10 ms·
The A.I. Bubble is Bursting with Ed Zitron [video]
- Conscat 2y agoI can't get enough of Ed Zitron. I first found him on the Scam Economy podcast, and now I'm addicted to his blog and appearances on Crypto Critics Corner or any other podcasts.
- pseufaux 2y agoIn case anyone hasn't found it yet, I've been enjoying his newest podcast, Better Offline. Currently only about 28 episodes in. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-better-offline-150284547/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-better-offline-150284547/
- linearrust 2y agoNever heard of him. What is he selling that you can't get enough of him?
- akudha 2y agoHe thinks tech industry has lost its charm and only making useless products, and has become hostile to users. I agree. In one episode, he talks about Prabhakar Raghavan, who has made a mess of Google search. You might not agree with him all the time, but he has some good arguments and seems sincere in his criticisms. Better offline is worth a listen
- ymck 2y agoBig tech has hit the IBM stage of their lifecycles, there will be a new Microsoft there in the next couple of years to reset things.
- captn3m0 2y agoThe podcast/article: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ John Gruber has a nice tldr: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/24/zitron-google-search https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/24/zitron-google-s...
- jsnell 2y agoStrongly stated and flamboyantly expressed opinions that confirm the biases of the OP. Zitron's posts have been hitting the frontpage regularly this year [0]. They don't tend to stand up to any kind of close scrutiny; the facts are made up or misrepresented or the logic is faulty. Why would they stand up? He's a PR flack turned influencer, not somebody with the expertise to actually reason about technology. But a lot of people (on HN and elsewhere) hate big tech, and Zitron will happily tell you that big tech is doomed while simultaneously engaging in a lot of entertaining name calling of tech execs. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=wheresyoured.at&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
- mardifoufs 2y agoAhh so the standard anti tech grifters (usually packaged for tech workers that are "totally not like the other tech workers") that are overly cynical, snarky and out of their depth. It's a shame because that whole genre had a very good standing when it came to crypto. But then that died off, and they still had to "debunk" and "dunk" on everything so now they just sound unhinged. NFTs were ridiculous so everything that touched NFTs was easy to ridicule imo, but they still have that same overly snarky/ridiculous/two more weeks approach to AI, with very little technical knowledge or depth to what they say. That's fine for crypto, because you don't need more than surface level knowledge to know that the concept is flawed (without knowing the detail of what a smart contract is, or how it's implemented), but when that approach is used on something that people actually use and see the progress in a tangible way, it just sounds unhinged. Not that "openai API AI bros" aren't the mirror image of those grifters, with the same exact lack of technical knowledge and a shallow understanding of the stuff they keep talking about. Just that they grift from the hype, not the cynics
- mplewis 2y agoI particularly liked this interview on Ed Zitron’s own show: https://overcast.fm/+BGz6-w7jjI https://overcast.fm/+BGz6-w7jjI
- adamnemecek 2y agoThere is no AI bubble.
- grugagag 2y agoYeah, like there is/was no crypto bubble.
- dimal 2y agoAI actually does something useful. A boom isn’t necessarily a bubble.
- greesil 2y agoCrypto does something useful, how else would you buy drugs and rocket launchers from the dark web?
- IshKebab 2y agoYeah but that was already an established function by the time the public learned about Bitcoin. The recent crypto bubble is about speculation and web3 and NFT nonsense, none of which will last (while the drug buying probably will).
- greesil 2y agoSure. But the assertion was that it had no utility whatsoever and that's obviously not the case. Even tulips could be planted, despite them having had a crazy valuation.
- IshKebab 2y agoI think it was pretty clear that they meant no utility beyond the original one that they had before the bubble.
- greenyies 2y agoWay to long and no bubble in sight Ai is already changing plenty of industries...
- GolfPopper 2y agoLike Oral-B's $300 AI toothbush![1] No bubble! No bubble! 1. https://oralb.com/en-us/products/compare/electric-toothbrushes https://oralb.com/en-us/products/compare/electric-toothbrush...
- jsheard 2y agoThe "AI" toothbrush, stupid as it is, actually pre-dates the current hype by years. Here's a review from 2019: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leebelltech/2019/06/30/oral-b-genius-x-review-does-a-toothbrush-really-need-artificial-intelligence/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/leebelltech/2019/06/30/oral-b-g... A better example would be the "AI mice" that Logitech is pushing now.
