[beau26]

We seem to be at an inflection point with AI -- companies across the board are investing billions of dollars into AI R&D and I expect that we'll start to see some really amazing products and services coming out of this in the coming decades.

[phreeza]

It's either that, or a great disillusionment in ~5 years when the investments don't pan out, followed by the next AI winter.

[a-priori]

This is a real concern. But as I see it, the difference is that the last time around, everyone was sold on the potential applications -- which turned out to be way harder than anyone realized.

This time around, the technology is seeing real applications today, so the valuations are more grounded in reality. So while people are definitely investing based on the future potential, the worst case scenario -- that we're going to hit a wall next week where no further progress can be made in machine learning research -- wouldn't be as devastating as the last AI winter.

At this point there's a lot of work to do, and money to be made, applying the current state of the art even if no further progress can be made.

[cmarschner]

The next AI winter will come when we maxed out on the current technology, i.e. when model training will become too expensive. If all that is left to do is to run training on top of all of Youtube videos, one might have to wait for 10 years until that becomes feasible.

[dragontamer]

It probably will be something more like the Kinect: a few products come out that aren't useful at all.

It took decades before people figured out Aluminum was actually useful for things for example. It was a chemical curiosity for the later-half of the 1800s (hmm, this is a cheap metal that is found everywhere. But its weaker than steel, what should we use it for?)

Just because you discover something useful doesn't mean you figure out what to do with it.

[phreeza]

Aluminum (metal, not ore) was actually extremely expensive until the discovery of the electrolytic Hall–Héroult process ca 1880.

[Florin_Andrei]

Yup. The reason why it was not used for a long time is that it was hard to make. Aluminum is a very reactive metal; when combined with oxygen or other stuff, it sits at the bottom of a deep pit of energy. It takes a lot of effort to get it out of there. The electrolytic process is basically a brute-force approach: throw enough energy at anything, and it will start moving eventually.

Napoleon III had his fancy-dinner utensils made from aluminum, for those occasions when gold did not seem lavish enough. And then cheap manufacturing was invented, and the rest is history.

[Retric]

The Washington Monument is capped with Aluminum because at the time it was more expensive than gold to refine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...