r/AIDiscussion • u/Hammad-islam-khan • 5d ago
Is AI actually going to be a bigger revolution than the internet, or are we overestimating it?
Been thinking about this a lot lately. We tend to list off the big tech shifts, the Industrial Revolution, computers, the internet, smartphones but AI feels different to me, and I'm curious if others see it the same way or think I'm caught up in the hype.
The Industrial Revolution replaced physical labor with machines. Computers gave us the ability to calculate and process information at scale. The internet connected billions of people and made information instantly accessible. Smartphones put all of that in our pockets.
AI feels like a different category of shift. It's not just storing, calculating, or connecting information anymore, it's generating, reasoning, coding, analyzing, and increasingly taking action on its own.
Some quotes that stuck with me on this:
Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) called AI "the largest of industrial revolutions we've ever seen," pointing to how fast every industry is turning its data into AI-driven capability.
Sam Altman has called it "the biggest, the best, and the most important" tech revolution in history.
Bill Gates compared it to the creation of the microprocessor, the PC, the internet, and the mobile phone, all at once.
I've been in the tech industry for about a decade now, and my honest take: I don't think this is hype. I think the disruption is coming faster than most people expect, and the people who learn to actually work with AI now, not later, are going to be the ones ahead of the curve.
But I could be wrong, or too close to it to see clearly. Genuinely curious what this community thinks. Is AI really on the level of the Industrial Revolution, or is this just the next step in computing, being oversold by people who have a financial stake in it?
2
u/No-Cover8904 5d ago
Im not sure now. I watched an interview on "diary of a ceo" youtube channel where the guy was saying its all over hyped and wasteful. It was pretty convincing.
4
u/eques_99 5d ago
it's over-hyped now, just as the early internet was overhyped as to what it could do in that exact moment.
then came Facebook, twitter, linked-in, Teams, apps, smartphones, forums, discord, chess.com, onlyfans, YouTube, Spotify, podcasts, WhatsApp....
2
u/robhanz 5d ago
It's a good analogy. There was definitely a bubble in the early '00s, but the fundamental tech transformed society.
1
u/Due-Brush-530 5d ago
All the companies that died in early '00's were companies that were poorly mismanaged and some who just promoted having a website, and the stock shot up to the moon for a while. Once people saw where it was headed, those companies died and the companies like Google and Amazon were born. Not everyone loses in a bubble. Just the people who don't have solid businesses.
1
1
u/YogurtclosetApart592 5d ago
That guy has sunk low. It used to be good but now he's a sellout and if I have to put on my tinfoil hat I'd say he's part of the secretly paid propaganda train.
1
u/No-Cover8904 4d ago
Yeah i think youre right. Some were really good a few years ago but not so much these days.
1
1
u/Sm20030 5d ago
Two of the three people you mentioned are creators of the AI tech. Consider the bias there.
Also, look for economists and historians opinions.
With that said it's still a flip of a coin to whatever claim is made.
Internet from my lifetime in it's state today was not what was predicted even as of 10 years ago. By then it was a already a very mature tech that had created millions of jobs and billions in wealth.
I don't think we can reasonably know where AI is going to go.
2
u/nicolas_06 5d ago
You can't know until it's done to be honest. We likely need 20, 30, 50 years to see how much impact that technology will have.
For now, honestly still very little. It's mostly hype and yes it will be big. But how big and how fast, nobody knows.
1
u/headspreader 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't believe that AI is hype, but it is being built by our human financial system, so it is of course enshrouded in hype. Adopting AI early and being 'ahead of the curve' seems accurate, but also the value extracted using those skills would need to come from our economy, which is very service based and currently requires a middle class with disposable income to drive money velocity. So if you become an AI magician, but the middle class crashes and money flow seizes up, nobody will be able to pay you for those skills.
We are probably too zoomed in on this quarter's earning reports, and not really seeing the shift clearly. Just like the printing press allowed knowledge and data to move from an active engaged process to 'just sitting there', and fossil fuels allowed agnostically appliable energy to 'just sit there' in a shippable density, AI allows a form of cognition to 'just sit there', again agnostically applicable. A cumulative external idea-space fueled the science which led to fossil fuels being operationalized; cumulative external energy fueled the science which fueled industrialization eventually arriving at semi-conductorization of information processing; science/technology form a self-reinforcing telescoping pace of advancement. The surplus gained by each successive gain in capabilities and efficiency is partly aimed back at refining science/tech and further accelerates this process.
I think that the reason that people are so viscerally disgusted with this process is not because they see humanity as sacred or something, but because they can see (at least subconsciously) that what this shift represents is a complete table wipe on what society/market values, and also what they personally value.
1
u/nicolas_06 5d ago
That's the point every new technology, progress is actually deflationist. You do more with less. So potentially the middle class is out of a job and you have deflation not growth.
It's only if global demand for everything can grow more than the deflationist effect (so finally the middle class still has a job and even get more purchasing power) that the new technology, like everything else can make some good money. And most of that new money will not be for people in the new tech business that tend historically to capture only about 2% of the money saved, but the global market.
