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having exhausted the number of people he can sell his “crypto bad” books to, gerard has now pivoted to “ai bad”. nothing new. https://pessimistsarchive.org/ ht

having exhausted the number of people he can sell his “crypto bad” books to, gerard has now pivoted to “ai bad”. nothing new. https://pessimistsarchive.org/ https://pessimistsarchive.org/

__loam 2y ago
You're right, there was absolutely nothing to be pessimistic about vis a vis crypto. Nothing bad ever happened there.
lxgr 2y ago
To be fair, it doesn't look like he was far off on crypto. Of course being able to call that doesn't at all automatically translate into also being right about AI. There's lots of people that have successfully predicted one particular bubble, but all of their other predictions have completely failed to materialize (to say nothing of all the wrong ones they made before striking gold). That's just how selection/survivorship bias works. In this particular case, I actually suspect that both things can be true at the same time: We're in the middle of an AI hype bubble and >90% of current startups will not survive the next 3 years, but AI will still profoundly change the way we work. There's even a nice historical analogy: We once had the dot com bubble, in which lots of people lost lots of money, but ultimately, the Internet did turn out to be kind of a big deal. It's just hard to go from that general bet on vibes to one that identifies actual companies that are going to bring about all of that.
- __loam 2y ago
  I think you're right, but I don't think "AI" as we see it today is really the thing we should be looking at when we come out of this bubble. What's really exciting is that we're building an enormous parallel computing infrastructure that's going to revolutionize scientific computing. We're already seeing some glimmers of this stuff like with what deepmind did with protein folding. Once the charletans die off I hope we see a massive acceleration in research in all kinds of fields.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    That's a good way to put it. That said, I do think that LLMs, while not the "final form of AI" by any means, are already somewhat of a revolution in human-machine interfaces. Being able to look up facts (or make up convincing lies) is neat, but to me, their real power lies in how good they are in summarizing and translating. Remember when Siri and Google Assistant were having a very hard time understanding even the simplest commands if they weren't formulated in the exact way they understood, and the "aboutness" problem seemed unsurmountable without AGI? Now we're suddenly way past that (without any AGI). Even if AI completely plateaus out with LLMs at their present-day strength, I think we could spend years, if not decades, of getting good at meaningfully integrating them into previously very manual workflows. Even an "AI winter" of that shape feels significantly more disruptive than many of the more optimistic crypto scenarios.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    > we're building an enormous parallel computing infrastructure that's going to revolutionize scientific computing We're doing an absolute shit job of it and basing our foundations on piles of sand. We're gonna have to throw it all away and do it right the second time if we ever decide to do something useful.
    - smackeyacky 2y ago
      I don’t think that matters. Out of the Dotcom rubble, we got a lot of useful ideas for tools even though the actual tools all got thrown away. It was the ideas and the “hey, look at what is possible” that survived i.e. Linux came of age properly and now the world runs on it. AI will quickly pollute itself, but the infrastructure will survive. That most of it will be thrown away is perfectly ok, the ideas will live on.
      - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
        > but the infrastructure will survive What infrastructure? Massively inefficient corporate rent-seeking attempts aren't infrastructure. There is no AI "Linux" in 2024, all AI tools are closed-source and proprietary.
- davidgerard 2y ago
  author here. the key insight is that (a) the AI promotional nonsense is the same as crypto (b) the VCs are literally the same guys who just bombed out on Web3. AI is not as blitheringly useless as crypto - ML is real and does things! - but those guys are zeroing in on the applications that really are that useless. Also, the AI guys are making the same excuses for their ghastly power usage that the coiners used to.
  - jijijijij 2y ago
    Compare the last two S. Altman interviews on the Lex Fridman Podcast. Dude already got lawyers breathing down his neck not to make unsubstantiated claims. I guess, they can't deliver, and the suspicion of fraud is in the air.
    - aitchnyu 2y ago
      Umm, so what promises he is/maybe legally liable for?
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    >AI is not as blitheringly useless as crypto Really? You can't think of one single practical use for a non-centrally controlled system for sending -basically money- to others without gatekeepers being able to effortlessly interfere or debase? You completely dismiss the very real cases (all bubble hype uses and scams aside) of people using crypto to escape the worst parts of certain countries horrible inept, corrupt banking and financial systems? If you flatly deny that any of these uses cases do exist and could become larger, I'd argue that you're speaking from ideological blindness against crypto instead of from a reasoned, thoughtful notion of its problems.
    - cvz 2y ago
      I've only ever heard of one use that wasn't speculative, promotional, astro-turfing, or just a straight up scam. That one use was an anonymous online marketplace to buy and sell illegal drugs. Do you have another example?
otabdeveloper4 2y ago
Is he wrong though? (Never read him, but now I suddenly want to.)
davidgerard 2y ago
SBF was robbed, right?
Netcob 2y ago
I have yet to see a comment with a sarcastic "something bad" in it that provides an actual argument. By the way, what positive effect has crypto had so far? Other than redistributing between some people and wasting enormous amounts of energy? Personally I use AI all the time, but hallucinations are a problem, data is always a problem in all of machine learning, and it's always good to stay away from the cult-like behavior of people who can find absolutely nothing wrong with new technology.
t3hfl1pside 2y ago
[dead]

having exhausted the number of people he can sell his “crypto bad” books to, gerard has now pivoted to “ai bad”. nothing new. https://pessimistsarchive.org/ https://pessimistsarchive.org/

