Comment by Tiktaalik

Oh no absolutely real mining.

But ultimately the transferable skills are pitch making, selling to investors, pumping and dumping.

That applies not just to some plot of land in some obscure place that has some "enormously promising" signs of valuable minerals, but also some new crytocurrency, NFTs, cannabis, VR and all sorts novel things. AI is the latest thing but it won't be the last.

When mining is hot they'll focus on mining, but when it's not they'll be looking to see how they can use their skills on other places.

(Not to say that any of these things are necessarily scams per se, I personally think there's lots of interesting things going on with AI, but this is the ocean that these guys swim in, and there'll be lots of money attaching some flimsy nothing idea to the latest hot trend)