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I remember when I suggested that I shouldn't learn to write in 1998, because you can just type on the computer, I was laughed at. I was told that at best I'd still need to learn to write, and at worst computers can turn out as a fad due to them requiring electricity to work, they can crash and go bad, etc. Pease note that my dislike of writing was heavily influenced by likely having dyspraxia, and a lot of cheaper pens/pencils being mildly painful to hold.

However, the very same people are now disencouraging anything that the AI is promised to replace. Don't draw, just use Dall-E. Don't code, just use ChatGPT. Don't play music, just use Suno. Don't make movies, just wait until it can do it good enough. The music one is even often being pushed by those who absolutely despised electronic music for "not requiring any talent, just pressing buttons", all while AI music is literally what ignorant rock/metal kids thought electronic music production was. Even one person, who criticized me for using amp sims on my PC instead of a wall of tube amplifiers is more favorable than not towards AI music.

I wonder if those who now disencourage art classes in favor of a short lesson on how to prompt an image generator will also disencourage writing due to speech-to-text technologies. Maybe the problem is that they don't use LLMs, but often a more primitive version of neural networks.

And I'm not 100% against new tools. I even use Neural Amp Modeler, sometimes even two instances with one having a Boss HM-2 response for that Swedish chainsaw tone. But these prompt machines are barely more than toys for real professional work, due to the lack of actual control beyond prompting.

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[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

because the bubble is about to break, and google, MS, openai and other is cramming into as much other hardware as possible to recover the losses of putting all thier eggs in one basket. palintir and similar is trying to stave it off by peddling it to LEO on several countries.

MS largely neglected most of thier other products: xbox, Windows os versions for AI solely. and google largely neglects thier phone development for AI.

[-] renrenPDX@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

It’s being pushed in corporate America, hard.

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

AI companies are trying to peddle it to service/ or other industries so they end up holding the bag in the end.

[-] northernlights@lemmy.today 12 points 2 days ago

cloud/virtualize everything was a big push too.

[-] Chais@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago

But that was pushed on companies and their developers more than consumers. "AI" is pushed on everyone. And their dog.

[-] utopiah@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

OK ok yes and I have a theory about it!

So... my theory is that, and it might be shocked, by VCs, investment banks, business angels, C-suites, so basically people with BIG money are actually learning. I know, I know, sounds crazy but hear me out.

I think they are learning NOT about a topic, say AI, or XR, or 3D printing, etc no, that's pointless, no they are instead learning about real materials, things like pretty curve published on Harvard Business Review or McKinsey Quarterly or HackerNews. These people learned over time about the Gartner hype cycle and they are learning to both ride it AND amplify it. VCs have a big incentive for big bets. They do NOT care about your mom&pop software shop which might just reach a million paying customers. No, they make BIG bets that nobody else can, that's their cornered market. If it doesn't reach a billion users, not even customers, then it's just not interesting to them. They want, no they NEED, something that will grow fast, very fast, and big, VERY big. This way they fund the infrastructure and in exchange they get the only thing they care about, shares. Everything else is just a hurdles to go over, or remove entirely thanks to lobbying.

They specifically look for this dependency so that they can't be bought out, 1000x return on projects that need them. It's a parasitic relationship that they excel at. Now again this isn't new but IMHO what you are hinting at, the amplitude of the push is arguably new.

One person at the center of this embodies it perfectly : Sam Altman. He lead YCombinator at the heart of the SiliconValley. SV isn't special for the skills, they are plenty of very smart people everywhere else. What's special is that smart people go there to go money, a lot of money very fast in exchange for the promise of tremendous growth. Altman has seen hundreds if not thousands of such proposal and he evaluate them. He knows precisely what sticks, what people offered but also what promises get funded.

He keeps on doing exactly that. He keeps on promising MORE.

So... yes I think the AI push is bigger than anything else. It's bigger than cryptocurrencies, it's bigger than the metaverse, it's supposedly THE technology that changes everything else. We heard this before. In fact we hear this at the beginning of every cycle. This time though grifters, because no matter how big the bank account is, they still are grifters (look at Musk, promising constantly what everybody wants to hear, delivering a fraction of it so small it became a joke) who get their power through getting everybody to push for their promises.

TL;DR: yes and it's a pattern. Everything gets pitched as more revolutionary than ever before.

[-] Quexotic@infosec.pub 18 points 2 days ago

I think that the reason behind this is twofold

  • Imagine you want control over everything and everyone, what better way than to be a literal "friend" to them whispering ideas in their ear
  • Imagine never having to pay employees. They're the most expensive part of any business, by a lot. There are probably a few exceptions but rare ones.
[-] zd9@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

AI by itself is amazing, and is being used in thousands of ways to tangibly improve the world. The problem is when capitalists get their greedy authoritarian hands on any technology, they try to squeeze as much power and money out of it at the expense of the common person.

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

they also have to try and sell it as a product, which AI hasnt done at all, its just being crammed into everything when its not asked.

[-] zd9@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I just said this to someone else in this community which shows maybe yall aren't the most informed: AI has been in thousands of highly successful products for over a decade. I think you just see the headlines without knowing the industry as a whole.

