[borissk]

The companies that stuck with paper and didn't adopt computers, the web and mobile went out of business. The same will happen in the near future with the companies that are unwilling or unable to adopt AI/ML in their business.

[onion2k]

Some businesses absolutely have adopted IT with vigour and massively improved the way they work, but many haven't. They've just 'ported' their old paper processes to computers without learning or improving anything. Sending emails is faster than using paper memos but if you're just sending memos by email nothing is actually better. Using an Excel spreadsheet with no macros, formatting, or functions doesn't really give you much that double entry bookkeeping in a real book wouldn't already have given you. Plenty of people use Word with everything 'annoying' switched off, and they could do the same job on a typewriter.

Similarly, lots of companies spent thousands of dollars on a website or a mobile app that no one looks at because they're a small town landscaping business that really doesn't need those things.

The same goes for AI. There are definitely use cases where it will improve how we do things. For some businesses that will make them more profitable and more competitive. A lot of businesses won't adopt it for decades. Some will adopt it when it brings them no real benefits.

AI is a tool. People will often use it poorly, just like every other tool.

[bilqis]

Typical grifter take, using analogies, which are always a bad framework to analyse and predict events and trends based on the history. A few years ago others grifters were saying the same about blockchain and NFTs, a year ago same thing about metaverse/decentraland.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Exactly. What was the corresponding percentage of Blockchain and/or Cryptocurrency start-ups say, 2 years ago?

[borissk]

Do tell - how do you analyse and predict events and trends NOT based on the history.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

I'm puzzled by this take: surely the recent history - the cryptocurrency bubble - the hot air and lack of substance, the extractive scams, is useful lens for current events? But it's not everything, we can't be entirely "based on it" deterministically - as we do indeed "suck at predicting".

[mym1990]

That’s easy, if you have a framework of knowledge around things like physics or chemistry or biology(add any domain here), one could predict outcomes of hypothetical use cases with considerable accuracy. Unless you lump all domain knowledge into “history” because it has to have happened in the past…

[Idiot_in_Vain]

Do you think chemistry or biology knowedge was given to humans by the gods or the ancient aliens and not based on a history of practical knowedge, experiments and research?

[mym1990]

Thats why I added the last sentence. But for the purpose of debate, it is reasonable to distinguish domains like physics from history. It is one thing to study how something was discovered, and another to understand the parameters around an event so that you can predict what might happen.

[bilqis]

My point was, that saying “historical event X is somehow similar to ongoing event Y, thus we can reason and predict outcomes of Y based on X” is a false methodology, appealing, but false.

[palata]

A first good step IMO is to accept that we suck at predicting.

[borissk]

We are great at predicting. The number one task of the huge human neocortex is predicting the future.

If you look at the past HN comments there were users who predicted the raise of OpenAI, the war in Ukraine and so on.

[mym1990]

Predicting isn’t some black and white skill. The neocortex doing calculations in the background to predict how heavy a cup of coffee might be or how hot the stove is…is very different from consciously predicting geopolitical events which are based on countless other variables. In a world of 8 billion people of course you will see some get things right, and then conveniently point it out…but most people’s predictions are wrong, and no one pays attention to those results.

[palata]

Did you forget a "/s", or do you actually believe that?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

No, but they are playing word games. yes, the human brain is a great engine designed for predicting future events and working with that e.g. how to catch a ball that is coming towards you and will arrive shortly in the future, how to throw an object and hit a target, how to pick up a heavy object and move it to where you need it, etc.

But this is not at all the same kind of "predicting future events" as accurately saying where e.g. the CryptoCurrency or VR industry will be in a decade or so.

[nikanj]

Remember when people paid good money for Second Life real estate?

[choeger]

I have yet to encounter a single valuable (in terms of hard currency) use case for GPT besides automating publishing. Yes, you can generate text automatically now in relatively high quality. But that's a business that was struggling before GPT came along and I don't think we actually need that much automatically generated bullshit content. Yes, a language model will help authors to write their articles/books quicker, but that's not a significant fraction of their time spent, hopefully.

I think language models will become a commodity, like a spell checker is today. They might open up the market for translations into more exotic languages (but I don't know how the quality is for such languages and by definition, the market ain't big) and I think every author will use one as part of their workflow (think of technical writers using a language model for the textual parts). Computer games might profit massively in terms of immersion.

No, I don't think that new applications will become that important with language models. I think it's the other way around. There are so many applications that we simply don't need any longer. Language models and image recognition models together will take over the user interface industry. Why bother with web design and user experience if you can just throw the chatbot at your client? That's going to become the real value here.

If I was a junior web developer, I would begin to seek out new programming languages and stacks.

[kromem]

Yes, but there's a massive difference between a startup focused on a broader business issue incorporating AI into its plan on tackling that issue and a company focused on AI as the primary product.

The former are going to mostly be successful, particularly in the place of companies that don't adapt, but the latter are mostly going to be obsolete by the time they'll be several years into it.

AI as a product is a TERRIBLE play. But AI as part of a solution is going to be necessary for nearly every business vertical.

[palata]

Survivorship bias. You select technologies that won, and assume your new technology will be the same.

What about all those technologies that just died? Companies that did not embrace Minitel, blockchain or the metaverse seem just fine right now.

[Beaver117]

Except these companies are just thin wrappers over OpenAI APIs

[borissk]

Today they may be thin wrappers over OpenAI APIs, but if they start bringing in big money they can hire data scientists and build their own models.

[rvz]

That is a big "if", which doesn't cut it with startups looking for VCs, given 95% of these ML startups depend on OpenAI's APIs. What I am looking for is 'even if'.

So even if they make money AND hire 'data scientists', there is a higher chance that they will run out of money quicker since they are competing against Google, Microsoft and OpenAI which they all can afford to run everything at a loss for free and raise their prices which eats these startup's revenue.

Either way, they are locked into these APIs and they aren't focused on profitability to even begin building their own models at this stage. If they are not profitable by the time the price increases come in, they are going to be struggling for survival.

[dddw]

Frakkin' toasters everywhere!