from Hacker News

Is the AI Boom Already Over?

by ExtremisAndy on 8/20/23, 6:58 PM with 7 comments

• by Fricken on 8/20/23, 7:58 PM

  We've kind of been through this already with autonomous vehicles a decade ago.

  In a demonstration capacity autonomous vehicles were mindblowing. In the real world the novelty wears off quick, and what remains is a bit of a disappointment.

  Of course, the demos helped churn up many bajillions of dollars in investment money, and many companies with long runways continue to tinker away at the problem. Level 4 AVs are dramatically better than a decade ago, and yet still totally shitty relative to real to real drivers.

  What has become apparent is that these companies and their investors are not at all interested in solving any real transportation problems.

  They are interested in getting between you and things you want to do, so they can set up a gate and charge you money to pass through it.

• by 8organicbits on 8/20/23, 8:06 PM

  > the bots are still prone to basic errors that make them impossible to trust

  This has been my frustration. If I don't bring my own domain knowledge, carefully review, and provide follow up prompts I get garbage output. Novices don't have great domain knowledge and likely overestimate the quality of the output. It's not worth the effort.

  It's helpful to know what chatgpt can't handle: math, visual, spacial, safety. It's pretty limited.

• by mindcrime on 8/20/23, 8:52 PM

  Sure, you can define "the AI Boom" in such as a way as to say "The AI Boom is over." No problem. But... taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, I'd say that any slight, contemporary, dip in interest in AI is just that: a dip. A momentary blip at a point in time, hardly the harbinger of any larger trend. There's no reason I see to expect anything less than for AI research to continue, and for AI to become progressively more and more useful.

  So no, not in an bigger, more universal sense, would I agree that "the AI Boom is over". If anything, it's just starting.

• by jqpabc123 on 8/20/23, 9:13 PM

  It can't be over because it never arrived in any real, substantial way.

  We've been waiting for some real "intelligence" from AI for decades now.

  Creating word salad from ingredients found on the internet isn't it.

• by jschveibinz on 8/20/23, 9:20 PM

  Ha, no I don’t think so.

  This is how we experience the slope of technical change over a period of months: ___

  This is closer to the slope of technical change over that time period:

  /