Today I read a stupid Hackernews comment about how AI is useless. Therefore Hackernews is stupid. Oh, I need a filtered list of which comments to read?
Do you build computers by ordering random parts off Alibaba and complaining when they are deficient? You are complaining that you need to RTFM for a piece of high tech?
> Oh, I need a filtered list of which comments to read?
If they are about something you're not sure about, and you're making decisions based on them ... maybe it would actually help, so yes?
> Do you build computers by ordering random parts off Alibaba and complaining when they are deficient?
We build computers using parts which are carefully documented by data sheets, which tell you exactly for what ranges of parameters their operation is defined and in what ways. (temperatures, voltages, currents, frequencies, loads, timings, typical circuits, circuit board layouts, programming details ...)
The shovel analogy is typically used to discuss tools versus goals, irrespective of the microeconomics of buying and selling.
I can use another sector, biotech, as an example. The sequencing industry spends billions of dollars designing and selling the next generation of sequencers, along with collecting more and more data. They are still actively researching and developing new platforms. The end goal (product) of biotech is ultimately to produce a medicine. Pharma is in the business of end products. You can spend billions on sequencing and never produce a new medicine.
Shovels = sequencing
End product = medicine
That has nothing to do with the cost or availability of shovels. As a biology major, you could choose to go into sequencing or go into medical research.
AI is a tool. For what? In the future, who knows--isn't that the big question at the moment, about whether the investments are justified and so on. But other businesses will presumably purchase and use these AI services. OpenAI can spend $500 billion, but how are they going to recover the cost (short of AGI demolishing HFT or the like, or simply taking over the world) without another business buying it and using it to create value in the form of end products.
Shovels are typically B2B.
End products are B2C.
OpenAI doesn't need anything from (the proverbial) you. Also, I stated in the title, "Currently". We aren't talking about doomsday AGI situations where AI exists as the end-all of humanity, and the point is just to own it. For current investors and labor, the model appears to be that these large companies sell their AI services.
Do you build computers by ordering random parts off Alibaba and complaining when they are deficient? You are complaining that you need to RTFM for a piece of high tech?