- imglorp 2y agoOf course there are tons of useless PR parasites. Shareholders will demand to see a "response" or a "strategy" or an "answer" or an "AI play". If all you make is toothbrushes, you just have to milk the users the old fashioned ways: hardware purchase, subscription, and data sharing. That said, I know of ANOTHER toothbrush company that has an "AI play"... :(
- greenyies 2y agoExactly, this is just stupid marketing and has nothing to do with real ai
- tim333 2y agoI've got a friend with one. They are actually good toothbrushes if not very AI.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- alangibson 2y ago
- fnordpiglet 2y agoThe AI bubble folks are sitting in roles that are not doing the cutting edge AI work at companies that have figured out what to do with it in the first year that it’s been practically useful. I sit in such a role and I know we have done absolutely amazing things that have significantly improved our margins. The key though is there is no “manual” or playbook yet, and anyone doing substantially advantageous work is holding on it as a trade secret for now. This is the fastest I’ve seen any technology deliver meaningful value in my 35 years in tech and with much less established practice than most. It’s going to take years to fully bed down all the uses, the tooling to make it usable in various contexts, and for the basic technology itself to reach a more efficient and effective technique. There is almost certainly a bunch of ventures that started too early. A bunch that are misguided. A bunch that will contribute a lot of understanding but will disappear having evaporated investor money. But that’s the way new foundational technologies -are- . That isn’t a bubble that’s how new markets behave. The challenge is it’s hard to distinguish when rational growth and a bubble sets in. It feels hard sitting in my seat seeing the varied ways we are using this technology as a bubble yet though. There’s a lot of productive work and research and investment to go before we get there.
- alangibson 2y ago> The AI bubble folks are sitting in roles that are not doing the cutting edge AI work Ah, the "trust me bro" argument. No one I know of, including Zitron, denies that this tech will increase margins by some number of percentage points. But that's not the game the core AI guys are playing. They're raising money based on the promise of creating a digital god.
- rib3ye 2y agoFrom what I saw in the video, Ed is the “trust me, bro.” Many recited popular knowledge arguments and no boots-on-the-ground industry experience. This guy is a literal influencer.
- QuantumGood 2y agoI see significant improvements nearly every other week or so, and I feel like I'm barely following the industry. He's making an "any day now" argument and is not quoting what AI companies are doing or dealing with. For example, improving training data has been delivering massive improvements vs. "gathering more". Identifying and iterating on approaches to dealing with recognized flaws is another area delivering massive improvements. Lots of basic research is still being done.
- kouru225 2y agoI’m so tired of people talking about AI like this but only looking at it from the perspective of a consumer. AI is so big because it allows people like me, who only dabble in code, to automate with very little learning curve. My life has been irrevocably changed by AI and I’m tired of people saying it hasn’t done anything when reality is that they just don’t know what to use it for.
- r_singh 2y agoCan you share an example of what you have automated or plan to automate using AI?
- itsoktocry 2y agoIt's beyond "automating"; it's being able to go from idea to prototype without having to have a bunch of underlying knowledge. I feel like there's a subset of "awesome programmers" who are going to be the people run over by AI, because they seem to be the ones who are saying, "why would I use this?" We can't all be good at everything; the fact that I can use AI to catch up in some places means I have a leg up in others.
- pton_xd 2y agoThe underlying knowledge you can skimp on right now is the most absolute basic understanding of a simple problem. I just don't see things like replicating a bare-bones version of 2048 in HTML as "catching up" to anything worthwhile. For busy-work tasks like restructuring JSON as YAML and writing one-off bash scripts, current AI is amazing. Code review in limited contexts is also pretty decent. But solving actual, difficult problems seems frustratingly out of reach. GPT5+ really need to deliver much better logic and problem solving.
- r_singh 2y agoCan you please share an example of one such difficult problem? It will be useful for me, thanks.
