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.
How much VC is really being invested at the moment? I know a variety of people at start ups and the money is very tight at the moment given the current interest rate environment.
removed by mod
it’s so effective, it only takes a few milking it to completely saturate the opportunity market
Yeah, this is the problem. The moment a couple cover each platform. The bubble gets created really fast with the wrapper implementations that follow suit, that add no added value. Or the value add may be a simple update for the ones that were first, if the first ones never implement it then I usually view the new ones as the better version.
Dot com is a bubble because some just host a website and got massive fund, same as crypto some just a random similar coin to eth they got massive fund. But Ai now can replace jobs, need massive fund to train so not much similar startup copying and startup barrier is high, also few free money going around at the same time due to interest rate. I think this might just be different.
@DarkMatter_contract It’s not that the AI CAN replace jobs, it’s that they’re gonna use it to replace jobs anyway.
The burst will come from those companies succeeding and quickly destroying a lot of their customer’s businesses in the process.
I think *LLMs to do everything is the bubble. AI isn’t going anywhere, we’ve just had a little peak of interest thanks to ChatGPT. Midjourney and the like aren’t going anywhere, but I’m sure we’ll all figure out that LLMs can’t really be trusted soon enough.
deleted by creator
The thing is a lot of people are not using for that. They think it is a living omniscient sci-fi computer who is capable of answering everything, just like they saw in the movies. Noone thought that about keyboard auto-suggestions.
And with regards to people who aren’t very knowledgeable on the subject, it is difficult to blame them for thinking so, because that is how it is presented to them in a lot of news reports as well as adverts.
They think it is a living omniscient sci-fi computer who is capable of answering everything
Oh that’s nothing new:
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
- Charles Babbage
deleted by creator
I just want to make the distinction, that AI like this literally are black boxes. We (currently) have no ability to know why it chose the word it did for example. You train it, and under the hood you can’t actually read out the logic tree of why each word was chosen. That’s a major pitfall of AI development, its very hard to know how the AI arrived at a decision. You might know it’s right, or it’s wrong…but how did the AI decide this?
At a very technical level we understand HOW it makes decisions, we do not actively understand every decision it makes (it’s simply beyond our ability currently, from what I know)
You can observe what it does and understand its biases. If you don’t like it, you can change it by training it.
You train it, and under the hood you can’t actually read out the logic tree of why each word was chosen.
Of course you can, you can look at every single activation and weight in the network. It’s tremendously hard to predict what the model will do, but once you have an output it’s quite easy to see how it came to be. How could it be bloody otherwise you calculated all that stuff to get the output, the only thing you have to do is to prune off the non-activated pathways. That kind of asymmetry is in the nature of all non-linear systems, a very similar thing applies to double pendulums: Once you observed it moving in a certain way it’s easy to say “oh yes the initial conditions must have looked like this”.
What’s quite a bit harder to do for the likes of ChatGPT compared to double pendulums is to see where they possibly can swing. That’s due to LLMs having a fuckton more degrees of freedom than two.
I don’t disagree with anything you said but wanted to just weigh in on the more degrees of freedom.
One major thing to consider is that unless we have 24/7 sensor recording with AI out in the real world and a continuous monitoring of sensor/equipment health, we’re not going to have the “real” data that the AI triggered on.
Version and model updates will also likely continue to cause drift unless managed through some sort of central distribution service.
Any large Corp will have this organization and review or are in the process of figuring it out. Small NFT/Crypto bros that jump to AI will not.
IMO the space will either head towards larger AI ensembles that tries to understand where an exact rubric is applied vs more AGI human reasoning. Or we’ll have to rethink the nuances of our train test and how humans use language to interact with others vs understand the world (we all speak the same language as someone else but there’s still a ton of inefficiency)
Are you familiar with the 1980s program Racter? It wasn’t trained on the entire internet like LLMs are, but it kind of feels like an extension of that. Except Racter’s output was more amusing.
deleted by creator
Yeah, it’s kinda scary to see how much people don’t understand modern technology. If some non-expert tells them AI can’t be trusted, they just believe it. I’ve noticed the same thing with cryptocurrencies. A non-expert says it’s a scam and people believe it even though it’s clear they don’t understand anything about that technology or what it’s made for.
Did you mean the crypto/NFT bubble?
