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AI Is Starting to Look Like the Dot Com Bubble (futurism.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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As the AI market continues to balloon, experts are warning that its VC-driven rise is eerily similar to that of the dot com bubble.

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[–] 35 points 3 years ago (5 children)

Same thing happened with crypto and block chain. The whole "move fast and break things" in reality means, "we made up words for something that isn't special to create value out of nothing and cash out before it returns to nothing

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Except I'm able to replace 2 content creator roles I'd otherwise need to fill with AI right now.

    There's this weird Luddite trend going on with people right now, but it's so heavily divorced from reality that it's totally non-impactful.

    AI is not a flash in the pan. It's emerging tech.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @SCB The Luddites were not upset about progress, they were upset that the people they had worked their whole lives for were kicking them to the street without a thought. So they destroyed the machines in protest.

    It's not weird, it's not just a trend, and it's actually more in touch with the reality of employer-employee relations than the idea that these LLMs are ready for primetime.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Luddites were wrong and progress happened despite them.

    I'm not really concerned about jobs disappearing. Get a different job. I'm on my 4th radically different job of my career so far. The world changes and demanding it should not because you don't want to change makes you the ideological equal of a conservative arguing about traditional family values.

    Meanwhile I'll be over here using things like Synthesia instead of hiring an entry level ID.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @SCB The Luddites gave way to Unions, which yes were more effective and gave us a LOT of good things like the 8 hour work week, weekends, and vacations. Technology alone did not give us that. Technology applied as bosses and barons wanted did not give us that. Collective action did that. And collective action has evolved along a timeline that INCLUDES sabotaging technology.

    Things like the SAGAFTRA/WGA strike are what's going to get us good results from the adoption of AI. Until then, the AI is just a tool in the hands of the rich to control labor.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Not everyone can flex into new roles. Have some compassion for those who get left behind. The lack of compassion in your response actually causes you to look conservative.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I have compassion. I think the government should invest heavily into retraining programs and moving subsidies.

    I don't think we should hold all of progress back because somebody doesn't want to change careers

    Edit: retraining, not restraining. That's an important typo fix lol

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    What if we were finally able to get insurance companies out of healthcare in the US? Thousands would lose their jobs, but millions would suddenly be able to get care. So much money would be saved, but so many people would suddenly be out of work.

    I don't know about you, but I hate paying several hundred dollars a month (and 100s or 1000s if I actually get care) to prop up a whole ass middleman between me and my care.

    Anyway, my point is we can't keep old systems just l only for the sake of preserving jobs. The guy you're replying to is short sighted and relying too heavily on a language imitation program, but he's essentially right about not keeping jobs just because.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    @new_acct_who_dis Yeah, but that wouldn't hurt as much because all the people out of work would still have healthcare.

    AI displaced creatives will lose their healthcare.

    Now if we passed healthcare, and THEN started replacing people with AI? That would make things considerably less dire for the future. But only one of those is happening and it's AI alone, because the rich do not care about other people.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You could use this kind of argument for almost anything. For example if we stop burning coal, many coal miners will lose their jobs. That doesn't mean that we should keep burning coal.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Freesoftwareenjoyer interesting you mention stopping burning coal. Because mining and burning coal is bad for the environment.

    Guess what else is bad for the environment? Huge datacenters supporting AI. They go through electricity and water and materials at the same rates as bitcoin mining.

    A human being writing stuff only uses as much energy as a human being doing just about anything else, though.

    So yes, while ending coal would cost some miners jobs, the net gain is worth it. But adopting AI in standard practice in the entertainment industry does not have the same gains. It can't offset the human misery caused by the job loss.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You could say that gaming is also bad for the environment and that's just entertainment. But I wouldn't say that we should get rid of it. Both cryptocurrency and AI have uses to our society. So do computers, internet, etc. All that technology has a cost, but it is useful. Technology also usually keeps improving. For example Etherum doesn't require mining anymore like Bitcoin does, so it should require much less electricity. People always work on finding new solutions to problems.

    A human being writing stuff only uses as much energy as a human being doing just about anything else, though.

    But if a computer the size of a smartphone could do the work of multiple people, that might be more efficient and could result in less coal being burned.

    Computers and automation have improved our lives and I think AI might too. If AI takes away my job, but it also improves the society, would it be ethical for me to protest against it? I think it wouldn't. I've accepted that it might happen and if it does, I will just have to learn something new.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Freesoftwareenjoyer Gaming isn't as bad as cryptomining farms and the stuff required by an AI server, man. You need to go look up some of the load on this stuff.

