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> There you have it - what are you most interested in, dear leader? Artificial intelligence, the blockchain, or quantum computing?6 They know exactly what their

> There you have it - what are you most interested in, dear leader? Artificial intelligence, the blockchain, or quantum computing?6 They know exactly what their target market is - people who have been given power of other people's money because they've learned how to smile at everything, and know that you can print money by hitching yourself to the next speculative bandwagon. Nailed it.

anon291 2y ago
I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. Block chain has no use. AI and quantum hage obvious uses if they work. Quantum is not close to working now. It's where AI was at in the 80s/90s. AI may not be perfect but there is no denying that the GPTs were a dramatic shift.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  > GPTs were a dramatic shift IT was a massive leap forward for a 50 year old idea. IF it takes another 50 years to make a leap of equal size, we might get to AGI before the heat death of the the universe. > I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them?
  - anon291 2y ago
    > If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them? A translator and editor would be nice? I use GPT to give feedback on my writing. It works well, especially suggesting other ways to word things. This is something I didn't even know I needed. There are all kinds of other uses. It has offered advice to me on programming language design, approaches to math proofs, etc. Again, I don't NEED these things, but yes it makes it a lot easier to have that there. Just like I don't NEED google. I could scan through hundreds of thousands of websites or hire someone else to do it. But it's just easier to do that myself.
- financltravsty 2y ago
  Blockchain is used as a stand-in financial system for those who don't or can't use the incumbent ones (for banking, commerce, gambling, and so on). AI is nowhere close to delivering on its promises. But it's pretty useful for many tasks. Quantum computers are vaporware. Quantum sensors are already here and game-changing. But just like AI, has failed to live up to hype. --- Crypto is already here and makes good on its promises: decentralized finance. Full disclosure: I do not own any crypto besides negligible sums in forgotten wallets.
- cfeduke 2y ago
  > I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. It's not that there is any claim to equivalency, its that these are the technology trends that are most useful - the trend itself, nevermind any sort of usable technology - for those who grift.
  - tavavex 2y ago
    It's not an uncommon argument to try and draw parallels between these - X was a fairly useless, yet extremely speculative new tech scam, and Y is speculative new tech. Therefore Y is also a useless scam, QED. There's a difference between something being an extremely hyped development and it being an actual grift down to the core. The internet was an extremely overhyped development, but ultimately not a grift. Cryptocurrency was, to a large extent, both. Whether generative AI is one or the other won't be apparent until a bubble truly starts growing.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Something can be both a good development and overhyped grift. You have to keep in mind that for a lot of people and their businesses, the grift is literally the entire angle. Not building a technology. Not building a 100 year old business. But to get rich fast as you can while you have the opportunity, tech and business be damned. Ironically, both the real technologists and the grifters benefit from this preaching of misleading overstatements and half truths from the rooftop. It’s therefore tolerated almost as a funding mechanism for the industry at large. Mac os 15, same as it ever was now with AI under the hood. Sounds like a good seller to me.
safety1st 2y ago
Yeah, this is pretty spot on, unfortunately. Most people don't really comprehend how much money there is in the hands of people at the top that just... falls down to whatever random stuff those people are getting worked up about at the moment. The vast majority of it ends up being nonproductive and it really does get allocated based on what those people see in their Twitter feeds. This is a much more pronounced problem than it was 20 years ago because of all the money printing governments have done, in general if you are connected to the government and banks, you will be the largest beneficiary of that type of action. None of this stuff is really subjected to market economics, it either flows through some kind of government/NGO bureaucracy or from someone who controls a monopoly or something similar to one. The waste and inefficiency in this modern pseudo-command-economy is mind blowing to behold.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Not only do people merely get worked up of course. Theres grifters and plenty of nepotism. Sometimes people in positions of power expand the system solely to make contracts for people connected to them, ostensibly for some benefit but with the amount of waste and unaccounted for money once leaving one org and entering for another intentions are sufficiently masked. And even if peoples intentions were plainly unmasked, everyone at the top of the org are probably just as leveraged and isn’t going to stop the music just to appease the little man that propaganda defanged 100 years ago in this country.

