• Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    7 days ago

    I do feel that, unlike Crypto, AI (or, to drop the buzzwords, LLMs and other machine-learning based language processors and parsers) will end up having a place in the world.

    As it is NOW, the AI hype train is definitely an investment bubble and it will definitely explode in a glorious fashion eventually. Taking a lot of people down with it.

    But unlike Crypto, AI does – It like does things, you know? Even if I personally feel like it’s mostly only good for a toy, all my attempts to use it for anything society would deem “valuable” were frustrated, but at least I can RP with it when my friends aren’t available. It is a thing that exists and can be used.

    Crypto was funny because it was literally useless. Just an incredibly wasteful techno-fetishistic speculative vehicle with precisely zero shame about being that.

    As for what’s next, I think Quantum Computing might be it. That is, assuming the Tech Industry even survives the bubble’s burst in its current form. Because everyone in the industry is putting all their eggs including theoretical eggs that haven’t even been laid, and in fact there’s not even a chicken in this AI hype train. And even with AI becoming part of people’s lives, as I predict it indeed will, when the bubble does burst it might end up hitting the reset button on who is truly in charge of things.

    • John@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      Of course people think crypto “doesn’t do anything” when most people don’t even understand how investments or tech in general works.

      There is actually a lot going on with crypto. It’s just that people who aren’t plugged in won’t really care… : https://ethereumadoption.com/

        • John@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Read Blockchain Radicals, there’s more of us than you think. Dozens!

          Make no mistake though, I view crypto as simply a technological tool to get us from A to B. From the cryptoleftist subreddit:

          Bitcoin or any other specific crypto / blockchain project will not get us to socialism. This is first and foremost an ANTI-capitalist community (this should be the bare minimum to calling oneself a leftist), so please, we don’t want to encourage some of the worst aspects of both capitalism and crypto currency like speculation and trading. We don’t care if you do it, but there are other communities out there for that.

          That said, there’s some cool work being done on Breadchain for coops and workers: laborDAO, the ReFi (regenerative finance) movement, etc.

          Crypto can be an important tool to:

          • protect the unbanked,underbanked, and even banked from the exploitative financial system: we’re making progress

          • remove US hegemonic power by undermining the dominance of the US dollar: we’re making progress, but some like USDC are actually reinforcing American dominance

          • move away from capitalism and asset speculation to collective ownership (governance tokens), trade of useful goods (digital or physical), and savings protocols: we’re not making very much progress and are actively moving against this

    • Event_Horizon@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      This is exactly the same at the dot.com boom and bust. After the crash the internet didn’t go anywhere, and look at where we are now. The same will (unfortunately) happen with AI.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      You make it sound as if they don’t already have a place in the world. Ml models have been employed to solve problems for the greater part of a decade or more now. Deeply integrated into damn near everything that you interact with.

      When you get an MRI or a CAT scan AI helps identify and call out peculiarities.

      The traffic lights and traffic management in your city is probably partially operated using “AI”.

      Wear and tear on parts of your car are predicted from data using ml models.

      Industry sensor data is interpreted and made actionable using ml models.

      Telecommunication Network fault prediction and detection.

      Energy load prediction.

      …etc

      But you’re probably talking about is recent hype around llms which are models that are fantastically good at understanding language. Which opens up a whole new field of possibilities when you can combine the ability to understand language with the predictability and reliability of “classic” ML models.

      • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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        7 days ago

        Yes I most definitely mean the recent hype train from the likes of chatGPT which kickstarted a market bubble.

        … Because if I were to include all Machine Learning, that’d be silly. We’ve been using things with machine learning in it for decades now and – No one cares. It’s the best kind of technology in that it is invisible.

    • ragas@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      You are talking about crypto after the hype. But actually the idea before the hype was pretty cool. It was basically to allow safe payments around the world without any government control needed.

      In my city there were a few shops that took Bitcoin back then and a cup of coffee was something like 2 Bitcoin.