It makes me think of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. To be fair I never finished the book but one thing really stuck out.
He describes how scientific revolutions aren’t really incremental progress on previous theories. Think Galileo’s theory earth revolved around the sun - that destroyed the conventional understanding of astronomy (and maybe even physics?). After these revolutions there is a flood of “normal” science that fills in the gaps based on these new big axioms.
Now, blockchain nor AI are scientific revolutions by Kuhn’s meaning of the term. They are certainly “normal” operating within the established domains of statistics, computer science, cryptography etc. But I think they are an analogs . Major breakthroughs were made that gave us AI and blockchain and then afterwards there is a flood of (probably decreasingly small) extensions or applications of them.
I guess my point is that I don’t feel like anything is broken or there are bad incentives. Thats just how innovation works. You have massive progress followed by decreasingly useful work. And certainly in the case of AI there is more large scale progress to be made.
Except in one of those, we get steam engines, electricity, space travel, and what not, and in the other we get biz bros getting rich quick by scamming people with cryptocoin Ponzi schemes, deepfakeporn, and election fraud robocalls. Plenty of bad incentives there, not at all convinced it all should count as "innovation" even if it is new.
People are overselling and hyping it in similar ways, and entire companies springing up that are essentially just thin wrappers around chatGPT doesn’t help, especially when a lot of the same people pimping that stuff were on the crypto/web3 train barely over a year ago.
However, while definitely overhyped and its capabilities far exaggerated, its applications already in several fields have been significant. I think the “gen AI” thing is pointless, but I got an eerie feeling watching 4 fairly senior engineers the other day huddled around a chatGPT terminal they were asking questions.
To me it felt like some profound moment, like maybe how the guys that went around manually lighting street lamps felt when they first saw electric lights.
Anyway, the answer usually falls in the middle somewhere between hype and doomsaying. It’s improved my workflow a bit. Not too worried that it’ll replace me, but I do believe there will be less work because of it, and to management that usually means someone’s getting fired.
> and entire companies springing up that are essentially just thin wrappers around chatGPT doesn’t help
instant frat-guy funding.. they have networks of insta-money. There is a cult in SF connected to Seattle..
meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of competent coders are looking for a work gig.. the price for skilled coders is dropping in almost all categories..
It does have the same feel but there's a big difference. Back then we knew crypto was all fiat. Dollar value was based on perception that could and was(is still) manipulated by whales.
AI, OTOH, can provide meaningful value in most industries. Lump them together at your own peril.
He describes how scientific revolutions aren’t really incremental progress on previous theories. Think Galileo’s theory earth revolved around the sun - that destroyed the conventional understanding of astronomy (and maybe even physics?). After these revolutions there is a flood of “normal” science that fills in the gaps based on these new big axioms.
Now, blockchain nor AI are scientific revolutions by Kuhn’s meaning of the term. They are certainly “normal” operating within the established domains of statistics, computer science, cryptography etc. But I think they are an analogs . Major breakthroughs were made that gave us AI and blockchain and then afterwards there is a flood of (probably decreasingly small) extensions or applications of them.
I guess my point is that I don’t feel like anything is broken or there are bad incentives. Thats just how innovation works. You have massive progress followed by decreasingly useful work. And certainly in the case of AI there is more large scale progress to be made.