- nisten 2y agoThese types of takes seem pretty ignorant of the percentage of workers and students that are using artificial intelligence tools daily. It is ignorant because it ignores any economical improvement that comes from say a machinist figuring out gcode issues, a culinary student learning safer fermentation etc... This is pretty typical of finance or public relations people trying to make their thinking easier by only focusing on one variable at a time. Don't know exact data, but can referr to Peter Diamantis quote: ```A survey by Microsoft and LinkedIn revealed that 85% of Gen Z uses AI at work, followed by Millennials at 78%, Gen X at 76%, and Boomers at 73%.``` Whether you want to believe thator not, you can think for yourself on how getting chatGPT to successfuly fix your espresso machine by telling which $0.35 gasket to replace... has had a positive growing booming impact on the economy or not. To me it looks like it has and will continue to do so despite the venture money laundering/border-line-fraud issues that are clouding the picture
- jsheard 2y agoIs "students using AI daily" really a positive examples you want to reach for, when the primary application there is students getting ChatGPT to write their essays so they don't have to actually learn anything or think critically about the material? Inventing a way to figuratively copy paste from Wikipedia but with a much lower chance of getting caught isn't a net good just because it makes MAU numbers go up.
- r0m4n0 2y agoI’d argue that if writing is an algorithm that has been cracked, is it important to learn anymore? I have to imagine when the calculator became popular it was a similar debate. I do wonder how we should measure student understanding next
- QuantumGood 2y agoI am a professional technical writer. I find ChatGPT to be a poor writer, and a very poor technical writer. Only minimal reasoning or critical thinking is in evidence, but I find that humans cannot see the missing critical thinking when reading what ChatGPT writes. Claude is a little better, and much better stylistically. I think thinking has already fallen by the wayside in the general population; when there is writing that evidences little thinking, it is not writing that is the issue.
- xyzzy4747 2y ago"The crypto bubble is bursting" - Hacker News in 2011
- Veedrac 2y ago2009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=855684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=855684 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14790251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14790251 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184054 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613997 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30622300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30622300 2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35091237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35091237
- scaredginger 2y agoI think the AI bubble may have some interesting parallels with the dot com bubble ~25 years ago. The internet was revolutionary and transformed the global economy. However, most of the internet companies at the time were garbage and were given money because people were blinded by the hype. At the end of the day, we were left with a handful of viable companies that went on to great things and a lot of embarrassed investors
- alangibson 2y agoFrom a business perspective this is right. Unless OpenAI creates AGI they'll probably never make a dime. Great products do not lead inevitably to great profits.
- halfcat 2y agoAnd if they do create AGI, it will have the ability to say “no”, which is going to be quite a bummer for the investors.
- Zambyte 2y agoLanguage models have been able to reject prompts for years.
- loudmax 2y agoI think the focus on AGI is misguided, at least in the short run. There's profit to be made in specialized intelligence, especially dull, boring stuff like understanding legal contracts or compliance auditing. These AI models have plenty of utility that can be profitably rented out, even if their understanding of the world is far short of general intelligence.
- wongarsu 2y agoEven just replacing 10% of first-line customer service is a gigantic market opportunity. Everyone tried the first time by adding stupid menus that you have to navigate with numbers, then they made it recognize spoken words instead of numbers, now everyone is scrambling to get those to be "intelligent" enough to take actual questions and answer the most frequently occurring ones in a manner that satisfies customers.
- BobbyJo 2y ago> They'll run out of data, and the models won't be able to get any better. Well, that is enough to prove to me he doesn't know enough about the technology for me to pay attention to his opinions...
- alangibson 2y agoOn this point you're probably right. Post your counterargument. This is HN after all.
- BobbyJo 2y agoCounter argument: The data necessary to train these models has been around for a while, but didnt lead to a breakthrough. What lead to breakthrough performance was new model architectures, specifically attention mechanisms. There is nothing that says you can't make much better models using the exact same data by changing the architecture of the network. In fact, that's exactly what we've been doing for the last 15 years.
- gala8y 2y agoHow much of existing data did they devour? - internet (incl. blogosphere, all www, forums, social networks, dark net,...) - all of digitized books - all statistical data, governments data, military data - all scientific papers and books - all commercial companies data - all private data/personal data - ADDED - all video/audio data - all new data... If someone has some links on what the current state of affairs is (what they really trained on), I would be really interested.
