Are We in an AI Bubble?

Yes I think there is a bubble. I think AI may become extremely impressive but still be limited.

A lot of tasks involve having context to produce a correct solution. AI can whip up algorithms in a vacuum. But doesn't know about the custom data format you have to import. It doesn't understand how to map that to the target schema and will blindly import in a way that is subtly wrong. It doesn't have the context provided by chit/chat and vague statements made in an email.

No matter how impressive AI works in a vacuum, the "context" heavy problems are going to be an issue. Someone mentioned "last mile", that's where things fall apart. Same with self driving, it is impressive at first, until a road is blocked and there's some poorly marked detour signs routing you through non-standard paths.

Same with a plumber. You might make a robot that can fix many plumbing problems. But there's always custom nooks and crannies you have to contort yourself into and saw off a pipe in a very specific way that only having a tons of context would let you even know where to begin.

So until AI can consume context the way humans can, it's going to be limited to a "auto completion on steroids". Which is valuable, but not the end of human developers. Only time will tell.

Of course it's a bubble. The question is, who will survive it popping?

Just because it's a bubble doesn't prove that there's no there there at all. It proves that there are too many players trying to be among the handful of survivors, and most of them will fall by the wayside. The winners of the dotcom boom are among the largest corporations on the planet now.

Now... I'm somewhat skeptical of the AI technologies. I strongly suspect that they will not lead to AGI, and that the utility of even the best "AI"s will be limited. So I don't think there's an Amazon forthcoming. But there could well be some "unicorns" (billion-dollar corporations), and that will make the winners quite comfortable.

Plus, of course, I could well be wrong. Maybe it's gonna be AGI, and that would be the biggest thing ever. Like, a quadrillion dollar company. I don't think so, but aren't you at least a little tempted to buy a ticket to a 15-digit lottery?

Does it matter?

Personally I love it when I see people dismiss AI as a “stochastic parrot” or whatever other snarky phrase is currently popular on HN.

I just keep getting tons of value out of AI and am more productive than I ever have been in my life. If the competition wants to shoot themselves in the foot, I’m not going to wrestle the gun out of their hands.

Ask HN: Could AI be a dot com sized bubble?

159 points|jameslk|8 months ago|130 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40739431

Ask HN: Is commoditization of AI finally going to burst the AI bubble/hype?

16 points|behnamoh|7 months ago|13 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41134422

Ask HN: When will the AI bubble burst?

14 points|roschdal|10 months ago|25 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259289

Ask HN: Are we in an AI / ML bubble?

10 points|orbOfOrthanc|5 years ago|8 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737972

AI is actually more revolutionary than people believe, it can do the repetitive human labour 10-100 times faster and doesn't has societal issues, hence in terms of business sense it makes companies more productive, allowing economy to grow.

But instead of natural progression the forces in the industry have been hyping up AI for their benefits. Which ofcourse will have consequences in the long term, I don't think there will be a burst in next 5 years, but I'd say chances highly increase in next two year, if certain conditions are met.

Disclosure: I'm not an economist, the observation is based on my understanding of propagation of AI as a developer and founder.

TL;DR Yes, because the current AI has the same last-mile problem as the tech around self-driving cars.