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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 09:56:31 JST Paul Cantrell

   • Baldur Bjarnason

   What the every-loving fuddlebuckets is up with all these companies pivoting to AI whose business has not a damned thing to do with AI?!

   In 1849, did railroad companies melt trains for scrap so they could “refocus on gold?”

   From @baldur:
   https://toot.cafe/@baldur/111927055012362197

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:29:06 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason
     • Rozalia Sofia

     @redrozalia @baldur I mean, fair point.

     In this case, I’m not totally convinced anyone’s buying. Thus the gold rush analogy. There’s a lot of FOMO going on right now, and when the dust has settled, I think we’re going to find there was a whole lot more FO than MO.

   • Embed this notice
     Rozalia Sofia (redrozalia@kolektiva.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:29:07 JST Rozalia Sofia

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @inthehands @baldur
     no, but railroad companies did abandon or destroy rails in the middle 20th century due to the rise of the car and a lot of state help.

     so if it makes you feel any "better", destroying valuable infrastructure so you can force people to buy your shitty product is just a normal feature of capitalism, and not new.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:00:21 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     It’s like all these execs are selling their cows for 3 beans because they heard the fairy tale and now they honestly believe they’re going to climb a giant beanstalk and slay a giant

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:01:32 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     …or they think their neighbor is going to slay a giant, and they don’t want to be left out.

     Whole lot of C-level FOMO going around right now, and once the dust settles, I suspect it will turn out to be a lot more FO than MO.

   • Embed this notice
     Rozalia Sofia (redrozalia@kolektiva.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:03:06 JST Rozalia Sofia

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @inthehands @baldur
     youre not wrong in pointing that out. one big difference between now and the heyday of the car is that their economy was in a post-war recovery, whereas ours is in a free-falling crisis. maybe capitalism has run out of even marginally useful new ideas to sell people.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:03:06 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason
     • Rozalia Sofia

     @redrozalia @baldur Hucksters and suckers are as old as time, as is business leader herd mentality and people blowing their money on foolish things. Still, the present moment does feel…special.

   • Embed this notice
     Gen X-Wing (breadbin@bitbang.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:03:43 JST Gen X-Wing

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @inthehands @baldur Short term gains? Zero interest the business they actually run?

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:03:43 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason
     • Gen X-Wing

     @breadbin @baldur Investor pressure is my guess, tbh, but who the hell knows. Obviously I’m not smart enough to understand this galaxy brain business strategy stuff.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:48:06 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Daniel M. Reck

     @DanielMReck I mean, to be fair, all “artificial intelligence” really means — truly, not cynically — is something that (1) humans are good at and (2) machines were recently not good at. That’s it. It’s a definition that inherently shifts.

   • Embed this notice
     Daniel M. Reck (danielmreck@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:48:08 JST Daniel M. Reck

     in reply to

     @inthehands Yes, I'm getting tired of everything in the world being labeled as AI enhanced or AI enabled.

     On top of that, the AI distinction has become almost meaningless to the point where AI often just means "uses computer."

     Sorry, basic image processing is not AI. Spell check is not AI. Bang-bang thermostat controls are not AI.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:50:32 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Inken Paper
     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @crashglasshouses @baldur I do actually think there’s a “there” there with the current generation of LLMs etc — unlike blockchain, which is just hoax all the way to the bone.

     The “there” that’s there is who hell of a lot smaller than the hype would have it though. Some small part of it might even be useful. Going to take years of dust settling before we figure that out, though.

   • Embed this notice
     Inken Paper (crashglasshouses@kolektiva.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:50:33 JST Inken Paper

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @inthehands @baldur

     ps, AI is just blockchain bullshit all over again. the tech bros couldn't make fake money with GPUs anymore, but now they've got all of these GPUs they need to do something with cause no one wants to buy a lot of 10,000 obsolete GPUs.

     everything they did with blockchain, they will do with "AI". they'll ask "how can trees be improved by AI?", just watch.

   • Embed this notice
     Ben Sahlmueller (b3n@g0v.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:51:55 JST Ben Sahlmueller

     in reply to

     @inthehands It’s especially weird for companies whose brand value could be to not be AI. Think journalism, the “human curated” part of media, etc. Well all drown in an ocean of meaningless autogenerated shit in a few years. What’s better then? Plastering your wall with a few globs that sticked or have the nice pool that doesn’t get its water from the sewages?

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:52:24 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason
     • Galbinus Caeli 🌯

     @SkipHuffman @baldur Fair.

   • Embed this notice
     Galbinus Caeli 🌯 (skiphuffman@astrodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 12:52:25 JST Galbinus Caeli 🌯

     in reply to

     • Baldur Bjarnason

     @inthehands @baldur no they were too busy bribing politicians for free land grants.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:00:04 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Daniel M. Reck

     @DanielMReck Oh, yes, agreed completely. Marketing has stretched the term beyond recognition.

   • Embed this notice
     Daniel M. Reck (danielmreck@mas.to)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:00:06 JST Daniel M. Reck

     in reply to

     @inthehands That's a fair assessment and a thoughtful look at the language.

     From my academic background in computer science, artificial intelligence traditionally relied on a more stringent definition than is being used in marketing materials being generated these days. I think most of my hostility to the term as popularly used today is that it is employed to sell "ooo shiny" junk to consumers, when that junk is not actually any better than the previous generation of junk.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 13:04:53 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     Because cynicism loves company, my previous ranting on this topic:
     https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111075245991998920