__loam 2y ago

You're right, there was absolutely nothing to be pessimistic about vis a vis crypto. Nothing bad ever happened there.

lxgr 2y ago

To be fair, it doesn't look like he was far off on crypto. Of course being able to call that doesn't at all automatically translate into also being right about AI. There's lots of people that have successfully predicted one particular bubble, but all of their other predictions have completely failed to materialize (to say nothing of all the wrong ones they made before striking gold). That's just how selection/survivorship bias works. In this particular case, I actually suspect that both things can be true at the same time: We're in the middle of an AI hype bubble and >90% of current startups will not survive the next 3 years, but AI will still profoundly change the way we work. There's even a nice historical analogy: We once had the dot com bubble, in which lots of people lost lots of money, but ultimately, the Internet did turn out to be kind of a big deal. It's just hard to go from that general bet on vibes to one that identifies actual companies that are going to bring about all of that.

__loam 2y ago
I think you're right, but I don't think "AI" as we see it today is really the thing we should be looking at when we come out of this bubble. What's really exciting is that we're building an enormous parallel computing infrastructure that's going to revolutionize scientific computing. We're already seeing some glimmers of this stuff like with what deepmind did with protein folding. Once the charletans die off I hope we see a massive acceleration in research in all kinds of fields.
- lxgr 2y ago
  That's a good way to put it. That said, I do think that LLMs, while not the "final form of AI" by any means, are already somewhat of a revolution in human-machine interfaces. Being able to look up facts (or make up convincing lies) is neat, but to me, their real power lies in how good they are in summarizing and translating. Remember when Siri and Google Assistant were having a very hard time understanding even the simplest commands if they weren't formulated in the exact way they understood, and the "aboutness" problem seemed unsurmountable without AGI? Now we're suddenly way past that (without any AGI). Even if AI completely plateaus out with LLMs at their present-day strength, I think we could spend years, if not decades, of getting good at meaningfully integrating them into previously very manual workflows. Even an "AI winter" of that shape feels significantly more disruptive than many of the more optimistic crypto scenarios.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  > we're building an enormous parallel computing infrastructure that's going to revolutionize scientific computing We're doing an absolute shit job of it and basing our foundations on piles of sand. We're gonna have to throw it all away and do it right the second time if we ever decide to do something useful.
  - smackeyacky 2y ago
    I don’t think that matters. Out of the Dotcom rubble, we got a lot of useful ideas for tools even though the actual tools all got thrown away. It was the ideas and the “hey, look at what is possible” that survived i.e. Linux came of age properly and now the world runs on it. AI will quickly pollute itself, but the infrastructure will survive. That most of it will be thrown away is perfectly ok, the ideas will live on.
    - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
      > but the infrastructure will survive What infrastructure? Massively inefficient corporate rent-seeking attempts aren't infrastructure. There is no AI "Linux" in 2024, all AI tools are closed-source and proprietary.
davidgerard 2y ago
author here. the key insight is that (a) the AI promotional nonsense is the same as crypto (b) the VCs are literally the same guys who just bombed out on Web3. AI is not as blitheringly useless as crypto - ML is real and does things! - but those guys are zeroing in on the applications that really are that useless. Also, the AI guys are making the same excuses for their ghastly power usage that the coiners used to.
- jijijijij 2y ago
  Compare the last two S. Altman interviews on the Lex Fridman Podcast. Dude already got lawyers breathing down his neck not to make unsubstantiated claims. I guess, they can't deliver, and the suspicion of fraud is in the air.
  - aitchnyu 2y ago
    Umm, so what promises he is/maybe legally liable for?
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  >AI is not as blitheringly useless as crypto Really? You can't think of one single practical use for a non-centrally controlled system for sending -basically money- to others without gatekeepers being able to effortlessly interfere or debase? You completely dismiss the very real cases (all bubble hype uses and scams aside) of people using crypto to escape the worst parts of certain countries horrible inept, corrupt banking and financial systems? If you flatly deny that any of these uses cases do exist and could become larger, I'd argue that you're speaking from ideological blindness against crypto instead of from a reasoned, thoughtful notion of its problems.
  - cvz 2y ago
    I've only ever heard of one use that wasn't speculative, promotional, astro-turfing, or just a straight up scam. That one use was an anonymous online marketplace to buy and sell illegal drugs. Do you have another example?

otabdeveloper4 2y ago

Is he wrong though? (Never read him, but now I suddenly want to.)

davidgerard 2y ago

SBF was robbed, right?

Netcob 2y ago

I have yet to see a comment with a sarcastic "something bad" in it that provides an actual argument. By the way, what positive effect has crypto had so far? Other than redistributing between some people and wasting enormous amounts of energy? Personally I use AI all the time, but hallucinations are a problem, data is always a problem in all of machine learning, and it's always good to stay away from the cult-like behavior of people who can find absolutely nothing wrong with new technology.

t3hfl1pside 2y ago

[dead]