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It's mostly bad actors, and a smattering of optimists who believe that despite its current problems, AI will eventually and inevitably get better. I also wish the whole thing would calm down and come back to reality, but I don't think it's a bubble that will pop. It will continue to get artificially puffed up for a while because too many businesses and people have invested too much for them to just quit (sunk cost falacy) and there's a big enough market in a certain class of writer/developer/etc... for which the short term benefits will justify the continued existence of the AI products for a while. My prediction is that as the long term benefits for honest users peter out, the bubble won't pop, but deflate into a wrinkled 10 day old helium balloon. There will still be a big enough market driven by cons, ad tech and people trying to suck up as many ad dollars as possible, and other bad actors, that the tech will persist, and continue to infest the web/world for quite a while.

AI is the new crypto. Lots of promise and big ideas, lots of people with blind faith about what it will one day become, a lot of people gaming the system for quick gains at the expense of others. But it never actually becomes what it pretends/promises to be and is filled with people continuing the grift trying to make a buck off the next guy. AI just has better marketing and more corporate buy in than crypto. But neither are going anywhere.


contrast
“the bubble won't pop, but deflate into a wrinkled 10 day old helium balloon”

Love it :)

tempodox
> AI is the new crypto.

But it's also way worse than cryptocurrencies, because all the big actors are pushing it relentlessly, with every marketing trick they know. They have to, because they invested insane amounts of money into snake oil and now they have to sell it in order to recover at least a fraction of their investments. And the amounts of energy wasted on this ultimately pointless performance are beyond staggering.

wiseowise
In what parallel universe do you live where LLMs are snake oil?
const_cast
It depends on how they're marketed and what's the prevailing opinion. If we believe LLMs are true, genuine intelligence then yes, I'd say that's snake oil.
4ndrewl
Not LLMs per-se but the wrap-around claims peddled by "AI" companies.
morngn
I think he was being metaphorical.
throwawayqqq11
From a classists perspective, big capital cant drop the AI ball, because its their only shot at becoming independent from human labor, those pesky humans their wealth unfortnunately depends uppon and that could democratically seize it in an instant.

I bet there are billionare geniuses out there seeing a future island life far away from the contaminated continents, sustained by robots. So no matter how much harder AI progress gets, money will keep flowing.

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