    And you still haven't gotten back to me on how AI improves society. People too lazy to learn to draw can say they drew something they actually didn't? That's not improvement.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    If you have statistics on power usage, I would love to look at them.

    And you still haven’t gotten back to me on how AI improves society. People too lazy to learn to draw can say they drew something they actually didn’t? That’s not improvement.

    If I want to make a game, but I can't create music and AI could do it for me, that would be very useful. I would be willing to pay for such program. Or if it could write a program that automates something for you, makes your job or your life easier somehow, that would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? It lets people do things that they might not be able to do otherwise, because nobody is an expert in every field. If that's not an improvement for you and you think it's silly - that's fine, but keep in mind that we barely just started to use this technology for something useful and it will keep improving.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think the problem is education. People don't understand modern technology and schools teach them skills that make them easily replaceable by programs. If they don't learn new skills or learn to use AI to their advantage, they will be replaced. And why shouldn't they be?

    Even if there is some kind of AI bubble, this technology has already changed the world and it will not disappear.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Freesoftwareenjoyer Out of curiosity, how is the world appreciably different now that AI exists?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Anyone can use AI to write a simple program, make art or maybe edit photos. Those things used to be something that only certain groups of people could do and required some training. They were also unique to humans. Now computers can do those things too. In a very limited way, but still.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    @Freesoftwareenjoyer Anyone could create art before. Anyone could edit photos. And with practice, they could become good. Artists aren't some special class of people born to draw, they are people who have honed their skills.

    And for people who didn't want to hone their skills, they could pay for art. You could argue that's a change but AI is not gonna be free forever, and you'll probably end up paying in the near future to generate that art. Which, be honest, is VERY different from "making art." You input a direction and something else made it, which isn't that different from just getting a friend to draw it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Yes, after at least a few months of practice people were able to create simple art. Now they can generate it in minutes.

    And for people who didn’t want to hone their skills, they could pay for art. You could argue that’s a change but AI is not gonna be free forever, and you’ll probably end up paying in the near future to generate that art.

    If you wanted a specific piece of art that doesn't exist yet, you would have to hire someone to do it. I don't know if AI will always be free to use. But not all apps are commercial. Most software that I use doesn't cost any money. The GNU/Linux operating system, the web browser... actually other than games I don't think I use any commercial software at all.

    You input a direction and something else made it, which isn’t that different from just getting a friend to draw it.

    After a picture is generated, you can tell the AI to change specific details. Knowing what exactly to say to the AI requires some skill though - that's called prompt engineering.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Crypto is still incredibly healthy. Bitcoin has been stable at $30k.

    Is it still a big scam? Maybe. But what happened with FTX was just good ol corruption.

    Anyone with exposure to Crypto either already collapsed, or wound down their position, so there wasn't a huge effect on markets. AI will be similar. Some VC will fail, but it's not the same as the dotcom bubble. It won't cause a recession

    OpenAI may fail if Microsoft doesn't keep throwing money at it, but they already got what they want out of it. They'll probably just end up acquiring the foundation and make money from the ways they're implementing it in their products.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    It's still useful but the issue always was it's expensive for what it does so that's why it was used underground since that has value of it's own. There is arguments that it's actually more efficient than current systems so there is an obvious takeaway of being, why don't we have money that doesn't cost a lot of maintain. The answer is the scary part.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    You can bitch about it all you want but the reality is that it actually works for a select group, the Amazons, Binances, etc. And that was always how it was going to be. The failures you point to are not a sign that these things don't work, they were always going to be there, they are like the people during the gold rush who found diddly squat, that doesn't mean there wasn't any gold.

    Anyone who suggests that AI "will return to nothing" is a fool, and I don't think you really believe it either.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Crypto was and still is a scam, and everyone that's said so has just been validated for it. People saying that AI is overstated right now are being called fools, and the people who are AI-washing everything and blathering about how it's going to be the future are awfully defensive about it, so much so to resort to namecalling as opposed to substantiating it. As a consumer I hate ads anyway, so I'm indifferent to AI generated artwork for advertising, it's all shit to me anyway.

    If my TV shows and movies are made formulaic by AI even moreso than they already are, I'll just patron the ones that are more entertaining and less formulaic. I fail to see how AI revolutionizes the world though by automating things we could already live without though. The only argument for the AI-washing we have is to push toward AGI, that we're clearly a very long ways off from still.

    This just all stinks of the VR craze that hit in 2016 with all the lofty promises of simulating any possible experience, and in the end we got some minor reduction on the screen-door-effect while strapping Facebook to our faces and soon some Apple apps. But hey we spent hundreds of billions on some pipe dreams and made some people rich enough to not give a shit about VR anymore.

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