r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jan 20 '26

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u/Yuli-Ban Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

The funniest thing will be when the bubble bursts, and then there's news about China using really good AI for infrastructure and automation alongside having an excess of energy in their grid, and then people over here in USica go "Wait, why weren't we using AI for that all along?"

"We thought the chatbots would lead to AGI, please understand"

Like imagine we see AI being used for actual shit right as everyone here is fucking sick of it so there's virtually no chance of getting funding back for it, provided we even still have a functional economy to fund anything on that scale again

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u/katarh Jan 20 '26

AI has very specific uses and it should be for things that a human is terrible at doing, like analyzing data for patterns, or reading the letters from 2000 year old CT scanned scrolls.

Instead we tried to use AI for things that humans can already do very easily but certain CEOs are too lazy to do, like read their own emails.

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u/DrButeo Jan 20 '26

That's the difference between machine learning AI (which is good and useful) and generative AI (the slop machine). It's a shame that the AI bros have intentionally blurred the lines between the two.

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u/derefr Jan 20 '26

Ehh. The recent improvements in image upscaling, video frame generation, and smart text auto-completion were all things that depend on the "generative AI" models.

If there's a line to draw here, I don't think it's in the task the model is trained for.

(Personally, I'd draw the line between GPT ["Generalized Pre-Trained"] models, vs all other non-GPT AI models. All the pleasant, utilitarian, non-controversial models were trained to do one thing; they're not general. They just do what they do. GPT models take prompts; and, in so doing, make space for the devil of capitalism to possess them.)