[soundworlds]

Even if Dario and Altman originally believed what they were saying, their scaretactics worked wonders for investment. Their companies are now incredibly incentivized to keep the AI Apocalypse narrative going further and further. It is hard to imagine them stopping, as that may lose them investment.

The last 10 years have been a decade of Big Tech Vaporware. NFTs and the Metaverse were assured to be the future. Once this narrative fails too (which I am almost certain is inevitable) I think society's love affair with Technology being the solver-of-all-things will finally fracture.

[Glyptodon]

I think technology can actually solve a lot more things than it has, the problem is that foundational problem solving does not make a unicorn startup with earthshaking economies of scale in most cases, and especially so if there's a physical world piece involved, and even more so if it's going to go asymptotic.

Just to throw out a random example - could technology, in terms of advances and improvements to allocation, distribution, and consumption, play a part in solving the western US's water issues? Probably. But would it be something that make a trillion dollars and a household name? Maybe not. And could saner policy, like making farmers have to bid for acre feet instead of getting it for basically free + distribution cost also help? Sure.

Likewise, even with AI most software is still crap. Like when have you heard about a doctor who loves their EHR? Like never.

So I think technology could be a solver of at least a lot more things. But we've created a market where people want to exhaust every flavor of flim flam and trend of the moment first. Because we've glorified the business of tech more than the actual improvements and aspirations that should be possible.

[anuramat]

> NFTs and the Metaverse

AI is not that bad

[Blackthorn]

It's significantly worse! All NFTs did was separate fools from their money, and crypto in general increased GPU costs. All the Metaverse did was cause Facebook to throw away a bunch of money (lol).

Meanwhile, AI has ruined the whole Internet and inflated the price of everything electronic.

[mrandish]

Let's not forget that the inevitable AI crash will nerf even supposedely "diversified" broad market ETFs due to BigTech's insanely inflated valuations and the index gaming of the X, OAI, and Ant IPOs.

[kadoban]

AI is actually useful, in the strict sense. It can do things. If you consider its eventual effects good or bad for humanity is fair either way, but it's still different from NFTs or the "metaverse" nonsense. It's a categorically different thing.

[rjzzleep]

The whole internet AND local computing. This may be cool for people on SF salaries but for the vast majority of the world memory has become a luxury good

[getpokedagain]

While it is driving new hardware costs up remember you can run Linux on a potato and just wait it out. My pixel 8a is a phenomenal computer if ignore the hype monster.

[anuramat]

so, twitter went from 98% shit to 99% shit, and landfills get less smartphones; I'd say it's worth it

[rockwotj]

> will finally fracture.

If true, it will only be replaced with something else. With what is anyone’s guess.