Transcript
Title text: This is how you all fucking sound
[A smug tech bro wearing a sideways cap, watch, chain around his neck stands in front of a data center by a lake with dead fish. A smoke stack blows pollution into the air]
Tech bro: AI is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a suit with cigarette in hand stands in a restaurant while two disgruntled diners cough from the smoke]
Suit: Smoking indoors is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a top hat and suit stands in a factory with two sad and dirty children]
Hat: Child labor is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug plantation owner stands in front of a field with with two angry slaves]
Plantation owner: The Atlantic Slave trade is already here, there’s no going back.
Reminds me of when the stupid "Web 3.0" made up by blockchain freaks was supposed to be the future. Not every technology will be as widespread as the internet. The internet facilitates communication across the entire world and offers many advantages over phone, mail, and other forms of communication.
The use cases and advantages are clear, even if there was an overly eager hype cycle in the 90s. AI might have some uses, but a clear advantage has not actually been established yet, nor have the legal challenges been ironed out. Remember that the current iteration of AI would not have been possible without breaking tons of IP law, slurping up as much data as possible.
Distributed web is a great idea. With a shitty vibecoded reference implementation (IPFS). And then also buzzworded as "Web 3" together with blockchain DNS and everything else.
Agree AI is as overhyped as the internet in the late 90's was. I also think AI or some descendent of it will likely be as ubiquitous as the Internet is now. There's quite a few problems right now that AI just seems really well suited to solving, unlike the blockchain where it really only solved one sorta esoteric problem. I look at AI as being the bridge between the real world where things are fuzzy, rules are inconsistent, things don't have clear cut answers, etc and the digital world where everything is precise and well defined. That's not something that's going away.
However, what I see happening with AI is much the same thing as what happened with the Internet. To use the Internet in the late 90's was frustrating. The computers sucked, they were huge, they used a bunch of power, the connection was slow, connections dropped, they weren't always on, they took quite some to establish, etc. It wasn't till CPUs got good enough to be able to be battery powered and still render full websites (in other words, the key building block of a smartphone) that the Internet really became a ubiquitous thing for most people. Today's AI uses way too much power, requires hardware that's way too expensive, is less smart than people think it is, has problems learning, has problems with hallucinations, etc. What I see happening is the AI bubble crashes, like the dotcom crash, but then it comes back once the technology is really ready.
As far as law and IP go, the Internet often had lots of issues with that too. Lookup the origins of why we have Section 230. It's still something we're arguing over. We'll figure out the legal issues. And IP law is broken, has been for a long time. It needs a revamp to bring it back to some sanity. I have no problem with AI breaking IP law. Much of that shouldn't be under copyright anyway.