Yeah I was going to say VC throwing money at the newest fad isn’t anything new, in fact startups strive exploit the fuck out of it. No need to actually implement the fad tech, you just need to technobabble the magic words and a VC is like “here have 2 million dollars”.
In our own company we half joked about calling a relatively simple decision flow in our back end an “AI system”.
NFTs yes but crypto is absolutely not a bubble. People are saying that for decades now and it hasn’t been truth. Yes there are shitcoins, just shitstocks. But in general, it’s definitely not a bubble but an alternative investing method beside stocks, gold etc.
Crypto is 100% a bubble. It’s not an investment so much as a ponzi, sure you can dump money into it and maybe even make money, doesn’t mean it doesn’t collapse on a whim when someone else decides to dip out or the government shuts it down. Its value is exactly that of NFT’s because it’s basically identical, just a string of characters showing “ownership” of something intangible
It’s not even a ponzi scheme, it’s just a good old fashioned bubble.
It’s digital tulips.
NFTs yes but crypto is absolutely not a bubble. People are saying that for decades now and it hasn’t been truth. Yes there are shitcoins, just like shitstocks. But in general, it’s definitely not a bubble but an alternative investing method beside stocks, gold etc.
What is the underlying mechanism that increases its value, like company earnings are to stocks? Otherwise, it’s just a reverse funnel scheme.
What’s the underlying mechanism that gives money a value? We the humans give money and gold a value because we believe they’re valuable. Same with crypto. Bitcoin is literally like gold but digital. Stop saying what everyone without knowledge says and inform yourself. Not only about crypto, also about money etc.
If you don’t understand the fundamentals of money, how can you judge something of being scam. There are lot of people here who didn’t even understand how money and gold works.
What’s the underlying mechanism that gives money a value?
A) the government backing it up along with its advanced military
B) the fact that you have to pay taxes in it
Yep, which is why Bitcoin can’t last forever without turning into some sort of GovCoin for it to truly replace money
Money has value insofar as governments use it to collect tax - so long as there’s a tax obligation, there’s a mandated demand for that currency and it has some value. Between different currencies, the value is determined based upon the demand for that currency, which is essentially tied to how much business is done in that currency (eg if a country sells goods in its own currency, demand for that currency goes up and so does it’s value).
This is not the same for crypto, there are no governments collecting tax with it so it does not have induced demand. The value of crypto is 100% speculative, which is fine for something that is used as currency, but imo a terrible vehicle for investment.
You are right in that it increases people’s belief in money because it is the primary source of revenue for states. But if the majority of people did not believe in the piece of paper, it would be worth nothing. That is the fundamental value of money as we know it.
There have been states where stones were the currency simply because the inhabitants believed in them.
Money is a physical representation of the concept of value. Saying “what gives money value” is like asking “why does rain make clouds.”
This is why printing money decreases the value of the currency - the value it represents has not changed so the value is diluted across the currency as the amount of currency expands.
Gold Standard
Linking money to a material with intrinsic value for it’s value
Gold has intrinsic value
US Dollar moved to be a Fiat Currency
US Dollar is backed by a Government
Crypto has zero intrinsic value, not linked to anything with intrinsic value, and not backed by a Government
Crypto is an imaginary “item” some people want to have valve. Value is created because of this want.
US Dollar is legal tinder for all US debts, Crypto is not
Crypto is not a currency but a digital commodity
Money and gold have value because they can be exchanged easily for goods and services that are really wanted. As long as crypto currencies make it hard to trade for goods ands services, they will be, at best, a fad, at worst, a scam. There needs to be market for crypto to work. All I see is promises, no real commitments to it.
legal tinder
I recall hearing it was illegal to burn money 😉
I don’t know if it’s good investment or not, but cryptocurrency has uses that are valuable to a lot of people. You can send money to other people without using a bank or PayPal and you can pay for things online anonymously. Some cryptocurrencies might have additional properties like Monero, which also gives you privacy. NFT might also have practical uses some day - for example it could be used for concert tickets.
Did ChatGPT write your comment?
Do you not have anything constructive to say?
The only way for someone to make money in crypto is for someone else to lose it.
Crypto is a scam.
Sooooo, the exact same premise with ehmmmm… Stocks.
You don’t understand how stocks work.
How is distributed ledger a scam? It’s nothing new and we know exactly how it works. It has nothing to do with making money. If I use it to pay for things online how am I getting scammed? I’m sorry, but it seems you don’t fully understand what this technology is.
