I couldn't agree with you more, as far as your last statement. People just need to look at history as you pointed out.The effects of tech are often overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. AI is much more than just self-driving, and chat gpt, and these are early days.
Yep. We have to come to terms with a few things
First the fact that direct to consumer AI has been a complete disaster. Gemini is a laughing stock. Every company that decided to do AI search results, chatGPT clones, etc spent billions in an ultra competitive market in order to then lose money on every customer because the models are so expensive to train and run...
Second that lprogress on more powerful models has stalled out. Hallucinations might not be solvable. Chat GPT 5 might take more data then currently exists...
I can't tell you what the future holds for AI, but it's entirely possible that it'll go the way of the metaverae, a money pit everyone will want to forget soon. Maybe it goes the other way, but the negativity is just starting to get priced in after all that optimism.
Computers can now see and hear. They can almost do once unthinkable things like... drive a car. We have a lot of jobs associated with tasks like driving cars, trucks, and trains, or reading and paying invoices, or operating cash registers and such.
I just read about Bosch developing AI's that listen to machinery to identify a malfunction before it happens (it was an aside in an article about a company making progress on the "cocktail party problem". One could imagine that someday, instead of security cameras going unmonitored, or having a guard try to periodically scan dozens of video feeds, security cameras will be able to flag an incident in progress and/or follow the suspect across cameras to tell you exactly where they are now, if they're still in camera range.
Costs will inevitably come down. Right now, it's early days, and researchers are still figuring out what is possible. ChatGPT just happened to work way better than anyone would've predicted for this early point. Enough so, that major companies (including non-tech companies) have FOMO that if they aren't working on this tech, they might end up disrupted by competitors.
It's anyone's guess, though, what this means long-term for any given company. Netscape and SUN microsystems were early leaders, but that didn't necessarily make them good long-term investments
Anyone remember the Betamax vs VHS wars?
https://foreverstudios.com/betamax-vs-vhs/So, What Really Killed Betamax?
There were several factors that contributed to lack of widespread adoption and ultimate demise of Betamax as a consumer video format:
Higher cost: Betamax machines were generally more expensive than VHS machines, which made them less accessible to consumers. In some cases, the players/recorders were hundreds of dollars more expensive than VHS.
Limited recording time: Betamax tapes had a maximum recording time of only 1-2 hours in the early years, while VHS tapes could record up to 4 hours. This made VHS more appealing to consumers who wanted to record longer programs such as movies and football games.
Lack of support: While Sony was the primary manufacturer of Betamax machines and tapes, many other electronics companies supported the VHS format. This meant that there were more VHS options available to consumers, including a wider variety of machines and tapes. Ironically, when Sony would later start the HD video format war between BluRay & HD-DVD, they somehow managed to win given the same set of circumstances.
Marketing: VHS manufacturers, led by JVC, were more aggressive in marketing their format and convincing retailers to stock their machines and tapes. This gave VHS a significant advantage in the marketplace.
All of these factors combined to make VHS the dominant video format by the mid-1980s, leading to a decline in Betamax sales and eventually the discontinuation of Betamax production.
Statistics: Posted by retireIn2020 — Sun Sep 08, 2024 1:13 am — Replies 664 — Views 156337