In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation, both blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) have captured significant attention.
Let’s think about blockchain for a bit. Blockchain technology has been met with considerable hype, promising revolution across various industries. However, this enthusiasm has not translated into success for most ventures in this space. Research indicates that approximately 95% of blockchain startups fail within a year of operation. Contributing factors include market volatility, regulatory hurdles, and the lack of clear use cases.
A notable example is the collapse of Terra’s LUNA cryptocurrency in 2022. In just one week, $45 billion was lost, illustrating the inherent risks associated with blockchain projects.
AI startups are now experiencing their own wave of excitement and investment. However, they too encounter significant challenges. Over 80% of AI projects fail due to issues like insufficient market demand, operational difficulties, and ethical complexities.
Consider this: approximately 42% of AI startups fail because there is insufficient demand for their products or services. Not to mention, many AI ventures struggle with resource mismanagement, inadequate expertise, and scaling difficulties. You also have the additional challenge of navigating the evolving landscape of AI ethics and regulations adds layers of complexity that can impede progress. There’s not exactly decades of history to refer to regarding legal precedent with AI.
A lot of the hype and marketing I see today looks just like what I saw a few years ago, except instead of “blockchain” it says “AI” now. There are consulting firms, integration firms, everything. Is this just a sign the industry is just endless fads with no actual commercial usage?
Bitcoin was hyped as reinventing the world’s economy. Sure, it found a few usages, like replacing Western Union, or also by essentially becoming “digital gold” that people can just acquire and sit on, but last time I looked, VISA/Mastercard and the like were still doing 98% of the world’s commerce. In other words, Bitcoin fell far short of where many of its proponents said it would land years ago. Looking around at all these AI firms, I wonder how many of them will even exist in 3 years.
This is the part I don’t entirely see eye-to-eye with you on. Right now, AI is eating the extreme low end of the work… for example, if someone needs a picture for their article, they might generate it with AI instead of buy stock illustrations from a real person.
If someone is making a site on WIX for their new business, that leverages AI too, but just for simple stuff.
By the time AI is able to do those jobs full stop, then I’ll have a worry. “Serious” artists do a heck of a lot more than just sit down with a pen. They go visit clients, figure out what to do, research, negotiate with other people at the business, etc. Same thing with developers. They aren’t just typing in code all day, they are meeting with other departments, figuring out requirements, etc. None of that is easy or quick. By the time you have an AI smart enough to either do 95% of a developer’s job or 95% of an artists’ job, it will be smart enough to do nearly every other job in America. If the same AI also comes with humanoid robots that can reason about their environment and move things around, then you’re also risking a lot of labor jobs, like picking in a warehouse. However, unlike proponents of AI I think all of the above is decades away, not years away. If it’s really decades away, you can kiss the current round of AI startups goodbye because they won’t exist by that point.
For many, many, many of the AI startups today, if they don’t start showing a profit within 1-3 years they are GONE. Part of showing a profit is being useful, and I think outside of little niches here and there, the amount of money getting poured into it does not in any way resemble the money coming out of it.
It doesnt have to be useful to you and it does not have to replace every job, it just has to show revenue and rapid growth. There are lots and lots of tasks out there were management doesnt really care if its perfect as long as its cheap and it gets done. AI will automate that stuff first, but people in rich countries probably wont notice because that sort of work was outsourced years ago. In the meantime, its all going to be about efficiency, having fewer people do the same work with AI assistance.
Yeah, that’s kind of the point. There’s so much money leveraged on it right now that if the revenue and/or growth doesn’t materialize soon the limited patience of the investors will expire and the money is going to disappear.
I think there’s a lot of grunt work artists than you might be aware of. My last job was at a video game studio and it was kinda eyeopening the amount of generic story boarding / art work they would send over to Eastern Europe / Asia to be done for cheap.
The visible side of the industry (what you’re talking about) yeah I agree, but AI is slowly going to pick away at the lower skill levels until only experts are really useful. How does a junior become an expert in that world?
They don’t.
Sure, but don’t you have to like work with those guys, give them a brief on what to do, provide feedback do revisions and all that. By the time there is an AI as good as those Eastern Europe fellows, it’ll be smart enough to do a lot more than storyboards. I see a lot of people reducing a field to one of its activities.
Let me put it this way, if I gave a business a magic box that all you had to do was explain your problem and it generates perfect code, they’d still have problems. Because we have those boxes today, they’re called software engineers, and there’s a lot more work that has to be done besides just typing in the code. Business people aren’t sure what to ask for, how to ask for it, how to get it done, etc. All that mushy soft stuff in the middle is why you have developers making a decent payday, because it’s a lot of work and not at all easy to just hand to ChatGPT.