and crypto and not web search, it empowers people to make derivative works or to use information without compensation, isn't that a form of predation? Add Wikipedia too, it officially discourages any "original research", everything is derived, and most people just read the wiki without ever clicking on the references to the original contents. Wiki takes traffic away from those sources, can we say it is a grifter site? Alternatively, let's tone down the grifting logic. There is nothing LLMs know that search engines and wiki don't, they just save a determined person a couple of clicks and a bit of reading.

nine_zeros 3y ago

There are enough people desperate enough that they will take unusual risks. Some of these people will become successful. Others are the suckers who will spend their lives chasing gold but never reach it.

Intralexical 3y ago
If they're all taking "risks", then by definition the result is luck/random. So then what separates your "successful" from your "suckers"?
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  The only difference between suckers and successful people is the outcome. If the outcome was truly meaningful for the individual, they were successful. Otherwise, they were just a sucker in other individual's games.

rchaud 3y ago

> something common between crypto and AI leading to the cloud of grift and predation Yes, the relentless drumbeat of 'this is the next Internet' hype. With blockchain it was 'money of the future'. Both are things that pique popular interest, but both fail to deliver what the hype promises. What people want is AGI, what they get are LLMs.

nobody9999 3y ago
>What people want is AGI, what they get are LLMs. I don't know about that. What I want is a local, private, configurable LLM that will act as my agent for actions that can be automated (e.g., ordering groceries based on what's in my refrigerator or paying my bills or noting that my favorite band will be in my town sometime in the future and buying tickets for me or filing my taxes for me or any of thousands of other things) without sharing state or data with anyone. I don't really care about AGI, as it doesn't currently and won't exist for the foreseeable future. And AGI is likely sentient and, as such, should have a choice as to how it expends the CPU/memory/network it is allocated. Perhaps I'm not representative of the "people" you mention, but that's what I want. Edit: Fixed typo.

Intralexical 3y ago

Both ideologies promise to replace social systems built around trusting people with technical systems run by machines, and in doing so they reduce people to the moral worthlessness of machines. No need to trust your shopkeeper to be honest or build a relationship with your contractor, the Blockchain/LLM will handle that interaction for you! Cry some more, artist, GenAI is inevitable so you're out of a job! Naturally, the individuals which are attracted to such an idea tend to… not be the most… prosocial or empathetic bunch. And some fraction of those take that to the degree of engaging in actively predatory and abusive behaviors in order to amass their own wealth. The hype cycle, and other prevailing economic conditions, are definitely a part of it too. But frankly, you don't see quite so many scams with other widely hyped technologies.