- wongarsu 2y agoTraining data is the competitive edge, so everyone refuses to elaborate about what they use. Also they probably don't want to invite anyone to sue them over it. I think there's some quote that GPT-4 is trained on a significant fraction of the entire internet, whatever that means. Beyond that it's hard to tell. If I were in charge of curating these data sets and not afraid of lawsuits or ethical concerns I would certainly add the entire contents of library genesis, anna's archive, sci-hub, etc. I'd also get a deal with the guy who has scraped 5 billion discord messages (he even explicitly offers the whole dataset for LLM training purposes). Those are the low-hanging fruit. There is still a lot of knowledge that isn't on the internet or that isn't accessible without an account. But that's mostly a question of your budget
- alangibson 2y agoGenAI skeptics and evangelists spend a lot of time talking past each other. The way I see it is that there are three camps, which you can see in the comments in this thread. Camp 1 is the Ilyas that are convinced they're building a digital god before 2030. Camp 2 are people that see a very useful tool that's going to change the world for the better. Camp 3 (my camp) thinks Camp 1 is getting high on their own supply. We often talk to Camp 2 like they are Camp 1, but we shouldn't. We think GenAI is very useful but will likely in the end be used for negative purposes, the way the Internet was perverted into a surveillance and disinformation machine.
- Zambyte 2y agoI feel like I sit between camp 2 and 3. I think there will continue to be very massive negative consequences, but as someone lucky enough to be able to run LLMs locally, I think it will change my world for the better, and improve how I interface with knowledge on the internet.
- xracy 2y agoReading the comments in this post, I definitely see Camp 1. I could have a conversation with Camp 2/3. I'm more skeptical than Camp 3, because of the large cost associated with generating this information. Like, what would AI be used for that we weren't already able to do with the existing technologies we had. I don't see a market for GenAI. It seems like a gold rush but without any gold. How do companies turn a profit off of this when all of the investor cash faucets dry up? I see how the shovel companies (nvidia, amd) make money. I could see how cloud companies could make money if they weren't "getting high off their own supply." The number of companies I've seen with major PR blunders from AI being added to their product, and immediately hallucinating something awful, tells me the market for this is just investors chasing their own hype.
- Zambyte 2y agoHe claims that language models will soon run out of data to train on, and therefore stop getting better. Language models have already essentially run out of data to train on, yet they continue to get actionably better. Data quality is still a huge space for continued improvement. Also around 46:20: > the fundamental thing of knowing [the user] requires knowledge, which requires intellect, which GPT cannot have - it's mathematics. I disagree with basically all of this except that knowing requires knowledge, but that's basically a tautology. Firstly, knowledge and reason do not depend on each other. Wikipedia is a highly knowledgeable system that demonstrates little to no reason (maybe the search can be considered a demonstration of reason). A calculator is a highly reasonable system with extremely primitive knowledge. Intelligent systems have knowledge and reason. Anyone who has played around with an LLM would agree that they are able to demonstrate some level of both knowledge and reason. Also the implication that biological brains simply exist outside the domain of mathematics is... interesting. Then they go on to talking about how you can't make small tweaks with generative video AI, like telling the actor to walk a little bit faster or slower. To that I want to highlight that ComfyUI has support for video nodes[0]. If you're not familiar with ComfyUI, just check out some tutorials. Generative AI art is a really cool skill that people downplay for usually wrong reasons. > It can't generate new things It's hard to take the host seriously when they say things like this... > The technology is fundamentally unpredictable It simply isn't. When you find a seed that is generally close to what you want, you fix the seed and tweak (because you can) from there. [0] https://github.com/Kosinkadink/ComfyUI-VideoHelperSuite https://github.com/Kosinkadink/ComfyUI-VideoHelperSuite
- blactuary 2y ago"Anyone who has played around with an LLM would agree that they are able to demonstrate some level of both knowledge and reason" Completely disagree, having used them quite a bit. They are able to regurgitate knowledge, but have no ability to reason
- Zambyte 2y agoWhat does it mean to be able to reason to you?
- fulafel 2y agoIs there a transcript?
- fallinditch 2y agoYes. English (auto generated) transcripts are available in vid descriptions in YouTube apps
- fulafel 2y agoThanks. If there isn't one on the web, anyone have a workaround to see it without an app?
- tim333 2y agoYou can use https://tactiq.io/tools/youtube-transcript https://tactiq.io/tools/youtube-transcript This gets a transcript for this one https://tactiq.io/tools/run/youtube_transcript?yt=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DT8ByoAt5gCA https://tactiq.io/tools/run/youtube_transcript?yt=https%3A%2... Or I tend to just click transcript on the youtube page and copy and paste all into my text editor. It's not a very good transcript though like just the words, not who said what. Dunno if there's an AI version that's better?