Comment on Will AI Startups End Up Like Blockchain Startups?

Shadow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They’re putting micro chips in the cheese and using block chains to track the micro chips! businessinsider.com/edible-microchips-on-parmigia…

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• yarr@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  A lot will fail yes, but I think there’s actually a lot of value in AI and many will succeed. Blockchain has always been a solution in search of a problem, but AI actually can help in a lot of ways.

  Well, what are those ways and when can we expect to see them? I keep hearing that “oh yeah, the very NEXT version of AI will do your job for you” but it always seems to be on the way. In the same way I can use blockchain tech for a few things here and there, I can use AI in the same way today. However, with all these billions and billions of dollars getting invested into AI right now, how will it change the average person’s life in 1 - 3 years? I use that scale of time because that’s pretty much how long startup runways last. If they don’t turn a profit in that time frame, they go to the big AI graveyard in the sky.

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  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    My wife uses AI to write complex Excel spreadsheet formulas saving hours. She still has to double check them but it saves enormous time. My friend uses it to write proposals again it needs to be checked and again it saves hours of time.

    AI doesn’t replace people. It provides a productivity boost and it has been doing it for 2 years now.

    Asking what AI is going to do for the average person in 1-3 years is like asking what is the PC going to do for the average person in 1980. There’s nothing that AI can do that can’t be done by a person. But like using a PC instead of a pocket calculator, it makes you more productive.

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    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My wife uses AI to write complex Excel spreadsheet formulas saving hours. She still has to double check them but it saves enormous time. My friend uses it to write proposals. Again it needs to be checked and again it saves hours of time.

      AI doesn’t replace people. It provides a productivity boost and it has been doing it for 2 years now.

      To me it’s obvious that AI is and will be really useful, but one of the great things about it is that it looks like a lot of that won’t be possible to gatekeep. Which seems like it would also mean that efforts to monetize it will fail.

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      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        People can easily self host email, file backup, etc but pay for service anyway. AI will be prohibitively expensive to self host for a very very long time.

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    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “Mary-Beth… gets down on one knee will you marinade me?”

      “What?”

      “I don’t know…I used AI to write this proposal. I wanted you to marry me, but lets hear the AI out. Lets submerge my body in juices, and see how tender I get.”

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    • yarr@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Asking what AI is going to do for the average person in 1-3 years is like asking what is the PC going to do for the average person in 1980.

      If you were a PC startup in 1980, this was very a relevant question, since PCs at home really didn’t take off in a big way until the web which was almost 20 years later. Look at how many PC manufacturers went out of business between 1980-2000. This is kind of my point, AI is so over-invested right now that if there are not HUGE returns in a short timeframe, there’s going to be some serious blood out there.

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      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oh yeah, as others said many startups will fail. But you wrote as if AI does nothing like blockchain.

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  • Shadow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    how will it change the average person’s life in 1 - 3 years?

    To be blunt, it’ll probably make them worry about losing their job. AI can’t do everything and it does a lot of stuff pretty shitty, but so do a lot of people.

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    • yarr@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Tech workers, artists and other industries have long had to compete with work being sent overseas. Now it’s even cheaper and faster.

      This is the part I don’t entirely see eye-to-eye with you on. Right now, AI is eating the extreme low end of the work… for example, if someone needs a picture for their article, they might generate it with AI instead of buy stock illustrations from a real person.

      If someone is making a site on WIX for their new business, that leverages AI too, but just for simple stuff.

      By the time AI is able to do those jobs full stop, then I’ll have a worry. “Serious” artists do a heck of a lot more than just sit down with a pen. They go visit clients, figure out what to do, research, negotiate with other people at the business, etc. Same thing with developers. They aren’t just typing in code all day, they are meeting with other departments, figuring out requirements, etc. None of that is easy or quick. By the time you have an AI smart enough to either do 95% of a developer’s job or 95% of an artists’ job, it will be smart enough to do nearly every other job in America. If the same AI also comes with humanoid robots that can reason about their environment and move things around, then you’re also risking a lot of labor jobs, like picking in a warehouse. However, unlike proponents of AI I think all of the above is decades away, not years away. If it’s really decades away, you can kiss the current round of AI startups goodbye because they won’t exist by that point.

      For many, many, many of the AI startups today, if they don’t start showing a profit within 1-3 years they are GONE. Part of showing a profit is being useful, and I think outside of little niches here and there, the amount of money getting poured into it does not in any way resemble the money coming out of it.

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      • jrs100000@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It doesnt have to be useful to you and it does not have to replace every job, it just has to show revenue and rapid growth. There are lots and lots of tasks out there were management doesnt really care if its perfect as long as its cheap and it gets done. AI will automate that stuff first, but people in rich countries probably wont notice because that sort of work was outsourced years ago. In the meantime, its all going to be about efficiency, having fewer people do the same work with AI assistance.

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      • Shadow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I think there’s a lot of grunt work artists than you might be aware of. My last job was at a video game studio and it was kinda eyeopening the amount of generic story boarding / art work they would send over to Eastern Europe / Asia to be done for cheap.

        The visible side of the industry (what you’re talking about) yeah I agree, but AI is slowly going to pick away at the lower skill levels until only experts are really useful. How does a junior become an expert in that world?

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