[-] ZDL@lazysoci.al 1 points 7 hours ago

Oh look! Another person who feigns incomprehension of things like "context" and "common parlance" so they can pretend they're smart!

[-] zd9@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

In my world, it is common parlance to use the word correctly. I'm worried the general public just sees "AI is ruining X" and are the poisoned against anything that's actually AI, not just profit-motivated chatbots to sell more plastic bullshit.

[-] Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago

I wanna add:

  • imagine there is no demand after making the investment.
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[-] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Had a few times I went out to recharge my social battery, and at least a couple of people I know over some drinks have gone whole hog on ChatGPT believing the shit's gonna make them rich by supposedly making the process of coding or otherwise simplified instead of (re)learning programming by reading hours of documentation and running sample code.

[-] ScrooLewse@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 1 day ago

I've literally had a friend I hadn't talked to in over a decade show up out of fucking nowhere to pitch me on vibe coding as a career. Wild shit.

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[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago

The AI push is definitely worse, but the second place, in my mind is the whole "smart" (insert mundane home gadget here).

I'm surprised I didn't see smart toothpaste or anything.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah they tried really hard to force smart things into every nook and cranny of your house.

[-] FatVegan@leminal.space 5 points 2 days ago

Also HD. Everything was HD. Sunglasses, now with HD lenses.

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

Every ten years or so, someone tries to push "Smart Homes" again. You can find ads of these things going back to the 50's. They want to vendor lock in every appliance in your home. The product lines themselves never actually last very long.

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

I have very much adopted and invested in smart technology and even I am massively annoyed by the fact that EVERYTHING connects to WiFi these days. My dishwasher can supposedly download new wash cycles or some nonsense. It's obnoxious and it will never know wifi. I just like being able to automate things and make my life easier in simple ways. When I dismiss my alarm in the morning my kitchen lights turn on because the first thing I do is go feed the pets. It helps light up the house a bit during winter when I wake up and I love it. THAT is what smart home technology should be. Not a freakin toaster connecting to WiFi so it can alert you when your toast is done.

On the topic of smart toothbrushes, I did get given one to test out and it was actually pretty cool. After you finished brushing it would send a map of your mouth and what you brushed in case you missed any spots. The app ended up being a bit buggy so I got rid of it, but I could see how that type of thing could be useful, especially for certain demographics like kids. They had a way to gamify brushing your teeth for kids as well, which is silly, but could also be effective especially for autistic kids.

[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I have smart stuff too. Even got an oral-b "Io" series of "smart" tooth brush!

I'm actually not enthusiastic about it at all. I got the oral-b because I knew I have a problem that my brushing isn't preventing cavities, so I did that in an effort to prevent visits to the dentist. It seems to be working. I just need my teeth fixed so I can not have to see a dentist again for a very long while.

Aside from that, most of the "smart" stuff in my house is lights. I intentionally do not have "smart" lights where safety is a factor, mainly kitchen/bathroom/basement/garage. I don't want something, or someone being able to turn the lights off on me while I'm slippery and wet in the shower, at the highest probability of falling and hurting myself; or when I'm cutting up food in the kitchen and not being able to see where the blade is for even a second could result in serious injury; or when I'm working on something in the garage, with potential hazards all around, like tools, oil, fuel, and other dangerous items and products.

The basement is mostly for when we do any work on the home appliances, wiring or plumbing. Don't want to be holding a leak with one hand, waving frantically with the other to try to trigger the motion sensor to turn the lights back on...

Living and sleeping areas, hallways, bedrooms, etc, are all smart lights. They're mostly RGB so we can do "party mode" or something, if we want.... Largely they're just told to turn on or off, but some household members have found that being able to turn the lights on a specific color for a specific time of day is useful, so the RGB stays. I put in some smart light switches too, some for areas that I don't care to put in "smart" lights, one notable example is the outdoor/porch lights, I have it set up on a timer to turn on/off with the sunset/sunrise, that way I can use cheap, throw away LED lightbulbs around the outside of the house and if they get damaged or destroyed by weather or vandals, I basically don't care... Not that we've had any vandals around here, I'm just prepared in case that were to ever happen.

Most lighting control, even smart light switches too smart lights, is handled through a hub of sorts; I have home assistant, but it's not necessarily the best for everyone. When a light switch is pressed, no power delivery changes, it just sends a command to HA to command the lights to turn on. The lights are powered 24/7, so we can turn on the lights with our phones. Most of the light switches have little more than basic controls of on/off for the respective group of lightbulbs. Any color control is either programmed or configured from the app.

A small number of bulbs are still in Phillips hue, and when I have the money those will be taken out because Phillips stuff is expensive for what you get. Easy to get into, but extremely limiting and the output sucks compared to alternatives.

My home is mostly zwave for the exact reason you mentioned. I don't want my wifi to suck because my fridge needs to be online 24/7. Not that I have, or would ever own a "smart" fridge.... I just know the technology and putting some 50+ lightbulbs and light switches on wifi would generally make the wifi terrible. I picked zwave because it operates mainly on the 900mhz ISM band, well away from the 2.4/5ghz of wifi.

