[duped]

If they're trying to act like they're "saving the world" they're doing a terrible job. It's honestly gross how much money is going into an industry that at best doesn't touch any real problems for humanity, and at worst amplifies the worst among them.

And I don't really think they sound like they're trying to save the world. They sound like they're trying to get rich.

[ForHackernews]

> an industry that at best doesn't touch any real problems for humanity

I posted this yesterday, but "AI is failing the Indoor Plumbing Test": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840785

Real innovations are often boring, but they transform human lives. So far, AI has not cleared that bar. I keep hearing that AI may go rogue and exterminate humanity, but for now I'm not even sure what it will enable me to do that I couldn't do before.

[duped]

One smell test for me is what the LinkedIn and Twitter "technologists" (0) are excitedly and hurriedly talking about. If they're onto it, the tech is a probably about to hit the saturation point of the s-curve as the hype lag catches up. This is the sweet spot where early adopters can find ~~bagholders~~ late series investors.

Right now, this part of the internet is obsessed with genAI. Same folks that couldn't stop talking about crypto and web3 a few years ago.

And I could be wrong! But everything about this industry smells wrong. NVidia boosting to obscene highs turning out to be because developers couldn't be bothered to write optimized code. Everyone and their mother talking about AI but I still can't see real world impacts, besides customer service chatbots getting worse. Meanwhile the world burns and people die of curable disease, and we spend money making sand go brr instead.

(0) I really don't have a good term for this that isn't something like "posers." They're the folks you meet at conferences, always giving talks and writing blogs, mostly talking and very little doing. They're the people that are obsessed with technology but can never get below the surface level. This sounds dismissive, and it is, because this kind of person has wasted a lot of my brainpower over the last decade before learning to weed them out (aka - they're not "well aligned" as customers or coworkers).

[lesuorac]

I don't think you even have to go as far as indoor plumbing. Just asking them if they'd rather have a lifetime free ChatGPT subscription at the cost of never being able to use a washing machine.

[jcgrillo]

This is excellent, thanks