4 ms·

I'm absolutely flabbergasted how much money and political capital is spent on vaporware, while there are very concrete and very impactful challenges we could be

by isodev 2y ago

I'm absolutely flabbergasted how much money and political capital is spent on vaporware, while there are very concrete and very impactful challenges we could be addressing instead.

brookst 2y ago
There’s a lot of money to be made if you can reliable distinguish the two in advance.
- isodev 2y ago
  I don't think there is appetite for this, in big tech especially. People are looking for glamorous next big things, everyone wants to be the first in some green field thing instead of digging into "the boring stuff we've been hearing about since forever". Imagine, even Apple completely enshittified their OSes just so they're on the bandwagon of AI with zero added value.
  - fhd2 2y ago
    Exactly. And now, a possibly terrifying question: What if there just is not going to be a "next big thing"? Population size is about to peak. Up until now, for as long as we know, it has been growing. Starting at the latest with colonisation, we've had more people, more resources, new markets advancing into buyers of new products. Once societies advance to a certain point, they begin to shrink, this is well studied. Without these growth factors, does it seem likely we'll see something as transformative as the automobile or the internet again? Possibly bleak and badly informed, but I find it plausible to think that the party is about to end. Most of us here have probably seen what happens to a company when they stop growing. Spoiler: It's typically not innovation.
    - fellowmartian 2y ago
      I’m not the biggest AI fanboy, but AI is the solution to this. You’re right that the population is about to peak, and we’ll stop adding biological brains that can come up with new things, but if we crack real AGI then we’ll have many more orders of magnitude of mechanical brains that can do the same.
      - fhd2 2y ago
        I think the most interesting aspect about this is that improvements in robotics could help us eliminate some truly gruesome jobs we currently rely on something bordering on slave labour for. Pricking fruits and vegetables for example is AFAIK for the most part still manual labour. And food is, as opposed to, say, ad targeting, a pretty fundamental requirement for us. But that's not really growth, it's optimisation. That is exactly the kind of thing that a company that stopped growing does. That wouldn't necessarily make it "the next big thing" though, in the "new frontier" ways we've seen in the past.
- drawkward 2y ago
  There's even more money to be made off the backs of those who can't.
- petee 2y ago
  My grandma loved to remind my dad about how he didn't think CDs would become a thing, and to not invest in Philips (as i recall) And he was tech savy, building circuits, computers etc, he just didn't think it would be reliable or better than what existed... definitely a vinyl guy.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Conversely I sold thousands of bitcoins years ago once I learned the technology and recognized how stupid/useless it was. Didn't pan out well for me.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      Yup, I had bought a few thousand bitcoin at about 2 or 3 cents each and sold them at 50 cents. Still "made money", but uhhh....
  - tetris11 2y ago
    that's curious, what was the alternative to the CD at the time?
    - petee 2y ago
      Most cars had cassette players, many still had 8-tracks; vinyl or or tape at home. Not that they were great options, but there was alot of existing media available, and hardware was common, so an expensive bulky device to play fragile media at lower quality than vinyl, was how it was viewed by many initially. Edit: just checking, the Sony Walkman came out in 1979, CDs in 1982, but the Walkman dominated the 80s & 90s, so its easy to see why CDs were dismissed
      - tetris11 2y ago
        Data cassette tapes look like they could have held up to max 600 MB[0], but CDs came out at out of the gate in 1980s with 650 MB. I guess in terms of storage I can't quite grasp why he thought that CD wouldn't take on. (Hindsight 50/50, of course.) 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Data_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Data_recording
nicce 2y ago
Imagine how much food you get for every person in U.S. with 7 trillion. You probably get some roofs too.
- layer8 2y ago
  You won’t get those 7 trillions back though, which is what they’d be hoping for.
- anon291 2y ago
  The US has -- if anything -- too much food. If someone is starving in America, it's 100% due to them having no interest in acquiring the free food that is widely available almost everywhere.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    As an interesting aside, the US measures hunger not by metrics of starvation, but by metrics of "feeling hungry and not being able to quench that sensation". They call this "food insecurity". So you end up with a whole bunch of poor overweight people who need 4500 cals a day to sustain their mass, reporting that they have a hard time sustaining their diet. Obesity is a huge problem in lower income demographics, the same demographics that report high food insecurity.
    - anon291 2y ago
      Ah fascinating. Yes many years of family working at food banks... There's endless healthy food. It's actually costly to get rid of it.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    >100% due to them having no interest I wouldn't go that far. Nobody willingly has no interest in being fed. There are logistical and other issues with the distribution of food and ensuring it gets to who needs it the most. It's a microcosm of what's happening in the world: there is more than enough food to feed every hungry person on the planet yet people starve (not because they don't have interest in acquiring food).
anon291 2y ago
AI is being used for all sorts of 'very concrete' and 'very impactful' challenges, and has been for the last decade.
csomar 2y ago
Capital is spent to acquire more power, not to give power to some random people. This is the reality of the world we are living in.

