this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I think AI has mostly been about luring investors into pumping up share prices rather than offering something of genuine value to consumers.
Some people are gonna lose a lot of other people's money over it.
Definitely. Many companies have implemented AI without thinking with 3 brain cells.
Great and useful implementation of AI exists, but it's like 1/100 right now in products.
If my employer is anything to go by, much of it is just unimaginative businesspeople who are afraid of missing out on what everyone else is selling.
At work we were instructed to shove ChatGPT into our systems about a month after it became a thing. It makes no sense in our system and many of us advised management it was irresponsible since it's giving people advice of very sensitive matters without any guarantee that advice is any good. But no matter, we had to shove it in there, with small print to cover our asses. I bet no one even uses it, but sales can tell customers the product is "AI-driven".
My old company before they laid me off laid off our entire HR and Comms teams in exchange for ChatGPT Enterprise.
“We can just have an AI chatbot for HR and pay inquiries and ask Dall-e to create icons and other content”.
A friend who still works there told me they’re hiring a bunch of “prompt engineers” to improve the quality of the AI outputs haha
That's an even worse 'use case' than I could imagine.
HR should be one of the most protected fields against AI, because you actually need a human resource.
And "prompt engineer" is so stupid. The "job" is only necessary because the AI doesn't understand what you want to do well enough. The only productive guy you could hire would be a programmer or something, that could actually tinker with the AI.
I'm sorry. Hope you find a better job, on the inevitable downswing of the hype, when someone realizes that a prompt can't replace a person in customer service. Customers will invest more time, i.e., even wait in a purposely engineered holding music hell, to have a real person listen to them.
God that sounds like hell.
Yes, I'm getting some serious dot-com bubble vibes from the whole AI thing. But the dot-com boom produced Amazon, and every company is basically going all-in in the hope they are the new Amazon while in the end most will end up like pets.com but it's a risk they're willing to take.
“You might lose all your money, but that is a risk I’m willing to take”
Investors pump money in a bunch of companies so the chances of at least one of them making it big and paying them back for all the failed investments is almost guaranteed. That's what taking risks is all about.
Sure, but it SEEMS, that some investors are relying on buzzword and hype, without research and ignoring the fundamentals of investing, i.e. besides the ever evolving claims of the CEO, is the company well managed? What is their cash flow and where is it going a year from now? Do the upper level managers have coke habits?
You’re right, but these fundamentals don’t really matter anymore, investors are buying hype and hoping to sell a bigger hype for more money later.
Seeing the whole thing as Knowingly Trading in Hype is actually a really good insight.
Certainly it neatly explains a lot.
Also called a Ponzi scheme, where every participant knows it's a scam, but hopes to find some more fools before it crashes and leave with positive balance.
If the whole sector turns out to be garbage it won't matter which particular set of companies within it you invest in; you will get burned if you cash out after everyone else.
OpenAI will fail. StabilityAI will fail. CivitAI will prevail, mark my words.
A lot of it is follow the leader type bullshit. For companies in areas where AI is actually beneficial they have already been implementing it for years, quietly because it isn't something new or exceptional. It is just the tool you use for solving certain problems.
Investors going to bubble though.
Yeah, can make some products better but most of the products these days that use AI, it doesn't actually need them. It's annoying to use products that actively shovel AI when it doesn't even need it.
Ya know what pfoduct MIGHT be better with AI?
Toasters. They have ONE JOB, and everybody agrees their toaster is crap. But you're not going to buy another toaster, because that too will be crap.
How about a toaster, that accurately, and evenly toasts your bread, and then DOESN'T give you a heart attack at 5am when you're still half asleep???
IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK???
Sweet, I'm the one who gets to link the obligatory Technology Connections toaster video!
Aw man, now I want this toaster.
I said the exact same thing months ago when I saw that video. I don’t even use a toaster.
Nah. We already have AI toasters, and they're ambitious, but rubbish.
Adding AI is just serious overkill for a toaster, especially when it wouldn't add anything meaningful, not compared to just designing the toaster better.
It only needs one string of conditions that it can understand: don't catch on fire. Turn yourself off IF smoke.
AI toasters are a Bad Idea
Did you want some toast?
This is the visionary we need. Take my venture capital millions on a magic carpet ride, time traveler!
I tried to find the advert but I see this on YouTube a lot - an Adobe AI ad which depicts, without shame, AI writing out a newsletter/promo for a business owner's new product (cookies or ice cream or something), showing the owner putting no effort into their personal product and a customer happily consuming because they were attracted by the thoughtless promo.
How are producers/consumers okay with everything being so mediocre??
I'm not. My particular beef is with is with plastics and toxic materials and chemicals being ubiquitous in everything I buy. Systemic problem that I can do almost nothing about apart from make things myself out of raw materials.
My doorbell camera manufacturer now advertises their products as using, "Local AI" meaning, they're not relying on a cloud service to look at your video in order to detect humans/faces/etc. Honestly, it seems like a good (marketing) move.