AI has some legit uses but the hype around it is mostly VC's throwing money at buzzwords while the actual tech is nowhere near the "AGI revolution" they keep promising us lol.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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A machine learning suite that spends hour after hour screening trillions of potentially medically useful molecules = kind of interesting.
A subscription to a chatbot that writes buggy code that has to be meticulously combed over before you dare put it into production, and might wind up appearing in Google search results = awful, but it's what's selling for some reason?
The latter isn't even selling, just used because it is free to use or they jammed it into an existing ecosystem like Copilot.
The former isn't "kind of interesting" and there are lots and lots of daily use cases solved by AI that are much much more than "kind of interesting".
What a simple way to try to downplay it by calling it only kind of interesting.
The former is important, but attracts little attention from the tech & mainstream press, is not heavily marketed by major corporations to other corporations and the general public, and makes VCs fall asleep. Whereas the latter gets ALL the coverage, marketing, and gives VCs big fat boners. My comment expresses my bewilderment at this state of affairs (hence the "for some reason?"). You want to white-knight machine learning, expert systems and pattern recognition? Call VentureBeat, Andressen-Horowitz, PitchBook, and TechCrunch. And while you're at it, tell them to stop vaporizing genAI slop.
Sure, I'm just hoping smart people can see through the bullshit and call it out instead of treating all "AI" the same.
But can we at least be thankful that it shifted focus from augmented reality? Prior to AI, the buzz was around things like the metaverse and digital avatars in your teams meetings.
Even crap AI is more useful than avatars in teams.
Digital Avatars in teams arent actively destructive to the internet, the environment, and people's grasp on reality.
I think you're universalising a personal grievance, without fully accounting for the impacts of Metaverse bullshit, which was never practical or feasible to begin with, and the AI Apocalypse sweeping the internet
Well, I was trying to bring a little humor to the conversation by just saying at least as a silver lining is that this other stupid crap is gone now.
If the AI "revolution" never came, I bet a thread just like this one would exist for metaverse or whatever saying how it's destroying the internet. And think about it, entering an entire world just to hold this conversation where all users are known and conversations recorded...kind of like AI scraping.
You can see his it could get just as bad or worse. Hint: its not the technology that's the problem, its the companies behind them - those wouldn't be any different.
I'm not trying to downplay AI, I'm just being realistic of the world we live in and trying to not be so doom and gloom every second of the day.
IDK, at least that was useful for gaming etc. AI is mostly about eliminating jobs
What's currently being marketed as AI reinforces that there's always someone who can do your job worse for cheaper
I'm just waiting for the "cheaper" part to change. Surely these VC's will want to see some ROI on the stupid amount of money these hosted models cost. There's no way the subscription fees being charged cover the actual cost of running the models, so something will have to give eventually
The crap they're promoting it for also showcases the direction they're developing it for which is an utterly depressing, unsustainable and impractical one. It's frustrating to see how much money is invested (and ultimately burned) to actively destroy the economy and create problems rather than fixing some.
How does this differ from most other things VCs throw money at?
cough cough crypto cough
This. Everybody wanted it to be AGI right out of the gate. It's just a tool, like Photoshop. It will get better over time but it's not the end all be all.
"Use our AI!"
"Hmm... I don't know."
"If you use AI you can fire all your employees 🤞 ."
"GIMMEE! GIMMEE! I'LL PAY ANY PRICE! I HATE EMPLOYEES SOO MUCH!"
two months later
"Why is everything broken?"
No fucking shit.
Every tech buzzword is a grift to try to rationalize endless exponential growth in a world where that’s just impossible
Duh
well duh, much like CRYPTO was a grift/ponzi scheme, after it crashed people started looking for th next big thing, it was AI.
Unrelated, but what’s the difference between grift vs. scam? Internet search seems to give me the same definitions.
Is it just that grifts are personal, while scams are impersonal (like phone/internet scams)?
Not sure of an official difference, but my take is a grift is something that everyone's kind of doing on the DL, but nobody is admitting that it's a scam.
Think like a cult. Everyone's a part of the cult, but nobody actually wants to believe they're getting scammed or scamming others, so it's more of a grift. People assume what they're doing can't last/sustain, but they do it anyway because the benefits are good.
A scam is straight up the party knowing it's illegitimate and going out of their way to execute the scam so they can benefit at the expense of others.
Basically, I've always taken it as one is self aware (scam) and one is only self-aware at the top levels (grift).
But this is all just in my head.
That's a good question actually. Could it be it's a "lie vs. untruth" situation where grift is just a nicer word for what's obviously a huge scam? In that case we should probably use "scammer" a lot more than "grifter".
When I think of a scam, I think a one-off, obviously amateur attempt. An email with awful grammar saying the government will fine me a bajillion dollars if I don’t download a file is a scam. A scam will also leave you alone.
A grift is done by career slimeballs. Used car salesmen, big C-suites and corrupt politicians are grifters. It’s more offensive and more aggressive. You can’t escape a grift.
Hmm, yeah that’s helpful! So maybe if I think of grifting as more of a lifestyle, as in done by con artists.
I read this as "gift" the first time haha
Same 😅
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