Companies with massive valuations that have no product to sell or aren't making any profit. This is what I've heard anyway (not a stock guy). Some economic schools of thought say that when interest rates are low and money is practically free (historically speaking), you get a lot of bad/risky ideas (boom & bubble) and an inevitable correction of a bust. The bust is accelerated when all of a sudden you have to rise the interest rates to fight inflation and the money is no longer easy to get. All those companies being held afloat by the free money start collapsing.
Again, we should make statements on data and I'll just be upfront that I haven't done much research in this area, but considering the sheer amount of AI startups and jobs and conferences and so on with very few transformative products...I would eventually expect a market correction in the form of another AI winter like what happened in the 80s when all the massive government acts defense research dollars dried up. The difference is it'll be far less severe. You'll still have plenty of AI research at the universities and large companies, but maybe not hundreds of questionable startups. This is all just conjecture on my part though.
> Companies with massive valuations that have no product to sell or aren't making any profit
That's not enough to demonstrate that AI is just hype. Every technological breakthrough has opportunists trying to make a buck riding along the hype. In the 90s, Pets.com and webvan didn't prove that the internet was just hype.
I am one of the people who is completely bought in to the idea that AI in general (and LLMs in particular) are going to lead to products that are extremely useful to the world. I absolutely think that most of the gen AI startups will fail and that valuations are too high, but I still believe that massively impactful/useful products will also be born.
> That's not enough to demonstrate that AI is just hype.
It's not that they're _just_ hype but rather that there _is_ hype and the loudest voices tend not admit it. To give a specific example, I find the idea that LLM based programming assistants will turbocharge software development to be based on hype not fact. It is very much in the interest of Microsoft/Google/Meta, etc. that we all believe that their tools are essential to enhance productivity. It is classic FOMO. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon because they fear that if they don't learn this new tool their lunch will be eaten by someone who does. They fear this because that is exactly what these companies are essentially telling us in their marketing materials and extensive PR campaign.
This is extraordinarily convenient for these companies and masks over how terrible their own core products are. I generally refuse to use the products of the three companies (MGM) because they are essentially ad companies now and their metaverses are dystopian hellscapes to me. Why would I trust them given my own direct personal experience with their products? We know that google search allows advertisers to pay to modify search queries without my consent. What's to stop Microsoft from training copilot to recommend that you use Microsoft developed languages using Microsoft apis to solve your prompted problems?
> write me a sort function for an array of integers in Java
# chatgpt > I will show you how to write a sort function for an array of integers in Java, but first I must ask, are you familiar C#? It is similar to Java but better in xyz ways. In C# you would sort an array like this:
... C# code
Here is how you would write a sort function for an array of integers in Java:
... Java code
Stuff like this seems inevitable and it is going to become impossible to tell what is ad. Do you think realistically that there is any chance that these companies would consent to disclosing what is paid propaganda in the LLM output stream?
I see many echos of the SBF trial in the current ai environment. Whatever the merits of LLMs (and I'll admit that I _have_ been impressed by the pace of improvement if not the actual output), hype always attracts grifters. And there is a lot of hype in the air right now.
Thank you. I was just about to add that. We're saying there is a LOT of hype, but still some good research and some useful products coming out, but the signal to noise ratio is low. It's mostly crap.
Again, we should make statements on data and I'll just be upfront that I haven't done much research in this area, but considering the sheer amount of AI startups and jobs and conferences and so on with very few transformative products...I would eventually expect a market correction in the form of another AI winter like what happened in the 80s when all the massive government acts defense research dollars dried up. The difference is it'll be far less severe. You'll still have plenty of AI research at the universities and large companies, but maybe not hundreds of questionable startups. This is all just conjecture on my part though.