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AI can be a bubble and a real technological revolution at the same time, there is absolutely no reason these two things need to be mutually exclusive. The most
by usrnm 1y ago
AI can be a bubble and a real technological revolution at the same time, there is absolutely no reason these two things need to be mutually exclusive. The most recent example is the Internet in the late 90s-early 2000s. It was a bubble, it did crash and it did eventually fulfill all af its promises and more. There is no contradiction here
- dijit 1y agoThe issue is: 1) Overhype can cause a “winter” where the word itself will become toxic once the bubble pops, leading to significant underinvestment for the period following. This actually has already happed twice with AI, and is part of why we use “Machine Learning” for concepts that used to be called AI… because AI was a toxic word that investors ran from. 2) A bubble sucks all the oxygen out of the room for all other technological endeavours. It’s strictly a bad thing as it can crush the entire technology sector (or potentially even the economy). 3) Bubbles might cause a return to form, but the internet was more like the railroads. Once built the infrastructure was largely existing and it being sold “for cheap” lead to a resurgence. AI has fewer of these core bits of infrastructure that will become cheap in a bust.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThe difference with the .com era is that a website is and was immediately useful when it came out. Yes there was too much speculative investment, but the inherent merits of the technology were plainly obvious. This is not the case with AI. It is not even clear if these tools are useful. This really is much more an “Emperor has no clothes” situation, which is why this bubble is perhaps more dangerous.