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"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors
by tomlue 7mo ago
"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different.
Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no technology in history with these curves.
The real debate isn't whether AI is transformative. It's whether current investment levels are proportionate to the transformation. That's a much harder and more interesting question than reflexively citing a phrase that pattern-matches to past bubbles.
- spidersouris 7mo ago> Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years Source?
- tomlue 7mo agohttps://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-adoption-generative-ai https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-ado...
- Jensson 7mo agoSo about 10%, using it less than once per day means you didn't find it useful for most tasks.
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoJust like the PC. Or the internet. In 1995 how many people used the internet in their daily work, of those that did how many was it a curiosity that maybe supplemented their existing business practice (sending a memo via email rather than post for example). Large companies were using large computer mainframes but the majority of employers - the SMEs - weren’t. By 2005 it massively shifted, and AI seems to be coming faster than the internet and computers in general. By 2015 non intenet companies were going the way of the dodo. How many travel agents were there per 100k in 1995 compared to 2015?
- shimman 7mo agoMy boss never had to threaten me to use a computer, unlike the current LLM mandates across corporate America.
- shimman 7mo agoAlso add in that these adoption rates are being enforced via threats of firing by bosses of workers. It's hardly something organic, there's a reason why the LLM companies are chasing lucrative corporate welfare contracts because consumers have soundly rejected this nonsense.
- 201984 7mo agoYeah, what's counting as "adoption" here?
- cogman10 7mo agoThe problem is in the middle of such a change it's hard to recognize if this is a real change or if this is another Wankel motor. Plenty a visual programming language has tried to toot their own horns as being the next transformative change in everything, and they are mostly just obscure DSLs at this point. The other issue is nobody knows what the future will actually look like and they'll often be wrong with their predictions. For example, with the rise of robotics, plenty of 1950s scifi thought it was just logical that androids and smart mechanic arms would be developed next year. I mean, you can find cartoons where people envisioned smart hands giving people a clean shave. (Sounds like the making of a scifi horror novel :D Sweeney Todd scifi redux) I think AI is here to stay. At very least it seems to have practical value in software development. That won't be erased anytime soon. Claims beyond that, though, need a lot more evidence to support them. Right now it feels like people just shoving AI into 1000 places hoping that they can find an new industry like software dev.
- bojan 7mo agoThe practical value is there, if they managed to keep the price at the current levels or lower. But if they don't and if I have to think twice about how much every request's going to cost, the cost-benefit analysis will look differently fast.
- cogman10 7mo agoYeah that's another rub. The current price is basically there in the hopes that in the future they can find revenue streams to maintain their current pace. But even if the big companies ultimately go belly up, I think the open models are good enough that we'll likely see pretty cheap AI available for a while, even if it's not as good as the STOA when the bankruptcies roll through.
- jibal 7mo agoI once owned a Maxda RX2 ... my second car, IIRC. The Wankel motor wasn't revolutionary, but it was pretty good.
- radlad 7mo ago
- fragmede 7mo agoThe four technologies I look at are 3D televisions, VR, tablets, and the electric car. 3D televisions and VR have yet to find their moment. Judging tablets by the Apple Newton and electric cars by the EV1, this time is different turns out to be the correct model looking at the iPad and Tesla, but not for 3d televisions or VR (yet). So, it could be, but my time machine is as good as yours (mine goes 1 minute per minute, and only forwards, reverse is broken right now.), so unless you've got money on it, we'll just have to wait and see where it goes.
- legulere 7mo agoThere's another perspective you can see in the comparison with the dot com boom. The web is here to stay, but a lot of ideas from the beginning didn't work out and a lot of companies turned bankrupt.
- inigyou 7mo agoThe original concept of the web, hyperlinked documents originating from high-quality institutions, is pretty much dead. Now we have an application platform that happens to have adopted some similar protocols and is 99% slop
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoIt wasn’t surprise me if a lot of AI companies go bankrupt. However some will survive, and there will be far more bankruptcy and downsizing in the industries replaced
- thesz 7mo ago> 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Adjust for connectivity and see whether it is different (from pure hype) this time.
- bigstrat2003 7mo ago> The real debate isn't whether AI is transformative. No, the debate is very much whether AI is transformative. You don't get to smuggle your viewpoint as an assumption as if there was consensus on this point. There isn't consensus at all.
- selridge 7mo agoNo one is smuggling this in. The debate is over. It's transformative. We're in the midst of transformation.
- bandrami 7mo agoIt's really not over. Somebody has to actually put something into production with it first.
- jwittmayer 7mo agoImplying that nobody has put AI generated code into production yet?
- bandrami 7mo agoStuff that's going into production now (actual production, not startup MVP production) would have been being written just before Claude Code came out, so pretty much by definition no. There's some copilot-style assisted stuff in the wild, I guess? But not really more of it than pre-copilot so the productivity argument kind of falls through there.
- thevinter 7mo agoCursor came out 3 years ago. "Agentic" refactors have been a thing for 1.5 years. Vibecoding as a term has been created 1 year ago. There are multiple companies that deploy to production daily. What are we even talking about?
- alpaca128 7mo ago> Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12) You're comparing a service that mostly costs a free account registration and is harder to avoid than to use, with devices that cost thousands of dollars in the early days.
- tomlue 7mo agoThat is a fair point. You could look at enterprise adoption though, also very high, and not cheap at all.