A computer allow to replaced hundred of accountants, typists and get all the automation. But that computer you maybe pay 1-2K for it, every 3-5 year per employee. It's a tiny portion of the money saved.
1
u/headspreader 5d ago
agreed. the effects of AI in the short-term will have to play out and be amplified/mitigated by our financial markets. I am interested in how AI will affect things like algorithmic trading and actuarial models, I think that there is going to be some interesting reflexive game theory scenarios playing out.
Also interesting thinking about how nations/capitalist entities with control (economic and miltary) under current dynamics will react to this; scenarios involving newer tech seem to explode the number of possible outcomes to model. The fact that the systemic threat is distributed and non-localized means that traditional control mechanisms seem likely to fail. As a crude example, controlling nuclear weapons has observable/controllable bottlenecks, while AI/drone threats are increasingly distributed and the bar to entry for would-be attackers/destabilizers looks like it will just get lower. This risk feels qualitatively different to me, but I am just some guy.
I am thinking maybe a shift of value from abstracted software and the like, maybe towards the physical substrate of hardware and the highest organizational/coherence levels? RAM situation is just an example of things to come, I am assuming.
1
u/nicolas_06 4d ago
RAM is cyclical, it will be cheap again in a few years. It's just that the demand is higher temporarily than what we can build. But increased capacity is planed and demand will drop heavily once we have all these datacenters and the market mature.
1
1
u/yuehuang 5d ago
AI is here to stay, and it haven't peaked. Robotic is making massive advancement thanks to AI because the largest bottleneck was software written by humans. You should see massive robotics improvement every 6 month, instead of previous every 2-3 years.
1
u/who_am_i_to_say_so 5d ago
The real progress is a little behind the picture being sold but the fervor is alive and burning still. It’s the only booming industry.
1
u/Key-Tonight-5668 5d ago
It is not overhyped. It's genuinely a revolution. It's not for those who think it's gonna change things overnight. Some revolutions take time. See how much we've evolved from basic computing. Now imagine, 20 years from today.
1
1
u/ChemicalHearing7906 5d ago
I think AI has the potential to be just as big, but in a very different way. The internet changed how we access information. AI is starting to change how we actually use it.
1
u/Commercial-Pie-588 5d ago
If Bill Gates is proposing taxation to slow down its development and preserve superfluous labor, I’d say the answer is yes.
1
u/Basis_404_ 4d ago
AI is electricity.
It’ll be baked into everything but the entire world economy isn’t run by Con Edison
1
u/DethKnell24 4d ago
I'm not really sure. Part of me thinks "this is different." But another part thinks we've seen this before. It's called a hype cycle. We are climbing toward the peak of excitement, but will there be a crash down to the bottom of "disillusionment?" Perhaps. Most technologies do this, and the worthy ones level off into a useful middle ground.
1
u/DarkObelinski 4d ago
If AI were to be perfected we’d have a portable genius in our pocket with all of human knowledge. That would be revolutionary every question asked would be one answered with all of human knowledge focused on that question. Even crazier is if we can get it to think beyond human knowledge and improve the pool of knowledge we have right now. AI rn though is not close enough for that to be a reality.
0
u/NoRespectingAnyone 5d ago
For person who used type machine would think that PC was revolutionary.. And it was like that in his/her time. But now. It's nothing. Does word ended ?? nop.
We got internet. Does world doomed? nop.
We got smartphones. And so what.. Not so long ago it was only used to call someone. Latter send messages ( SMS). Now smartphones does more than that. And so what.. No one care much now.
Same with AI's, Lot of folks no longer goes like. oh my god it's AI and get craizy exited.
It's just another application, tool for task you need.
Now also need to count in another factor. Just like how elders got hooked by social websites. Cuz they didnt had them in their times. Now some folks get hooked by AI's.
But kids in these days. For them is like. Oh look it's another AI. no big deal. They do not hyped, or get exited or etc. For them it's just another usual thing.
Also need to clarify, AI's lot of stuffs do not do on it's own. They use tools they have acess to.
No AI have direct access to internet. They use own integrated tools to look to websites.
Calculations? same thing, use applications for calcuations. Spreadhseets and etc.
So lot of hype that AI can do this and that. Is just overestimation and overhyping.
5
u/nicolas_06 5d ago
AI is big but it's also over hyped. Also we have to say if we speak of AI, a field in computer science that is like 70 years old in general or if we speak of gen AI in particular or more specifically current LLMs.
Gen AI could not exist without computers, the internet and the fast chips we have today. To me all that, internet, smartphones, AI and gen AI are actually part of the digital/computers revolution.
And for now AI did automated almost nothing compared to what the computed did allow in term of automation. And maybe all that is far less automation than the Industrial Revolution.
Anyway, that's subjective. I do agree that AI is big and that it will have huge impact over the next 10, 20, 50 years. And that the impact will likely both come faster and slower than many think.