anon291 2y ago

I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. Block chain has no use. AI and quantum hage obvious uses if they work. Quantum is not close to working now. It's where AI was at in the 80s/90s. AI may not be perfect but there is no denying that the GPTs were a dramatic shift.

zer00eyz 2y ago
> GPTs were a dramatic shift IT was a massive leap forward for a 50 year old idea. IF it takes another 50 years to make a leap of equal size, we might get to AGI before the heat death of the the universe. > I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them?
- anon291 2y ago
  > If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them? A translator and editor would be nice? I use GPT to give feedback on my writing. It works well, especially suggesting other ways to word things. This is something I didn't even know I needed. There are all kinds of other uses. It has offered advice to me on programming language design, approaches to math proofs, etc. Again, I don't NEED these things, but yes it makes it a lot easier to have that there. Just like I don't NEED google. I could scan through hundreds of thousands of websites or hire someone else to do it. But it's just easier to do that myself.
financltravsty 2y ago
Blockchain is used as a stand-in financial system for those who don't or can't use the incumbent ones (for banking, commerce, gambling, and so on). AI is nowhere close to delivering on its promises. But it's pretty useful for many tasks. Quantum computers are vaporware. Quantum sensors are already here and game-changing. But just like AI, has failed to live up to hype. --- Crypto is already here and makes good on its promises: decentralized finance. Full disclosure: I do not own any crypto besides negligible sums in forgotten wallets.
cfeduke 2y ago
> I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. It's not that there is any claim to equivalency, its that these are the technology trends that are most useful - the trend itself, nevermind any sort of usable technology - for those who grift.
- tavavex 2y ago
  It's not an uncommon argument to try and draw parallels between these - X was a fairly useless, yet extremely speculative new tech scam, and Y is speculative new tech. Therefore Y is also a useless scam, QED. There's a difference between something being an extremely hyped development and it being an actual grift down to the core. The internet was an extremely overhyped development, but ultimately not a grift. Cryptocurrency was, to a large extent, both. Whether generative AI is one or the other won't be apparent until a bubble truly starts growing.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Something can be both a good development and overhyped grift. You have to keep in mind that for a lot of people and their businesses, the grift is literally the entire angle. Not building a technology. Not building a 100 year old business. But to get rich fast as you can while you have the opportunity, tech and business be damned. Ironically, both the real technologists and the grifters benefit from this preaching of misleading overstatements and half truths from the rooftop. It’s therefore tolerated almost as a funding mechanism for the industry at large. Mac os 15, same as it ever was now with AI under the hood. Sounds like a good seller to me.

safety1st 2y ago

Yeah, this is pretty spot on, unfortunately. Most people don't really comprehend how much money there is in the hands of people at the top that just... falls down to whatever random stuff those people are getting worked up about at the moment. The vast majority of it ends up being nonproductive and it really does get allocated based on what those people see in their Twitter feeds. This is a much more pronounced problem than it was 20 years ago because of all the money printing governments have done, in general if you are connected to the government and banks, you will be the largest beneficiary of that type of action. None of this stuff is really subjected to market economics, it either flows through some kind of government/NGO bureaucracy or from someone who controls a monopoly or something similar to one. The waste and inefficiency in this modern pseudo-command-economy is mind blowing to behold.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Not only do people merely get worked up of course. Theres grifters and plenty of nepotism. Sometimes people in positions of power expand the system solely to make contracts for people connected to them, ostensibly for some benefit but with the amount of waste and unaccounted for money once leaving one org and entering for another intentions are sufficiently masked. And even if peoples intentions were plainly unmasked, everyone at the top of the org are probably just as leveraged and isn’t going to stop the music just to appease the little man that propaganda defanged 100 years ago in this country.