Comment by jstummbillig
3 days ago
Convenient for whom and what...? There is nothing tangible to gain from you believing or not believing that someone else does (or does not) get a productivity boost from AI. This is not a religion and it's not crypto. The AI users' net worth is not tied to another ones use of or stance on AI (if anything, it's the opposite).
More generally, the phenomenon this is quite simply explained and nothing surprising: New things improve, quickly. That does not mean that something is good or valuable but it's how new tech gets introduced every single time, and readily explains changing sentiment.
I think you're missing the broader context. There is a lot of people very invested in the maximalist outcome which does create pressure for people to be boosters. You don't need a digital token for that to happen. There's a social media aspect as well that creates a feedback loop about claims.
We're in a hype cycle, and it means we should be extra critical when evaluating the tech so we don't get taken in by exaggerated claims.
I mostly don't agree. Yes, there is always social pressure with these things, and we are in a hype cycle, but the people "buying in" are simply not doing much at all. They are mostly consumers, waiting for the next model, which they have no control over or stake in creating (by and large).
The people not buying into the hype, on the other hands, are actually the ones that have a very good reason to be invested, because if they turn out to be wrong they might face some very uncomfortable adjustments in the job landscape and a lot of the skills that they worked so hard to gain and believed to be valuable.
As always, be weary of any claims, but the tension here is very much the reverse of crypto and I don't think that's very appreciated.
I saw that edit. Indeed you can't predict that rejecting a new thing is part of a routine of being wrong. It's true that "it's strange and new, therefore I hate it" is a very human (and adorable) instinct, but sometimes it's reasonable.
It is an even more human reaction when the new strange thing directly threatens to upend and massively change the industry that puts food on your table.
The steam-powered loom was not good for the luddites either. Good for society at large in the long term but all the negative points that a 40 year old knitter in 1810 could make against the steam-powered loom would have been perfectly reasonable and accurate judged on that individual's perspective.
"I saw that edit" lol
Sorry, just happened to. Slightly rude of me.
2 replies →
Honestly the hype cycle feels very like crypto, and just like crypto prominent vcs have a lot of money riding on the outcome.
Of course, lot's of hype, but my point is that the reason why is very different and it matters: As an early bc adopter making your believe in bc is super important to my net worth (and you not believing in bc makes me look like an idiot and lose a lot of money).
In contrast, what do I care if you believe in code generation AI? If you do, you are probably driving up pricing. I mean, I am sure that there are people that care very much, but there is little inherent value for me in you doing so, as long as the people who are building the AI are making enough profit to keep it running.
With regards to the VCs, well, how many VCs are there in the world? How many of the people who have something good to say about AI are likely VCs? I might be off by an order of magnitude, but even then it would really not be driving the discussion.
I don't find that a compelling argument, lots of people get taken in by hype cycles even when they don't profit directly from it.
I agree with you, and I think that’s coloring a lot of people’s perceptions. I am not a crypto fan but am an LLM fan.
Every hype cycle feels like this, and some of them are nonsense and some of them are real. We’ll see.