Governments and tech moguls have bet hundreds of billions on artificial intelligence. If the technology does what it promises, we will have to radically rethink how the global economy functions.
There has been a mobile phone revolution, absolutely
There was even a social media revolution, changed the way we interact
AI, though, so far has been just “the next it fad” in the 2-5 year cycle, like NFT before it, like Crypto currencies before that, and what was it before that? Web 3.0, then before that there was… Trying to remember… cloud computing? Each of these fads had minor to no influence.in how we did things, and for AI we only just added in stupidity of writing documents with AI which completely misses the point why we write those documents to begin with
I was with you up to “cloud computing”. That bubble was a huge success that has really revolutionized how software is provided
well known winners include AWS, Google, Microsoft but there are many more depending how you define cloud computing
also some huge flops
AI has a lot of mindshare and has demonstrated contributions in several areas. For example, ai slop you see on YouTube is making some people money. As a coder I do find it sometimes a useful tool, and I can definitely see the near future where it’s a required skill, and no, if you just ask it to spit out slop you’re not getting anything but slop ). I don’t see how it’s going away. However it doesn’t (yet?) live up to its hype nor is there (yet?) a profitable business for providers.
Meanwhile the crypto and NFT bubbles were pyramid schemes that only ever made money from themselves. Web 3.0 probably looks useful to its proponents but was only ever a niche that no one else cared about
im iffy on the social media thing. I would call it a type of stagnation. its not really improving anything. honestly the enshitification is kinda worse than stagntion. smarphones seemed incredible when the iphone and android first came out.
Software engineers use AI. Software engineers make software. Software runs all the shit. Generative AI has definitely lead to a revolution, regardless of how we feel about it. It’s not revolutionary like the internet was, nor like the steam press, nor like toast, but… maybe it’s revolutionary like … I don’t know … browsers in phones?
Not to mention AI is helping us understand how consciousness works better. Not because it actually resembles consciousness, but because it doesn’t while many people thought it would. This realization helps us develop our language and understanding better… now we distinguish between different kinds of intelligence more, and certainly understand better that you can have intelligence without consciousness. That’s a philosophical revolution.
Honestly, the technology is cool. The clout around it is ass. How the technology is being used is ass. What behaviors the technology is incentivizing is ass. But as a matter of fact, that it’s possible at all to exploit natural redundancy in language to the point of producing generative machines — that by itself is quite cool.
Not because it actually resembles consciousness, but because it doesn’t
There have been several waves of advancement for things initially called ai. However one of the most common threads is that it helps us define what intelligence is not.
There has been a computer revolution for sure
There has been a mobile phone revolution, absolutely
There was even a social media revolution, changed the way we interact
AI, though, so far has been just “the next it fad” in the 2-5 year cycle, like NFT before it, like Crypto currencies before that, and what was it before that? Web 3.0, then before that there was… Trying to remember… cloud computing? Each of these fads had minor to no influence.in how we did things, and for AI we only just added in stupidity of writing documents with AI which completely misses the point why we write those documents to begin with
I was with you up to “cloud computing”. That bubble was a huge success that has really revolutionized how software is provided
AI has a lot of mindshare and has demonstrated contributions in several areas. For example, ai slop you see on YouTube is making some people money. As a coder I do find it sometimes a useful tool, and I can definitely see the near future where it’s a required skill, and no, if you just ask it to spit out slop you’re not getting anything but slop ). I don’t see how it’s going away. However it doesn’t (yet?) live up to its hype nor is there (yet?) a profitable business for providers.
Meanwhile the crypto and NFT bubbles were pyramid schemes that only ever made money from themselves. Web 3.0 probably looks useful to its proponents but was only ever a niche that no one else cared about
im iffy on the social media thing. I would call it a type of stagnation. its not really improving anything. honestly the enshitification is kinda worse than stagntion. smarphones seemed incredible when the iphone and android first came out.
Software engineers use AI. Software engineers make software. Software runs all the shit. Generative AI has definitely lead to a revolution, regardless of how we feel about it. It’s not revolutionary like the internet was, nor like the steam press, nor like toast, but… maybe it’s revolutionary like … I don’t know … browsers in phones?
Not to mention AI is helping us understand how consciousness works better. Not because it actually resembles consciousness, but because it doesn’t while many people thought it would. This realization helps us develop our language and understanding better… now we distinguish between different kinds of intelligence more, and certainly understand better that you can have intelligence without consciousness. That’s a philosophical revolution.
Honestly, the technology is cool. The clout around it is ass. How the technology is being used is ass. What behaviors the technology is incentivizing is ass. But as a matter of fact, that it’s possible at all to exploit natural redundancy in language to the point of producing generative machines — that by itself is quite cool.
There have been several waves of advancement for things initially called ai. However one of the most common threads is that it helps us define what intelligence is not.