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Bluesky Social is a microblogging social platform being developed in conjunction with the decentralized AT Protocol. Previously invite-only, the flagship Beta app went public in February 2024. All are welcome!

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Share your opinion on why companies invest in AI (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by Loduz_247 to c/peoplebluesky

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[–] billiam0202 45 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They're all terrified of being the one missing out on The Next Big Thing(tm). And so they'll jump on anything that has even a remote chance of making the line go up, lest their line not go up while their competitors' lines do.

[–] Mirshe 2 points 3 days ago

Basically this. All of them got spooked by missing Bitcoin before Bitcoin was worth infinite money, and a good chunk missed out on NFTs before THEY were worth thousands of dollars too

[+] [email protected] -12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

This but it makes perfect sense since AI is the real deal. If you want to have a good chance of being the first to take advantage of AI once it is mature enough, then you have to keep trying over and over even when it almost certainly isn't mature yet. If you wait until you see that it is mature, someone will have already beaten you to it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Hard disagree.

Most technology goes through phases like:

Novelty of limited utility (think pre-1980 home computers or a pre-1900 motorcar)
Growing maturity that shows the product has mainstream viability, but does not conquer the market permanently (think original IBM PC or Ford Model T)
Final stabilized product.

You can get onboard late in the "Growing maturity" phase and still make a great business, while avoiding some of the pie-in-the-sky thinking of the "novelty" phase.

AI has not really left the "growing maturity" phase. You could even argue it's still in the "novelty" phase, as the "let's add AI to everything" mindset is a lot like flogging three-wheeled cars with boat steering wheels, or home computers with paper tape punches to store recipies on.

There's still a huge hype bubble to prick. People think AI does things better than it actually does, because it avoids some specific, familiar, human foibles. Notably, the whole "confident and grammatically clean" thing that can disguise huge factual inaccuracies. Hence all the summarizing/desummarizing tools. As we see through that, will the AI business see a retrenchment, cut back to much more narrow markets where it might have more value?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

I'm not so sure if the actual problem is even part of your simplified phase model. What is most annoying about the AI hype is that those aspiring entrepreneurs try to put AI into everything, randomly throwing shit at things to see if it sticks. It was a similar hype with IOT and internet connectivity for everything, with the notable difference that the underlying technology was well matured at that point while AI is still basically in an experimental stage with often unpredictable and unsafe results.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Those two examples (Ford And IBM) are not very convincing. Both are probably examples used in business school on how to identify and exploit and untapped market.

Sure, they're not today's industry leaders, but they were for a very long time. Their global name recognition is because they were in the right place at the right time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

You're describing first mover advantage which is a popular idea but doesn't exist. The few examples of it are the outliers.

[–] athairmor 14 points 3 days ago

That’s not why. It’s more like FOMO.

They don’t want to be the one left behind because they didn’t jump on the latest hype train. If AI hype fizzles, most of these companies will just carry on like it wasn’t a thing or it’ll get incorporated in a more modest form and called something else.

The same thing happened with crypto/nft/blockchain. There’s a few still trying to milk that cow but most who tried just turned and left it.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Companies don’t serve their customers. They serve their shareholders. And if jamming AI into everything will attract investment because “the next ChatGPT” then that is what they’ll do.

[–] f314 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Companies, under capitalism, don’t serve their customers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Valid

[–] ZILtoid1991 11 points 3 days ago

Also a reason why a lot of companies went "full out on MAGA" was due to the rejection of AI by most people left of republicans, while the latter group fully embraced it. Before that, they played both sides.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

AI is cheaper than employees, plus you get to ride the hype train!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah I'm surprised there's not more talk here about the likelihood they are speculatively investing in AI to see how viable it will be to replace employees with, if they haven't already been able to do so. Seems among other industries, we're on our way to journalistic AI slop and fake film actors, in the spirit of 1984.

You can't make the line go up by investing in something that makes more sales even less likely.