It may be painful to some, but AI tech currently has no path to create lasting value...
Anyone who's worked in VC-backed startups consistently will recognize the cycle a majority of Big Tech and AI startups have bought into.
Their go-to (market) is all the same: if what we're doing isn't working, we need a new narrative.
They're choosing messaging/PR over product value, and when you do that consistently, you stop knowing what you're building and who you're building it for. You start thinking your "market" is the mind-share of other people people running the same game as you, instead of customers.
You can see this because they keep doing the same two things over and over:
1) Using fear/anxiety to sell the product instead of real change metrics or adoption
Executives release "reports" and "memos" showing that automation will cut millions of jobs without saying how they'll continue to respond to customer needs.
Their basic claim is "If you don’t adopt it, someone else will. If your company doesn’t, someone else’s will."
The business/tech news media love this stuff, and so do "experts" who are really just excited to catch the newest narrative wave, with titles that say things like "AI Wrangler" and "futures evangelist."
I believe tech CEOs when they say they will try to fire/lay off employees, but I don't believe them when they say "our magic AI will increase profits and efficiency 100x" because there is no evidence/data to back this up.
Early research already shows there will be modest gains at best, and they may be zeroed out in many cases by the cost to adopt these tools.
2) Executives keep raising money/investing with no return in sight, all to keep pushing the news/narrative cycle forward
Did your company spend billions on VR tech just to get 200,000 active users onto a platform that's basically a ghost town now?
Or, did you burn money trying to create "intelligence" but that didn't work, so now you're spending billions to acquire companies & startups to create "super-intelligence?"
While the above is about Meta/Facebook, all of the big tech companies are doing it...
And, they're likely to continue doing so, because their group texts, conferences, briefings, and even their personal lives are clearly filled with the shitty AI they are hyping...
"Alexa, create a unique talking point I can use for our board meeting today about how AI adoption is changing the future of work."
"No problem Andy, here it is, let me know if this meets your expectations: Amazon is revolutionizing the 29 hour day, previously, people were only able to use 24 hours but we've unlocked 5 extra hours."
I genuinely don't know how this will all play out – my guess is we are in a moment where multiple overlapping bubbles of greed and mediocrity will pop.
But one thing I do know is that when you choose messaging/PR over actual product value, the risks keep increasing and there will definitely be an end to it... because "greed good, growth forever, me big boy smarter than rest, plz believe me see future" isn't a strategy.
Good reads:
If you want to know what ethical & effective AI would look like, The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) can answer that, and more
Dr. Timnit Gebru has a clear, direct set of recommendations for how to create AI that has value, and that is responsive to actual customers, shareholders, and workers, not Silicon Valley oligarchs:
Timnit Gebru: Ethical AI Requires Institutional and Structural Change
Don’t Fall For The AI Hype - A Conversation with Dr. Timnit Gebru and Parix Marx