Comment by TeamDman
15 hours ago
I enjoyed Dave Cridland's comment more than the article. The article is dismissive of AI and other technologies in an unsubstantiated way.
New things are happening and it's exciting. "AI bad" statements without examples feel very head-in-sand.
OP here. Unless you're still watching Quibi on your curved TV, delivered via WiMax then, yeah, I'd say it was pretty bloody substantiated.
I like technology. I made a decent living from it. But if I had chased every hyped fad that was promised as the next big thing, I doubt I'd be as happy as I am now.
You claim to cite 'technologies' but include a few brands and companies for some reason.
The one you keep citing, here and in the article, Quibi, lives on in technology-form (the spirit of your article we must presume) as an 8 billion dollar business in China and is rapidly upending every Hollywood film studio.
So, arguments about substantiation or even 'this time' fall flat in the face of not even understanding your own message.
Just chiming in to say thanks for the Pratchett quote! I dare say he's about to beat out Douglass Adams for my top author. Feets of Clay and Hogfather should be must reads for people dealing with AI right now imo.
You're not really saying anything, though. For every tech hype that has failed, there is another that's changed the world. This IS changing the world and our industry, regardless of whether it reaches the heights of the hypers.
I mean you're just stating that sometimes tech doesn't meet it's hype. What's insightful about that? It's a given; cherry-picking examples doesn't prove your case.
> For every tech hype that has failed, there is another that's changed the world.
Well, no, the ratio is most definitely not 1-to-1.
The thing is, the successful tech rarely get the excessive hype.
MRNA vaccines. Where are the countless breathless articles about these literal life saving tech? A few, maybe, but very few dudes pumping out asinine "white papers" and trying to ride the hype train.
Solar and battery. Again, lots of real world impact but remarkably few unhinged blowhards writing endless newsletters about how this changes everything.
I'm struggling to think of a tech from the last 20 years which has lived up to its hype.
Not everything is written to be insightful. Some things are just written to get them out of my head.
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It's not unsubstantiated though. The claim is "People frequently assert that 'this time is different' and they are almost always wrong" and it proceeded to provide a reasonable list of analogous manias.
This only doesn't feel like substantiation if you reject the notion that these cases are analogous.
"You shouldn't eat that."
"Why not?"
"Everyone else who's eaten it has either died or gotten really sick."
"But I'm different! Why should I listen to your unsubstantiated claims?"
"(lists names of prior victims)"
"That doesn't mean anything. I'm different. You're just making vague and dismissive unsubstantiated claims."
The claim isn't "AI bad" the claim is more along the lines of "there's a lot of money changing hands and this has all the earmarks of a classic hype cycle; while attention/diffusion models may amount to something the claims of their societal impacts are almost certainly being exaggerated by people with a financial stake in keeping the bubble inflated as long as possible, to pull in as many suckers as possible."
If you want another example (which you won't find analogous if you've already drunk the koolaid):
https://theblundervault.substack.com/p/the-segway-delusion-w...