Comment by esperent
4 hours ago
> 3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX.
Agreed, these things all failed to live up to the hype.
But these didn't:
Electricity, cheap computing, calculators, photography, the internet, the steam engine, the printing press, tv, cars, gps, bicycles...
So you can't really start an article by picking inventions that fit your narrative and ignoring everything else.
Yes, and despite every single one of these world-changing inventions, people in rich countries still go to work every day, even though UBI is generally not a thing. People claim AI will eliminate large numbers of jobs. Maybe it will, just like the tractor did. But new jobs are created. I would never have guessed that “influencer” would be a thing!
This current “AI will destroy all the jobs and make most people useless” fear is as old as, say, electricity, and even older than cheap computing. It hasn’t happened.
Ex historian here, now engineer. I would gently suggest you’re underestimating the magnitude of some of the transformations wrought by the technologies that OP mentioned for the people that lived through them. Particularly for the steam engine and the broader Industrial Revolution around 1800: not for nothing have historians called that the greatest transformation in human life recorded in written documents.
If you think, hey but people had a “job” in 1700, and they had a “job” in 1900, think again. Being a peasant (majority of people in Europe in 1700) and being an urban factory worker in 1900 were fundamentally different ways of life. They only look superficially similar because we did not live the changes ourselves. But read the historical sources enough and you will see.
I would go as far as to say that the peasant in 1700 did not have a “job” at all in the sense that we now understand; they did not work for wages and their relationship to the wider economy was fundamentally different. In some sense industrialization created the era of the “job” as a way for most working-age people to participate in economic life. It’s not an eternal and unchanging condition of things, and it could one day come to an end.
It’s too early to say if AI will be a technology like this, I think. But it may be. Sometimes technologies do transform the texture of human life. And it is not possible to be sure what those will be in the early stages: the first steam engines were extremely inefficient and had very few uses. It took decades for it to be clear that they had, in fact, changed everything. That may be true of AI, or it may not. It is best to be openminded about this.
This argument is the one that shook me, I’m curious if you think there’s any merit to it:
Humans have essentially three traits we can use to create value: we can do stuff in the physical world through strength and dexterity, and we can use our brains to do creative, knowledge, or otherwise “intelligent” work.
(Note by “dexterity” I mean “things that humans are better at than physical robots because of our shape and nervous system, like walking around complex surfaces and squeezing into tight spaces and assembling things”)
The Industrial Revolution, the one of coal and steam and eventually hydraulics, destroyed the jobs where humans were creating value through their strength. Approximately no one is hired today because they can swing a hammer harder than the next guy. Every job you can get in the first world today is fundamentally you creating value with your dexterity or intelligence.
I think AI is coming for the intelligence jobs. It’s just getting too good too quickly.
Indirectly, I think it’s also coming for dexterity jobs through the very rapid advances in robotics that appear to be partly fueled by AI models.
So… what’s left?
No one is hired to swing a hammer? What world do you live in?
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But what if new jobs aren't created? I don't think it's an absolute given that because new jobs came after the invention of the loom and the tractor that there will always be new jobs. What if AI if a totally different beast altogether?
Exactly my thoughts. Selective whinging indeed.
Also meta-platitude whinging like
> The ideology of "winner takes all" is unsustainable and not supported by reality.
Sometimes the winner deserves to win, AND that's a good thing even at scale. It kindof depends.
The winner that deserved to win might turn into the complacent monopoly pf tomorrow. It might vow to Not Be Evil for a while, but the investors will demand that it does whatever it takes to grow.
Electricity bros want to put a socket on every wall. That is such a non-starter from a safety POV. It's a fundamentally unsafe technology and it can never be made safe.
The article is trash. The only reason it got voted to the front page is because the author is salty about AI.
The first few paragraphs are all you need to see that the author is writing a propaganda piece. It's not meant to be truthful, it's meant to convince.
I think this is what is meant by "bullshit".
“Bullshit” is:
+ statement of dubious correctness
+ and that serves the author’s interest
+ and which the author does not care whether or not it is believed.
When the author wants you to believe it, that’s horseshit.
OP here! Thanks for replying.
To take, for example, calculators. I can't find any evidence of a massive influx of hyperbolic articles talking about how the calculator will change everything. With bikes, there were plenty of articles decrying how women would get "bicycle face" but very little in terms of endless coverage about them being miracle technology.
People adopted bikes and calculators and electricity because they were useful. Car manufacturers didn't have to force GPS into vehicles - customers demanded it.
The narrative I'm describing is how hype sometimes (possibly often) fizzles out. My contention is the more a technology is hyped, the less useful it will turn out to be.
Now, excuse me while I ride my Segway into the sunset while drinking a nice can of Prime.
You have gotta stop cherrypicking. The massive influx of hyperbolic articles about how electricity will change everything started in the 19th century. It became a common theme in fiction (including classics like Frankenstein) and became an enormous media hype war, which historians call the War of the Currents.
Yes, electricity was useful. And it had hyperbolic articles talking about how transformative it would be. Like all prognostication, some of those articles were overblown, but, in some ways, they understated the transformative effect electricity would have on human history.
And cars? Did you somehow miss the influx of hyperbolic articles about how cars will change everything? Like, the whole 20th century?
What was your approach to researching the history of media hype? You somehow overlooked the hype around air travel, refrigeration, and antibiotics…?
There was a great deal of hype around the atom changing everything, but electricity was just too slow to see such breathless anticipation takeoff.
200 years ago the was some hype around how electricity caused mussel contractions in dead flesh, but unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media etc etc.
Public street lights long predated light bulbs as did both indoor and outdoor Gas lighting 1802 vs 1880’s was just a long time. People were burn, grew up, had kids, and become old between the first electric lighting and the first practical electric bulb. People definitely appreciated the improvement to air quality etc, but the tech simply wasn’t that novel. Rural electrification was definitely promoted but not because what it did was some unknown frontier.
Similarly electric motors had a lot of competition, even today there’s people buying pneumatic shop tools.
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You can find similar hype articles about the Palm Pilot, then all the neighsayers who said most people wouldn't want and had no need for computer in their pocket. And yet here we are.
Calculators are a particularly bad example for your case. There was absolutely hyperbole against calculators when they were introduced. [1]
With similar sentiment as well "They make us dumb" "Machines doing the thinking for us"
Cars were definitely seen as a fad. More accurately a worse version of a horse [2]
If you looked through your other examples, you'd see the same for those as well.
Some things start as fads, but only time will tell if they gain a place in society. Truthfully it's too early to tell for AI, but the arguments you're making, calling it a fad already don't stand up to reason
[1]: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-item/160697182/ [2]: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...
The personal computer, laptops, web browsers, cell phones, smartphones, AJAX/DHTML, digital cameras, SSDs, WiFi, LCD displays, LED lightbulbs. At some point, all of these things were "overhyped" and "didn't live up to the promise." And then they did.