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"The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent," he added. "Suddenly productivity goes up and the economy is growing at a faster rate. When that happens, we'll be fine as an industry."

Needless to say, we haven't seen anything like that yet. OpenAI's top AI agent — the tech that people like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say is poised to upend the economy — still moves at a snail's pace and requires constant supervision.

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[-] sighofannoyance@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

And crashing the markets in the process... At the same time they came out with a bunch of mambo jumbo and scifi babble about having a million qbit quantum chip.... 😂

[-] seejur@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Tech is basically trying to push up the stocks one hype idea after another. Social media bubble about to burst? AI! AI about to burst? Quantum! I'm sure that when people will start realizing quantum computing is another smokescreen, a new moronic idea will start to gain steam from all those LinkedIn "luminaries"

[-] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Quantum computation is a lot like fusion.

We know how it works and we know that it would be highly beneficial to society but, getting it to work with reliability and at scale is hard and expensive.

Sure, things get over hyped because capitalism but that doesn't make the technology worthless... It just shows how our economic system rewards lies and misleading people for money.

[-] seejur@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

It also can solve only a limited set of problems. People is under the impression that they can suddenly game at 10k full path ray tracing if they have a quantum cpu, while in reality for 99.9% of the problem is only as fast as normal cpus

[-] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

That doesn't make it worthless.

People are often wrong about technology, that's independent of the technology's usefulness. Quantum computation is incredibly useful for the applications that require it, things that are completely impossible to calculate with classical computers can be done using quantum algorithms.

This is true even if there are people on social media who think that it's a new graphics card.

[-] seejur@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Absolutely, but its application is not as widespread as someone not into science might think. The only thing it might actually impact the average Joe is cryptography I think

[-] sexy_peach@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago
[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Joseph Weizenbaum: "No shit? For realsies?"

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

That’s standard for emerging technologies. They tend to be loss leaders for quite a long period in the early years.

It’s really weird that so many people gravitate to anything even remotely critical of AI, regardless of context or even accuracy. I don’t really understand the aggressive need for so many people to see it fail.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Because there’s already been multiple AI bubbles (eg, ELIZA - I had a lot of conversations with FREUD running on an Apple IIe). It’s also been falsely presented as basically “AGI.”

AI models trained to help doctors recognize cancer cells - great, awesome.

AI models used as the default research tool for every subject - very very very bad. It’s also so forced - and because it’s forced, I routinely see that it has generated absolute, misleading, horseshit in response to my research queries. But your average Joe will take that on faith, your high schooler will grow up thinking that Columbus discovered Colombia or something.

[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

I just can't see AI tools like ChatGPT ever being profitable. It's a neat little thing that has flaws but generally works well, but I'm just putzing around in the free version. There's no dollar amount that could be ascribed to the service that it provides that I would be willing to pay, and I think OpenAI has their sights set way too high with the talk of $200/month subscriptions for their top of the line product.

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[-] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Is he saying it's just LLMs that are generating no value?

I wish reporters could be more specific with their terminology. They just add to the confusion.

Edit: he's talking about generative AI, of which LLMs are a subset.

[-] balder1991@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

But the hype isn’t about any other form of AI. It’s just OpenAI and a few other companies trying to copy them.

[-] Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

AI is burning a shit ton of energy and researchers’ time though!

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

eh, the entireity of training GPT4 and the whole world using it for a year turns out to be about 1% of the gasoline burnt just by the USA every single day. Its barely a rounding error when it comes to energy usage.

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[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

For a lot of years, computers added no measurable productivity improvements. They sure revolutionized the way things work in all segments of society for something that doesn’t increase productivity.

AI is an inflating bubble: excessive spending, unclear use case. But it won’t take long for the pop, clearing out the failures and making successful use cases clearer, the winning approaches to emerge. This is basically the definition of capitalism

[-] capybara@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

What time span are you referring to when you say "for a lot of years"?

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Vague memories of many articles over much of my adult life decrying the costs of whatever the current trend with computers is being higher than the benefits.

And I believe it, it’s technically true. There seems to be a pattern of bubbles where everyone jumps on the new hot thing, spend way too much money on it. It’s counterproductive, right up until the bubble pops, leaving the transformative successes.

Or I believe it was a long term thing with electronic forms and printers. As long as you were just adding steps to existing business processes, you don’t see productivity gains. It took many years for businesses to reinvent the way they worked to really see the productivity gains

[-] Snowstorm@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

If you want a reference there is a Rational Reminder Podcast (nerdy and factual personal finance podcast from a Canadian team) about this concept. It was the illustrated with trains or phone infrastructure 100 years ago : new technology looks nice -> people invest stupid amounts in a variety of projects-> some crash bring back stock valuations to reasonable level and at that point the technology is adopted and its infrastructure got subsidized by those who lost money on the stock market hot thing. Then a new hot thing emerge. The Internet got its cycle in 2000, maybe AI is the next one. Usually every few decade the top 10 in the s/p 500 changes.

[-] iamjackflack@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago
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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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