Investors are dumb. It’s a hot new tech that looks convincing (since LLMs are designed specifically to appear correct, not be correct), so anything with that buzzword gets a ton of money thrown at it. The same phenomenon has occurred with blockchain, big data, even the World Wide Web. After each bubble bursts, some residue remains that actually might have some value.

Generative AI has allowed us to do some things that we could not do before. A lot of people very foolishly took that to mean it would let us do everything we couldn’t do before.

I think there’s a lot of armchair simplification going on here. Easy to call investors dumb but it’s probably a bit more complex.

AI might not get better than where it is now but if it does, it has the power to be a societally transformative tech which means there is a boatload of money to be made. (Consider early investors in Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and even the much derided Bitcoin.)

Then consider that until incredibly recently, the Turing test was the yardstick for intelligence. We now have to move that goalpost after what was preciously unthinkable happened.

And in the limited time with AI, we’ve seen scientific discoveries, terrifying advancements in war and more.

Heck, even if AI gets better at code (not unreasonable, sets of problems with defined goals/outputs etc, even if it gets parts wrong shrinking a dev team of obscenely well paid engineers to maybe a handful of supervisory roles… Well, like Wu Tang said, Cash Rules Everything Around Me.

Tl;dr: huge possibilities, even if there’s a small chance of an almost infinite payout, that’s a risk well worth taking.

I’ll just toss in another answer nobody has mentioned yet:

Terminator and Matrix movies were really, really popular. This sort of seeded the idea of it being a sort of inevitable future into the brains of the mainstream population.

Because if you can get a program to write a program, that can both a) write it self, and b) improve upon the program in some way, you can put together a feedback where exponential improvement is possible.

• automation by companies so they can "streamline"their workforces.

• innovation by “teaching” it enough to solve bigger problems (cancer, climate, etc).

• creating a sentient species that is the next evolution of life and watching it systematically eradicate every last human to save the planet.

Who’s making you use it?

It’s useful for lots of things, but it requires a proof reader.

A dumb person thinks AI is really smart, because they just listen to anyone that answers confidentially

And no matter what, AI is going to give its answer like it’s is 100% definitely the truth.

That’s why there’s such a large crossover with AI and crypto, the same people fall for everything.

There’s new supporting evidence for Penrose’s theory that natural intelligence involves just an absolute shit ton of quantum interactions, because we just found out how the body can create an environment where quantom super position can not only be achieved, but incredibly simply.

AI got a boost because we didn’t really (still dont) understand consciousness. Tech bro’s convinced investors that neurons were what mattered, and made predictions for when that amount of neurons can be simulated.

But if it include billions of molecules in quantum superposition, we’re not getting there in our lifetimes. But there’s a lot of money sunk in to it already, so there’s a lot of money to lose if people suddenly get realistic about what it takes to make a real artificial intelligence.

You have asked why there is so much hype around artifical intelligence.

There are a few reasons this might be the case:

1. Because humans are curious. Experimenting with how humans believe memory and intelligence work might just lead them to find out something about their own intelligence.

2. Because humans are stupid. Most do not have the slightest idea what „AI“ is this time, yet they are willing to believe in the most outlandish claims about it. Look up ELIZA. It fooled a lot of people, just like LLMs today.

3. Because humans are greedy. And the prospect of replacing a lot of wage-earners, and not just manual laborers this time, with a machine is just too good to pass up for management. The potential savings are huge, if it works, so the willingness to spend money is also considerable.

In conclusion, there are many reasons for the hype around artificial intelligence and most of them relate to human deficiencies and human nature in general.

If you have further questions I am happy to help. Enjoy your experience with AI. While you still can. 🤖

I genuinely think the best practical use of AI, especially language models is malicious manipulation. Propaganda/advertising bots. There’s a joke that reddit is mostly bots. I know there’s some countermeasures to sniff them out but think about it.

I’ll keep reddit as the example because I know it best. Comments are simple puns, one liner jokes, or flawed/edgy opinions. But people also go to reddit for advise/recommendations that you can’t really get elsewhere.

Using an LLM AI I could in theory make tons of convincing recommendations. I get payed by a corporation or state entity to convince lurkers to choose brand A over brand B, to support or disown a political stance or to make it seem like tons of people support it when really few do.