I get why so many use Wi-Fi, but I hate that. Just make it a module that you can plug in. Then give people a choice of wifi, Ethernet, ZigBee, zwave, matter/thread, or nothing. FFS.

Anyways. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, I guess?

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[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is late stage supply-side economics if I've ever seen it.

EDIT: I hope this shit fails like 3D TV.

[-] zd9@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

lol 3D tv isn't in the same ballpark as AI. It is a bubble and the hype will die down, but it's here to stay. Probably going to be as engrained as the internet is, but even that had a huge bubble in the early 2000s.

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[-] melisdrawing@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 days ago

I remember a time when every day our letter carrier would bring us another AOL compact disc. It was incredible, there were AOL CDs littering the streets, crushed rainbow shards promising to connect you to the world.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 56 points 3 days ago

Well, Cloud computing, Bitcoin/Block chain and Quantum computing come to mind with more recently over-hyped technologies... And I'm not sure what to make of the successful ones. Smartphones have certainly reshaped the world within my lifetime. I still remember when I was a kid and there was no wifi, just dial-up internet and you'd have to use landline phones and telephone booths. But smartphones weren't forced on us back then... People adopted them on their own because they were massively useful... Still only took a few years and everyone had one. (And it's just now that they're forced upon us. I mean try riding a train or attend a concert or get an appointment without using smartphones...)

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

quantum computing doesnt seem to have to pick up significant marketing as the others. bitcoin was largely a failure, as it wasnt heavily jammed into your everyday devices or software. using it as a form of payment seems to be worst than using cash/credit card.

cloud doesnt seem to be a scam, its heavily used by most companies, aka AWS

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[-] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

It's because it fucking sucks. Especially if you were already a person that knows how to search the internet and find the best answer already. That only took an extra 10 to 15 seconds most of the time, and you could be sure of where you got the information and whether this source is accurate or biased. That's to say nothing of the dangers, which tech bros actually don't give a shit about. The tech industry has historically gone from technological advancement to technological advancement in order to stay relevant and continue making the same level of money, or more than they were before. We finally reached a point where there's not really any big problems to solve with the current tech, and no real obvious next step, so they are looking for their next big breakthrough and trying to force one in the meantime. The sad thing is what they want to be the next big break is just not there yet, to me it kind of seems like it won't ever be the way they want it, and there's no way to know when we might get there with it. So instead they are taking this disinformation robot and pushing it into the lives of everyone so that they can now use the disinformation and improved information gathering as their new business model, because just pausing growth is a death sentence for a company in unregulated capitalism. If your company can't grow like a cancer, you become irrelevant and die

[-] upandatom@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago

I can only hope your enter key is currently in the shop.

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 48 points 3 days ago

If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

And sunken cost fallacy. Pretty much sums it up.

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[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago

This push is what Business to Business sales looks like, the unrelenting combination of FOMO and ease of use. It reeks of comparative spending where people who don't know what they are doing buy things for a business based on what competitors are purchasing instead of what their organization needs for the business.

This happened with cloud computing 10 to 15 years ago and is why Cloudflare going down means nothing works.

It happened before with workstations. And before that it was telephony (and that's why desks have phones even if no one uses them). Before that it was an open office concept.

Business fads are annoying because they are a whole different culture of people I don't relate to making choices I don't care about. But AI is connecting all things, businesses and people. The problem is AI doesn't fit any problem quite right so it is being shipped around to all parts of the market to find buyers. It hasn't found a sustainable amount of money yet and the combo of business and user subscriptions isn't cutting it. This is the bubble and when no one is found to want it then the buzz will die down and we can be prodded into another societal gimmick.

[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 42 points 3 days ago

Company pushing their own app so hard that everything that could be done in web or html5 is now app. I think this is one of the more recent "we gonna do it else we're being left out" stuff, but before the blockchain and AI push. Also "smart" everything and "iot" everything. Absolutely insanity.

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[-] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 38 points 3 days ago

People seem to have forgotten 3D-TVs. There was a time where you couldn't get a high-end TV without 3D functionality, it was going to be the future after all. Was it any good? No, but boy did the manufacturers try to push it. Look how that went.

[-] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 40 points 3 days ago

I remember when the 3D TV oligarchs took over our government and created an over 1 trillion dollar bubble.

[-] wewbull@feddit.uk 20 points 3 days ago

Not anywhere near the same scale.

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[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago

The closest thing I can think of at the moment is Blockchain.

[-] expr@programming.dev 28 points 3 days ago

Yeah but honestly, this dwarfs that. It's not even close.

[-] towerful@programming.dev 20 points 3 days ago

Never had Blockchain forced into operating systems

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[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 22 points 3 days ago

Crypto was pushed big in certain tech circles, but remained pretty niche to normies.

Every CEO is getting their dick hard over how many people they think they can fire once they get this AI thing finally figured out.

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[-] Yaky@slrpnk.net 25 points 3 days ago

The most similar all-permeating changes I could think of would be the surveillance ("targeted") advertising that slowly took over most of the web. Just like the AI craze, users did not get a choice of whether it is enabled, but unlike AI, it mostly happened behind the scenes.

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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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Fuck AI

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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.

AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.

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