by isodev 2y ago

I'm absolutely flabbergasted how much money and political capital is spent on vaporware, while there are very concrete and very impactful challenges we could be addressing instead.

brookst 2y ago

There’s a lot of money to be made if you can reliable distinguish the two in advance.

isodev 2y ago
I don't think there is appetite for this, in big tech especially. People are looking for glamorous next big things, everyone wants to be the first in some green field thing instead of digging into "the boring stuff we've been hearing about since forever". Imagine, even Apple completely enshittified their OSes just so they're on the bandwagon of AI with zero added value.
- fhd2 2y ago
  Exactly. And now, a possibly terrifying question: What if there just is not going to be a "next big thing"? Population size is about to peak. Up until now, for as long as we know, it has been growing. Starting at the latest with colonisation, we've had more people, more resources, new markets advancing into buyers of new products. Once societies advance to a certain point, they begin to shrink, this is well studied. Without these growth factors, does it seem likely we'll see something as transformative as the automobile or the internet again? Possibly bleak and badly informed, but I find it plausible to think that the party is about to end. Most of us here have probably seen what happens to a company when they stop growing. Spoiler: It's typically not innovation.
  - fellowmartian 2y ago
    I’m not the biggest AI fanboy, but AI is the solution to this. You’re right that the population is about to peak, and we’ll stop adding biological brains that can come up with new things, but if we crack real AGI then we’ll have many more orders of magnitude of mechanical brains that can do the same.
    - fhd2 2y ago
      I think the most interesting aspect about this is that improvements in robotics could help us eliminate some truly gruesome jobs we currently rely on something bordering on slave labour for. Pricking fruits and vegetables for example is AFAIK for the most part still manual labour. And food is, as opposed to, say, ad targeting, a pretty fundamental requirement for us. But that's not really growth, it's optimisation. That is exactly the kind of thing that a company that stopped growing does. That wouldn't necessarily make it "the next big thing" though, in the "new frontier" ways we've seen in the past.
drawkward 2y ago
There's even more money to be made off the backs of those who can't.
petee 2y ago
My grandma loved to remind my dad about how he didn't think CDs would become a thing, and to not invest in Philips (as i recall) And he was tech savy, building circuits, computers etc, he just didn't think it would be reliable or better than what existed... definitely a vinyl guy.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Conversely I sold thousands of bitcoins years ago once I learned the technology and recognized how stupid/useless it was. Didn't pan out well for me.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    Yup, I had bought a few thousand bitcoin at about 2 or 3 cents each and sold them at 50 cents. Still "made money", but uhhh....
- tetris11 2y ago
  that's curious, what was the alternative to the CD at the time?
  - petee 2y ago
    Most cars had cassette players, many still had 8-tracks; vinyl or or tape at home. Not that they were great options, but there was alot of existing media available, and hardware was common, so an expensive bulky device to play fragile media at lower quality than vinyl, was how it was viewed by many initially. Edit: just checking, the Sony Walkman came out in 1979, CDs in 1982, but the Walkman dominated the 80s & 90s, so its easy to see why CDs were dismissed
    - tetris11 2y ago
      Data cassette tapes look like they could have held up to max 600 MB[0], but CDs came out at out of the gate in 1980s with 650 MB. I guess in terms of storage I can't quite grasp why he thought that CD wouldn't take on. (Hindsight 50/50, of course.) 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Data_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Data_recording

nicce 2y ago

Imagine how much food you get for every person in U.S. with 7 trillion. You probably get some roofs too.

layer8 2y ago
You won’t get those 7 trillions back though, which is what they’d be hoping for.
anon291 2y ago
The US has -- if anything -- too much food. If someone is starving in America, it's 100% due to them having no interest in acquiring the free food that is widely available almost everywhere.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  As an interesting aside, the US measures hunger not by metrics of starvation, but by metrics of "feeling hungry and not being able to quench that sensation". They call this "food insecurity". So you end up with a whole bunch of poor overweight people who need 4500 cals a day to sustain their mass, reporting that they have a hard time sustaining their diet. Obesity is a huge problem in lower income demographics, the same demographics that report high food insecurity.
  - anon291 2y ago
    Ah fascinating. Yes many years of family working at food banks... There's endless healthy food. It's actually costly to get rid of it.
- thruway516 2y ago
  >100% due to them having no interest I wouldn't go that far. Nobody willingly has no interest in being fed. There are logistical and other issues with the distribution of food and ensuring it gets to who needs it the most. It's a microcosm of what's happening in the world: there is more than enough food to feed every hungry person on the planet yet people starve (not because they don't have interest in acquiring food).

anon291 2y ago

AI is being used for all sorts of 'very concrete' and 'very impactful' challenges, and has been for the last decade.

csomar 2y ago

Capital is spent to acquire more power, not to give power to some random people. This is the reality of the world we are living in.