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No. My memory of the advent of the WWW was a sidebar in PC Magazine in Nov 1993 with an FTP link to download the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was a wow! moment to vi

No. My memory of the advent of the WWW was a sidebar in PC Magazine in Nov 1993 with an FTP link to download the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was a wow! moment to visit the few sites that existed. But nothing like this. What we’re seeing now is generating vastly more interest and excitement. It’s more akin to the 1999 dotcom bubble, but with far more impact and reach.

catmanjan 2y ago
>far more impact and reach. Absurd, AI has had zero impact in the everyday life of most of the population of Earth, in fact the biggest impact has been upon the wallets of speculators
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- xenocratus 2y ago
  > far more impact and reach > has had zero impact in the everyday life of most of the population of Earth You do realise those two can be true at the same time, right? The first one is relative, while the second is absolute, so they don't necessarily cancel out.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- planb 2y ago
  So had the companies that crashed in the Dotcom Bubble. And still a pet food delivery service (like the infamous pets.com) can be a profitable and sustaining business now (> 20 years later).
- prettyStandard 2y ago
  Zero impact? AI is involved in things from writing laws to taking drive through orders.
  - anthk 2y ago
    And it will create horrible un-debuggable bugs, human-killing causalities and who knows what more. Welcome to Idiocracy.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      So far I've found the bugs that it writes to be indistinguishable from the bugs that I'd write. Like, you look at it and think: > Oh I see what you were going for, but no... It's learning its deficiencies from us. That's concerning for many reasons, but "un-dubuggable bugs" is pretty far down on the list for me.
  - xdennis 2y ago
    Zero impact is an exaggeration, but what others have pointed out is that there aren't a lot of companies primarily based on AI which are making a profit. Personally I can't think of any.
- dustingetz 2y ago
  chatgpt has >1b arr, so for comparison that’s about the size of Notion.
- icetank 2y ago
  I can tell you from personal experience that chatgpt is a game changer in universities and schools. Close to 100% of students use chatgpt to study. I know in our university pretty much everyone that attends exams uses chatgpt to study. Chatgpt is arguably more valuable then Wikipedia and Google for studies.
  - salviati 2y ago
    Let me add that this change compounds over time. More efficient studying results in more competent people. I believe it's very hard to measure the impact, but there is a very positive long term impact from how much these tools help with learning.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    It will be interesting to see if this benefits the learning of students or just helps them pass more easily without retaining any knowledge...
    - anshumankmr 2y ago
      i don't think they are gonna allow chat gpt while giving the end semester exams, right? or quizzes/assignments? Unless there is some homework aspect to it, it still can act as a tool not a crutch. If student's use it as a crutch, then yeah they are not gonna do as well I presume.
    - davidron 2y ago
      This is EXACTLY what I remember people saying about Cell Phones and PDAs when they were popular in the 90s (people can't remember phone numbers any more), Google when it was first unleashed (people won't know how to use card catalogs and libraries any more), and then again about Wikipedia when it became popular. What actually happened was that behavior changed and people became more efficient with these better tools.
- cameronh90 2y ago
  The internet had zero impact on most of the population of earth for quite a while too.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Relative to the 1999 Dot.com bubble? I'm fairly sure the customer support agents I've been talking to recently were using an LLM to draft their emails. No idea if they were supposed to be doing so or not, but the style of sentences in their emails… And I'm seeing GenAI images on packaging, and in advertising. AI is definitely having more than "zero impact", even if AI has gone from being a signal saying "we're futuristic" (when it was expensive, even though it was worse) to "we cut every cost we can" (now it's cheap).
- infecto 2y ago
  The only thing Absurd is the holdouts like yourself who refuse to see the impact the current gen of AI has on. Sure, you could probably say most people are not touched but there are definitely significant populations within the US and its only going to grow and spread.
- bwb 2y ago
  I am personally using it for around 50% of my questions about all kinds of things (things I used to Google and get frustrated with bad results). And my wife uses it for about 40% right now, even or recipes and other bits. We both love it. Work wise about to implement it and see how it does on some work we couldn't scale to humans.
newsclues 2y ago
Social media really changed news, especially the pace of breaking news.

