←back to thread

128 points ArmageddonIt | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.208s | source
Show context
jampa ◴[] No.44501089[source]
I like Steve's content, but the ending misses the mark.

With the carriage / car situation, individual transportation is their core business, and most companies are not in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

I say this as someone who has worked for 7 years implementing AI research for production, from automated hardware testing to accessibility for nonverbals: I don't think founders need to obsess even more than they do now about implementing AI, especially in the front end.

This AI hype cycle is missing the mark by building ChatGPT-like bots and buttons with sparkles that perform single OpenAI API calls. AI applications are not a new thing, they have always been here, now they are just more accessible.

The best AI applications are beneath the surface to empower users, Jeff Bezos says that (in 2016!)[1]. You don't see AI as a chatbot in Amazon, you see it for "demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations."

[1]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to...

replies(10): >>44501192 #>>44501224 #>>44501278 #>>44501389 #>>44501569 #>>44505291 #>>44505340 #>>44505796 #>>44506753 #>>44508378 #
1. benreesman ◴[] No.44506753[source]
Right. The point is that in frothy market conditions and a general low-integrity regime in business and politics there is a ton of incentive to exploit FOMO far beyond it's already "that's a stiff sip there" potency and this leads to otherwise sane and honest people getting caught up into doing concrete things today based on total speculation about technology that isn't even proposed yet. A good way to really understand this intuitively is to take the present-day intellectual and emotional charge out of it without loss of generality: we can go back and look at Moore's Law for example, and the history of how the sausage got made on reconciling a prediction of exponential growth with the realities of technological advance. It's a fascinating history, there's at least one great book [1] and the Asionometry YouTube documentary series on it is great as always [2].

There is no point in doing business and politics and money motivated stuff based on the hypothetical that technology will become self-improving, if that happens we're through the looking glass, not in Kansas anymore, "Roads? Where we're going, we won't need roads." It won't matter or at least it won't be what you think it'll be some crazy thing.

Much, much, much, much more likely is that this is like all the other times we made some real progress, people got too excited, some shady people made some money, and we all sobered up and started working on the next milestone. This is by so far both A) The only scenario you can do anything about and B) The only scenario honest experts take seriously, so it's a double "plan for this one".

The quiet ways that Jetson Orin devices and shit will keep getting smarter and more trustworthy to not break shit and stuff, that's the bigger story, it will make a much bigger difference than snazzy Google that talks back, but it's taking time and appearing in the military first and comes in fits and starts and has all the other properties of ya know, reality.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Moores-Law-Silicon-Valleys-Revolution...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@Asianometry