The blazing fast technology that allows for up to 7 transactions a second worldwide? Amazing.
Don’t forget to pay your capital gains tax when you sell your butts online to buy your pizza.
The slow transaction speed is a valid criticism, but it doesn’t make this technology a scam. Different cryptocurrencies have different speeds. With Litecoin I think it takes me 40 minutes to pay for something. I still prefer that over being tracked by my bank or having to use PayPal. I think you can pay instantly with Dash, but I haven’t used it.
I don’t sell anything online, so what are you talking about?
I think people are using the word scam not in it’s strictest sense - that is to say, I don’t think Satoshi personally invented BTC to defraud everyone who bought it so in that sense, no, it is not a scam technically. A better way to describe it would be via the greater fool theory: the only way to make money is to find someone even more foolish than yourself to buy it.
Crypto as it is currently implemented is inefficient, riddled with problems, and is deflationary which you can argue about but most economists would say deflationary currencies are bad as they lead to shrinking economies and do not encourage investment.
There also aren’t that many problems that it ‘solves’ that aren’t already solvable by existing tech. And even in the case of things it’s useful for, if it were to be widely adopted the ‘benefits’ would be overshadowed by the massive new problems that would be created.
I think crypto will always have a niche, especially for black markers. I don’t think anything similar to currently existing crypto currencies will ever be adopted for widespread use as legal tender.
And as the other commenter pointed out, the tax situation is a nightmare. Even if you don’t sell online yourself, that’s a big hurdle to crypto achieving what many supporters claim it can do.
A better way to describe it would be via the greater fool theory: the only way to make money is to find someone even more foolish than yourself to buy it.
Cryptocurrency is not about making money. It’s a distributed ledger. Technology like that could maybe be a scam if it didn’t do what its creators claim it does. But it’s been around for a long time and we know exactly how it works.
Crypto as it is currently implemented is inefficient, riddled with problems, and is deflationary which you can argue about but most economists would say deflationary currencies are bad as they lead to shrinking economies and do not encourage investment.
It has problems, but like every technology it keeps improving. I choose to use it despite its flaws and will probably use it even more in the future.
There also aren’t that many problems that it ‘solves’ that aren’t already solvable by existing tech.
It gives me privacy and anonymity when paying online. No other online payment technology does. It also doesn’t require trust, since it’s decentralized. I’m not aware of any other technology that solves those problems.
I think crypto will always have a niche, especially for black markers. I don’t think anything similar to currently existing crypto currencies will ever be adopted for widespread use as legal tender.
That’s possible, but over time it is accepted by more and more stores. So it keeps growing. But even if it didn’t, you can use crypto to buy gift cards for any store. It doesn’t have to be popular.
And as the other commenter pointed out, the tax situation is a nightmare. Even if you don’t sell online yourself, that’s a big hurdle to crypto achieving what many supporters claim it can do.
When someone wants to invest in crypto, I can see how that could be a problem. I just use it to pay for things online.
So what’s the difference to money, stocks or every other investing option? There’s has to be someone who loses so someone different can win. We’re living in a capitalistic system, that’s how it works.
Money isn’t an investment, it’s a currency. Of course it’s a bad investment and investing in forex is barely a better investment than crypto (purely because there’s less risk of a sovereign currency devaluing to 0).
Investing in capital, like stocks, property, equipment etc does not require someone to lose money for the capital owner to profit. If I invest in a stock, each year I’m paid a dividend based on the profits of that organisation - no losers required. I could later sell that stock at the exact price I paid for it and come away with profit from those dividends. What determines whether it’s a good or bad investment, is the ratio of profit to the capital owner compared to cost of the asset. Crypto generates 0 profit, so it has 0 value as a capital investment.
Every crypto trader that is clueless about actual investing thinks that dividends don’t exist.
Stocks pay dividends to their shareholders. Stocks also represent portions of companies that make other things.
Basically you’re saying that crypto is like a shitty stock that doesn’t pay dividends, doesn’t generate a profit, makes nothing, is not actually valuable, and is only worth what you can sucker someone else into paying for it. I agree.
But I also wouldn’t “invest” in such a stock.
Reminds me of money.
What is that even suppose to mean in this context?
crypto and nft have nothing to do with AI, though. Investing in AI properly is like investing in Apple in the early 90’s.
ultimately it won’t matter because if we get AGI, which is the whole point of investing in AI, stocks will become worthless.