catmanjan 2y ago

>far more impact and reach. Absurd, AI has had zero impact in the everyday life of most of the population of Earth, in fact the biggest impact has been upon the wallets of speculators

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xenocratus 2y ago
> far more impact and reach > has had zero impact in the everyday life of most of the population of Earth You do realise those two can be true at the same time, right? The first one is relative, while the second is absolute, so they don't necessarily cancel out.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
planb 2y ago
So had the companies that crashed in the Dotcom Bubble. And still a pet food delivery service (like the infamous pets.com) can be a profitable and sustaining business now (> 20 years later).
prettyStandard 2y ago
Zero impact? AI is involved in things from writing laws to taking drive through orders.
- anthk 2y ago
  And it will create horrible un-debuggable bugs, human-killing causalities and who knows what more. Welcome to Idiocracy.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    So far I've found the bugs that it writes to be indistinguishable from the bugs that I'd write. Like, you look at it and think: > Oh I see what you were going for, but no... It's learning its deficiencies from us. That's concerning for many reasons, but "un-dubuggable bugs" is pretty far down on the list for me.
- xdennis 2y ago
  Zero impact is an exaggeration, but what others have pointed out is that there aren't a lot of companies primarily based on AI which are making a profit. Personally I can't think of any.
dustingetz 2y ago
chatgpt has >1b arr, so for comparison that’s about the size of Notion.
icetank 2y ago
I can tell you from personal experience that chatgpt is a game changer in universities and schools. Close to 100% of students use chatgpt to study. I know in our university pretty much everyone that attends exams uses chatgpt to study. Chatgpt is arguably more valuable then Wikipedia and Google for studies.
- salviati 2y ago
  Let me add that this change compounds over time. More efficient studying results in more competent people. I believe it's very hard to measure the impact, but there is a very positive long term impact from how much these tools help with learning.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  It will be interesting to see if this benefits the learning of students or just helps them pass more easily without retaining any knowledge...
  - anshumankmr 2y ago
    i don't think they are gonna allow chat gpt while giving the end semester exams, right? or quizzes/assignments? Unless there is some homework aspect to it, it still can act as a tool not a crutch. If student's use it as a crutch, then yeah they are not gonna do as well I presume.
  - davidron 2y ago
    This is EXACTLY what I remember people saying about Cell Phones and PDAs when they were popular in the 90s (people can't remember phone numbers any more), Google when it was first unleashed (people won't know how to use card catalogs and libraries any more), and then again about Wikipedia when it became popular. What actually happened was that behavior changed and people became more efficient with these better tools.
cameronh90 2y ago
The internet had zero impact on most of the population of earth for quite a while too.
ben_w 2y ago
Relative to the 1999 Dot.com bubble? I'm fairly sure the customer support agents I've been talking to recently were using an LLM to draft their emails. No idea if they were supposed to be doing so or not, but the style of sentences in their emails… And I'm seeing GenAI images on packaging, and in advertising. AI is definitely having more than "zero impact", even if AI has gone from being a signal saying "we're futuristic" (when it was expensive, even though it was worse) to "we cut every cost we can" (now it's cheap).
infecto 2y ago
The only thing Absurd is the holdouts like yourself who refuse to see the impact the current gen of AI has on. Sure, you could probably say most people are not touched but there are definitely significant populations within the US and its only going to grow and spread.
bwb 2y ago
I am personally using it for around 50% of my questions about all kinds of things (things I used to Google and get frustrated with bad results). And my wife uses it for about 40% right now, even or recipes and other bits. We both love it. Work wise about to implement it and see how it does on some work we couldn't scale to humans.

newsclues 2y ago

Social media really changed news, especially the pace of breaking news.