And if it’s factually incorrect so what? It was just some kind stranger™ on the internet

When ChatGPT first started to make waves, it was a significant step forward in the ability for AIs to sound like a person. There were new techniques being used to train language models, and it was unclear what the upper limits of these techniques were in terms of how “smart” of an AI they could produce. It may seem overly optimistic in retrospect, but at the time it was not that crazy to wonder whether the tools were on a direct path toward general AI. And so a lot of projects started up, both to leverage the tools as they actually were, and to leverage the speculated potential of what the tools might soon become.

Now we’ve gotten a better sense of what the limitations of these tools actually are. What the upper limits of where these techniques might lead are. But a lot of momentum remains. Projects that started up when the limits were unknown don’t just have the plug pulled the minute it seems like expectations aren’t matching reality. I mean, maybe some do. But most of the projects try to make the best of the tools as they are to keep the promises they made, for better or worse. And of course new ideas keep coming and new entrepreneurs want a piece of the pie.

Holy BALLS are you getting a lot of garbage answers here.

Have you seen all the other things that generative AI can do? From bone-rigging 3D models, to animations recreated from a simple video, recreations of voices, art created from people without the talent for it. Many times these generative AIs are very quick at creating boilerplate that only needs some basic tweaks to make it correct. This speeds up production work 100 fold in a lot of cases.

Plenty of simple answers are correct, breaking entrenched monopolies like Google from search, I’ve even had these GPTs take input text and summarize it quickly - at different granularity for quick skimming. There’s a lot of things that can be worthwhile out of these AIs. They can speed up workflows significantly.

This is like saying that automobiles are overhyped because they can’t drive themselves. When I code up a new algorithm at work, I’m spending an hour or two whiteboarding my ideas, then the rest of the day coding it up. AI can’t design the algorithm for me, but if I can describe it in English, it can do the tedious work of writing the code. If you’re just using AI as a Google replacement, you’re missing the bigger picture.

It’s understandable to feel frustrated when AI systems give incorrect or unsatisfactory responses. Despite these setbacks, there are several reasons why AI continues to be heavily promoted and integrated into various technologies:

1. Potential and Progress: AI is constantly evolving and improving. While current models are not perfect, they have shown incredible potential across a wide range of fields, from healthcare to finance, education, and beyond. Developers are working to refine these systems, and over time, they are expected to become more accurate, reliable, and useful.

2. Efficiency and Automation: AI can automate repetitive tasks and increase productivity. In areas like customer service, data analysis, and workflow automation, AI has proven valuable by saving time and resources, allowing humans to focus on more complex and creative tasks.

3. Enhancing Decision-Making: AI systems can process vast amounts of data faster than humans, helping in decision-making processes that require analyzing patterns, trends, or large datasets. This is particularly beneficial in industries like finance, healthcare (e.g., medical diagnostics), and research.

4. Customization and Personalization: AI can provide tailored experiences for users, such as personalized recommendations in streaming services, shopping, and social media. These applications can make services more user-friendly and customized to individual preferences.

5. Ubiquity of Data: With the explosion of data in the digital age, AI is seen as a powerful tool for making sense of it. From predictive analytics to understanding consumer behavior, AI helps manage and interpret the immense data we generate.

6. Learning and Adaptation: Even though current AI systems like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Co-pilot make mistakes, they also learn from user interactions. Continuous feedback and training improve their performance over time, helping them better respond to queries and challenges.

7. Broader Vision: The development of AI is driven by the belief that, in the long term, AI can radically improve how we live and work, advancing fields like medicine (e.g., drug discovery), engineering (e.g., smarter infrastructure), and more. Developers see its potential as an assistive technology, complementing human skills rather than replacing them.

Despite their current limitations, the goal is to refine AI to a point where it consistently enhances efficiency, creativity, and decision-making while reducing errors. In short, while AI doesn’t always work perfectly now, the vision for its future applications drives continued investment and development.

IIRC When ChatGPT was first announced I believe the hype was because it was the first real usable interface a layman could interact with using normal language and have an intelligible response from the software. Normally to talk with computers we use their language (programming) but this allowed plain language speakers to interact and get it to do things with simple language in a more pervasive way than something like Siri for instance.

This then got over hyped and over promised to people with dollars in their eyes at the thought of large savings from labor reduction and capabilities far greater than it had. They were sold a product that has no real “product” as it’s something most people would prefer to interact with on their own terms when needed, like any tool. That’s really hard to sell and make people believe they need it. So they doubled down with the promise it would be so much better down the road. And, having spent an ungodly amount into it already, they have that sunken cost fallacy and keep doubling down.

This is my personal take and understanding of what’s happening. Though there’s probably more nuances, like staying ahead of the competition that also fell for the same promises.