This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Wonder if the 5% that actually made money included companies that sell enterprise AI services, like AWS, Microsoft, and Google?
Nvidia?
Emerging technology always loses money in the first few years. Sometimes for a decade or so. This isn’t new.
I think there are real productivity gains to be had but the vast majority are probably leaning into the idea of replacing people too much. It helps me do my job but I'm still the decision maker and I need to review the outputs. I'm still accountable for what AI gives me so I'm not willing to blindly pass that stuff forward.
Yeah. The dunning kruger effect is a real problem here.
I saw a meme saying something like, gen AI is a real expert in everything but completely clueless about my area of specialisation.
As in... it generates plausible answers that seem great but they're just terrible answers.
I'm a consultant I'm in a legal adjacent field. 20 years deep. I've been using a model from hugging face over the last few months.
It can save me time by generating a lot of boiler plate with references et cetera. However it very regularly overlooks critically important components. If I didnt know about these things then I wouldn't know it was missing from the answer.
So really, it cant help you be more knowledgeable, it can only support you at your existing level.
Additionally, for complex / very specific questions, it's just a confidently incorrect failure. It sucks that it cant tell you how confident it is with a given answer.
It's not about return it's about addiction. Companies that invest in AI have money.
We're now at the "if you don't, your competitor will". So you really have no choice. There are people that don't use Google anymore and just use chatgpt for all questions.
I have no proof, but I feel like the AI push and Turnip getting re-elected and his regression of the EPA rules sounds like this whole AI thing was an excuse to burn more fossil fuels.
If I was invested in AI, and considering AI's thirst for electricity, I would absolutely make a similar investment in energy. That way, as the AI server farms suck up the electricity I would get at least some of that money back from the energy market.
Does anybody have the original study? I tried to find it but the link is dead ( looks like NANDA pulled it )
Return? /s
I would argue we have seen return. Documentation is easier. Tools for PDF, Markdown have increased in efficacy. Coding alone has lowered the barrier to bringing building blocks and some understanding to the masses. If we could hitch this with trusted and solid LLM data, it makes a lot of things easier for many people. Translation is another.
I find it very hard to believe 95% got ZERO benefit. We’re still benefiting and it’s forcing a lot of change (in the real world). Example, more power use? More renewable energy, and even (yes safe) nuclear is expanding. Energy storage is next.
These ‘AI’ (broadly used) tools will also get better and improve the interface between physical and digital. This will become ubiquitous, and we’ll forget we couldn’t just ‘talk’ to computers so easily.
I’ll end with, I don’t say ‘AI’ is an overblown and overused and overutilized buzzword everywhere these days. I can’t say about bubbles and shit either. But what I see is a lot of smart people making LLMs and related technologies more efficient, more powerful, and is trickling into many areas of software alone. It’s easier to review code, participate, etc. Literal papers are published constantly about how they find new and better and more efficient ways to do things.
Well written response. There is an undeniable huge improvement to LLMs over the last few years, and that already has many applications in day to day life, workplace and whatnot.
From writing complicated Excel formulas, proofreading, and providing me with quick, straightforward recipes based on what I have at hand, AI assistants are already sold on me.
That being said, take a good look between the type of responses here -an open source space with barely any shills or astroturfers (or so I'd like to believe) - and compare them to the myriad of Reddit posts that questioned the same thing on subs like r/singularity and whatnot. It's anecdotal evidence of course, but the amount of BS answers saying "AI IS GONNA DOMINATE SOON" ; "NEXT YEAR NOBODY WILL HAVE A JOB", "THIS IS THE FUTURE" etc. is staggering. From doomsayers to people who are paid to disseminate this type of shit, this is ONE of the things that mainly leads me to think we are in a bubble. The same thing happened/ is happening to crypto over the last 10 years. Too much money being inserted by billionaire whales into a specific subject, and in years they are able to convince the general population that EVERYBODY and their mother is missing out a lot if they don't start using "X".
Losing money is a called going into debt, not just zero returns.
Douse it with gasoline. Burn it with fire.
