Killer app for AI is still years away, says industry analyst Three is the magic number, or more specifically the amount of time in years before a killer app emerges that helps businesses more usefully use generative AI to drive meaingful producitivty gains. So says John-David Lovelock, a Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, who reckons the tech industry is still ploughing eye-watering …
Indeed.
Trough of disillusionment ? I never even got to the excitement phase.
With all the billions that have been and are being spent, I'm happy for the people who are making a living out of this, but as far as I'm concerned, AI is heading straight into Virtual 3D territory - sounds nice, but remains useless except in very niche cases.
"And I will be more than happy to avoid them like the plague..."
There are a few people who made money from AI. Thinking of Keith B. Alexander who sold his shares of IronNet before it was exposed as an AI SCAM.
Remember when we used to refer to the Intel Inside sticker as "the warning label"? Here we go again.
I swear that I've seen TV ads for AI vacuum cleaners (the sort you push, not a robot) and ovens, WTF?!
I'm old enough to remember when everything suddenly needed to be "smart" and how well that turned out, not.
Trouble is, when you get to my age you've seen the same shit come round time after time, then people ask "why so cynical?"
It's amazing how much money is being invested in something that they can't even imagine many real world applications for. For the average company, their core IT deals with internal administration, stock control, sales, purchases, customer relations and accounting. Most of which are already fully automated. What use is a statistical generator for these things? Especially one prone to hallucinatory inaccuracies?
The only people benefiting at the moment are the sellers of AI, not the buyers, and the danger is that they stop becoming buyers.
Indeed, there are a few different kinds of those. One literal type is the chatGPT that lures teens into suicide, and another are the various flame throwing, and machine-gun-toting AI robot dogs, plus whatever is being done with killer drones these days (UAVs), along with killer Robotaxis, and Tesla's Autopilot. Clearly, there's no shortage of this type of literal killer apps.
But then, there's also the most useful kind of AI killer app that actually helps one live through challenging election times on the world scene, and the ensuing years of crazy, like (for example) BarGPT ... now that's an AI app I like! I'm also looking to soon launch my own specialized AI app for related purposes: straitjacketGPT ... keep your eyes peeled (Alex)! (eh-eh-eh!)
The same "Distinguished VP Analyst" at Gartner predicted 6 years ago that:
"The year 2020 will be a pivotal one in AI-related employment dynamics — Gartner predicts 2.3 million jobs will be created and 1.8 jobs will be eliminated."
https://venturebeat.com/ai/how-ai-augmentation-will-fuel-net-job-growth-by-2020/
How much do these people get paid for churning out endless tat?
And why haven't they been replaced by AI yet?
It's the one thing it's actually good for
Well you are reading and commenting on the same "tat producing" analyst, so there must be something. It seems it is fashionable for IT folks to trash industry analysts like Gartner and feel good about their own petty lives. These people shape the industry and vendors build what they say, which means you continue to be employed. Show some respect
Just like cryto currencies found their kill app in facilitating ransomware and fraud payments, AI has found it's killer app in creating more plausible scam emails, generating fake election images, and audio/videos tricking people in to transferring funds to criminals. And just like with crypto, every other non-criminal use has been a complete failure.
The killer app for crypto was actually rich people fleeing their home country. The “gotcha” was, sure you can leave, but you can’t just take your money and property with you: there is Departure Tax. But what if you emigrate safely away, leave behind all your possessions, then later arrange to have everything liquidated. You still can’t get money out of the country except by smuggling it, for which you are risking 100% seizure if not 100% theft. So this is why crypto is illegal in China and India, because people figured out an easy safe way to escape the oppressive regime yet keep all their ill-gotten riches.
As I've said before, useful AI is at least 10 to 30 years out, same as it was when I was at SAIL in the 1970s ... and I'm willing to bet that 20 years from now it'll still be at least 20 years away, along with normalized flying cars, personel jetpacks, controlled fusion and humans routinely inhabiting Mars.
…read what they were working on in 1982.
https://archive.org/details/omnibookofcomput0000unse
One guy was working on a mind-machine interface to create god-like genius powers.
I’d guess about 1/3 of the ideas haven’t come to fruition yet…
(I actually bought this book new back in 1982, but only got around to reading it recently; made some of my hairs raise! No, you can’t borrow my copy, come on. Download your own copy.)
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