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
The AI fad is a lot more like the Internet fad than the crypto fad. I think once the bubble pops (like the .com bubble 25 years ago) some use-cases will definitely remain. But yeah, we definitely are in a bubble.
AI is a lot closer to a revolution than to a bust. It’s already likely going to remain an established tool for software development and process automation.
It still remains to be seen if a company can be a single person managing an army of agents can actually become a sustainable company. This would be an industrial revolution on steroids type change that’s honestly terrifying.
An equally or even more likely scenario is we get most of the way there, but it only reduces the need for developer type jobs by 20-50%. From here lots of things could happen. The job market could stay somewhat stable as while companies hire less people, there are more smaller companies with direct hires as the barrier is massively reduced. The job market drastically shrinks and software becomes a less attractive discipline compared to other types of engineering or office work. An industry wide Cobol type situation happens as those that survive the job losses retire and laid off workers have moved on to other industries and no junior positions exist.
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 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
The AI fad is a lot more like the Internet fad than the crypto fad. I think once the bubble pops (like the .com bubble 25 years ago) some use-cases will definitely remain. But yeah, we definitely are in a bubble.
AI is a lot closer to a revolution than to a bust. It’s already likely going to remain an established tool for software development and process automation.
It still remains to be seen if a company can be a single person managing an army of agents can actually become a sustainable company. This would be an industrial revolution on steroids type change that’s honestly terrifying.
An equally or even more likely scenario is we get most of the way there, but it only reduces the need for developer type jobs by 20-50%. From here lots of things could happen. The job market could stay somewhat stable as while companies hire less people, there are more smaller companies with direct hires as the barrier is massively reduced. The job market drastically shrinks and software becomes a less attractive discipline compared to other types of engineering or office work. An industry wide Cobol type situation happens as those that survive the job losses retire and laid off workers have moved on to other industries and no junior positions exist.
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.