> The last time I felt like this, I was trying to talk other crypto speculators out of buying every hyped up shitcoin. AI at the moment feels like it is running very much on hype about future potential that has little to do with reality. I hate to use the term bubble, however.
Agree with this, but with nuance.
One of the differences with the AI tech is that we have a split between the technology and the businesses.
The current crop of large AI companies are totally in a bubble, and their economics make very little sense. That bubble is going to be extremely painful when it pops, and I hope we have the democratic fortitude to stop the losses being socialised through bailouts.
But the underlying tech is still good, and doing useful things. There are good open-source LLMs that are not that far behind the proprietary models, and can produce useful results.
Crypto had no use outside of the various currencies - there is not one successful use of blockchain tech that isn't a currency (or related), and the currency uses have been totally dominated by scammers and criminals. This is not the case with LLMs, which are useful tools, and will continue to be useful tools after the bubble bursts.
So yes, the hypers are hyping bullshit that is going to burst, and that is like the crypto situation. But after that bursts and they all go away (or hopefully broke), there will still be useful things being done with LLMs.
Eh I see your nuance and meet with further nuance.
That was exactly the problem with Crypto.
You had the base technology that had demonstrable value due to novel security mechanisms. But getting a lot of this value to investors was always difficult.
And then you had technology that was useful for working with the base technology (NFT's, ZKSnarks, Smart Contracts) but was always going to be extremely difficult to extract value out of as a product. (Generally I see this category as a donation to open source programmers)
And then you had a whole bunch of grifters and conmen trying to sell A or B as ridiculous science fiction transformations of the world. Even the businesses that had solid use cases, werent 10x or 100x valued. And most of them had to pivot out of the space as legislation caught up.
The successful B projects just arent earth shattering. Which is proper imho.
>and the currency uses have been totally dominated by scammers and criminals.
Eh if this is true (which no longer seems to be the case outside of certain nations) keeping these mechanisms open and functional for my valid, legal use cases means that crime is having positive social outcomes.
I don't see NFTs (for example) as a valid product, it was always a scam. Always based on speculative gambling with no actual value to anyone underpinning it.
And because of that, the whole "crime having a positive social outcome" doesn't work for me - doing crime to keep a scam going is not positive.
>I don't see NFTs (for example) as a valid product, it was always a scam. Always based on speculative gambling with no actual value to anyone underpinning it.
NFT is a protocol. Its technology. It shouldn't be a product, it should enable products. If NFT's were ever going to become widely used, they wouldnt be described as NFTs. Its like going around selling TCP/IPs to someone.
Cryptokitties remains its most proven use case. The non fungibility of the token is perfect for encoding the unique genetics of the derpy looking cats. Theres no reason to pay eleven billion dollars for one, but the platform has never relied on that, just bit payments for trading and breeding. There's possible future uses in property trading, but again, the NFT should never be the point like the weird grifters tried to make happen.
"In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is"
In theory you can use NFTs to make a valid product. In practice, it was part of the cryptocurrency culture who are locked into speculative gambling and so it was never going to be used for anything but that.
Agree with this, but with nuance.
One of the differences with the AI tech is that we have a split between the technology and the businesses.
The current crop of large AI companies are totally in a bubble, and their economics make very little sense. That bubble is going to be extremely painful when it pops, and I hope we have the democratic fortitude to stop the losses being socialised through bailouts.
But the underlying tech is still good, and doing useful things. There are good open-source LLMs that are not that far behind the proprietary models, and can produce useful results.
Crypto had no use outside of the various currencies - there is not one successful use of blockchain tech that isn't a currency (or related), and the currency uses have been totally dominated by scammers and criminals. This is not the case with LLMs, which are useful tools, and will continue to be useful tools after the bubble bursts.
So yes, the hypers are hyping bullshit that is going to burst, and that is like the crypto situation. But after that bursts and they all go away (or hopefully broke), there will still be useful things being done with LLMs.