Future spoiled milk post.
Are you sure? Likening it to the dot com bubble doesn’t mean that the tech is never going to make an impact, it means that the behaviour of investors is irrational. After all, the Internet is very much still here and affects our lives enormously, but the dot com bubble also absolutely did burst
When this bubble bursts, it’s going to transform the entire economy in such a way that we will either all be winners, or we will all be losers.
All economic bubbles do that
https://freakonomics.com/2007/06/the-benefits-of-a-bubble-even-when-burst/
Bigger than that.
You seem to have a notable lack of detailed knowledge on the topic considering how strong your feelings on it seem to be.
You seem to think you know a lot about me for someone who doesn’t know anything about me.
…just like the dot com bubble.
Bigger
This is probably a much better analogy than NFTs, but the dotcom bubble had much broader implications
Well, then we are facing two bubbles at the same time: AI and cyber currencies. Once both those bubbles burst, the fallout is going to make the dot-com era bubble look like small suds by comparison.
Whatever this iteration of “AI” will be, it has a limit that the VC bubble can’t fulfill. That’s kind of the point though because these VC firms, aided by low interest rates, can just fund whatever tech startup they think has a slight chance of becoming absorbed in to a tech giant. Most of the AI companies right now are going to fail, as long as they do it as cheaply as possible, the VC firms basically skim the shit that floats to the top.
It certainly is somewhere around the peak of the hype cycle.
There’s a lot of similarity in tone between crypto and AI. Both are talking about their sphere like it will revolutionize absolutely everything and anything, and both are scrambling to find the most obscure use case they can claim as their own.
The biggest difference is that AI has concrete, real-world applications, but I suspect its use, ultimately, will be less universal and transformative as the hype is making it out to be.
Eventually it absolutely will be universal.
But modern tech isn’t that and doesn’t have a particular promising path towards that. Most of the investment in heavily scaling up current hardware comes from a place of not understanding the technology or its limitations. Blindly throwing cash at buzzwords without some level of understanding (you don’t need to know how to cure cancer to invest in medicine, but you should probably know crystals don’t do it) of what you’re throwing money at is going to get you in trouble.
The AI sphere isn’t like crypto’s sphere. Crypto was truly one thing. Lots of things can be solved with AI and modern LLMs have shown to be better than remedial at zero shot learning for things they weren’t explicitly designed to do.
Ai is a bubble, the question is if it will burst and when it will…
Of course. Sure, AI image generated stuff are impressive but no way those companies could cover the operational, R&D cost if VC were not injecting shit load of fake money.]
Yeah early this year, I was crunching the numbers on even a simple client to interface with LLM APIs. It never made sense, the monthly cost I would have to charge vs others using it to at least feel financially safe, never felt like a viable business model or real value add. That’s not even including Generative Art, which would definitely be much more. So, don’t even know how any of these companies charging <$10/mo are profitable.
Generative art is actually much easier to run than LLMs. You can get really high resolutions on SDXL (1024x1024) using only 8gb of Vram (although it’d be slow). There’s no way you can get anything but the smallest of text generative models into that same amount of VRAM.
Oh wow, that’s good to know. I always attributed visual graphics to be way more intensive. Wouldn’t think a text generative model to take up that much Vram
Edit: how many parameters did you test with?
Sorry, just seeing this now- I think with 24gb of vram, the most you can get is a 4bit quantized 30b model, and even then, I think you’d have to limit it to 2-3k of context. Here’s a chart for size comparisons: https://postimg.cc/4mxcM3kX
By comparison, with 24gb of vram, I only use half of that to create a batch of 8 768x576 photos. I also sub to mage.space, and I’m pretty sure they’re able to handle all of their volume on an A100 and A10G
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
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.
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.
Going back all the way to the tulip mania of the 17th century.
Except that cryptocurrency has real uses, which are valuable to a lot of people.
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.
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.
@Freesoftwareenjoyer Out of curiosity, how is the world appreciably different now that AI exists?
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.
@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.
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.
@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.
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.
@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.
How is this at all on topic?
Yeah man unions are cool. That’s irrelevant to this discussion.
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.
The lack of rationale and reason in your response actually causes you to look conservative.
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 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.
@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.
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
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.
@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.
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.
deleted by creator
I agree, but isn’t that the job for the government?
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.
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.
No! Really, what a shock!!
