The way people talked about Blockchain/Web3 in particular was very similar to how a lot of people talk about AI now. It's going to take over the world any day now, we just need to fix [fundamental issue]. Get on board right now or you'll be left behind, especially if you're in a creative field. The business model is definitely-maybe-kinda legal but we just need to bend all governments to our will and then it'll be fine. It may use as much energy as a small country but trust us it's totally worth it.
The tech itself works, unlike blockchain, but the narratives are way overblown. I know a few small companies that have legitimately let people go without even having a proper replacement.
The leadership then hyped up Devin or whatever, only to find the whole workplace in chaos after a few months. All this was done to attract VC money, and now they're hiring for the same position again.
What about blockchain tech doesn't work? It's a relatively more tame technical problem than any GenAI.
Usability. The use case of GenAI is pretty clear at this point. With blockchain, the big question was, "Okay, we have this cool tech, but what do we do with it now?" If you have to think about what problem a tool solves, it's not a good tool at all.
To some extent, usability.
But since the target audience was always technical (although gullible) people, the incentive to make it useful beyond coin purchases never manifested.
But moreso: scalability.
The blockchains that are worth anything don’t scale to the level of total worldwide transactions per second.
I’ve heard “But Lightning!” — sure, so before I can send any money, I have to find a fellow to relay my transactions against.
I mean, Our Lord and Saviour The Almighty Blockchain (and its offshoot technologies, like DAOs) worked, for some value of worked; it just wasn't particularly useful. I'd put LLMs largely in the same bucket for now.
> I know a few small companies that have legitimately let people go without even having a proper replacement.
In terms of collateral damage, blockchain nonsense is probably still winning, at least for now, though its victims were often at least somewhat complicit in their own destruction.
I wouldn't be as harsh on LLMs as I was on blockchain. Blockchain didn't solve a single problem I had or understood. In contrast, LLMs already solve a few boring and annoying problems for me, which I find quite valuable.
No, people superficially said the same things. Except if you know anything at all about the underlying tech, or about business, you immediately see the difference. This is why so many people disliked and totally ignored the blockchain hype (like me), but are very bought into AI (also like me).
One glaring example of the difference - you're making an analogy by saying that people were saying "get on board web3 or you'll be left behind". I'm not sure I heard people say it quite this way, but even if they did - what was the causal mechanism they claimed would "leave you behind" exactly? Why would the average user care? Not at all clear.
Whereas, correct or not, there's a very obvious reason to think adopting AI is critical - in SE, for example, it promises drastic changes to how people work and increases in productivity - it's pretty clear why not adopting it is a bad idea.
Lol, in the Web3 case, "take over the world" was only a metaphor. This is a big difference for AI.
Eh, I think that's just the state of contemporary "influencer"-heavy discourse. The similarity in how people talk about the two fields has more to do with the people doing the talking (they're the same people) than it does with similarities between the fields themselves.
While LLMs are still new, ML itself is by no means a new or unproven technology. Recommendation engines built on ML are, for better or worse, the backbone of the average person's online experience. Fraud and spam detection, built on ML, are baked into most of our digital utilities (email, payments, etc.) How many apps do you use that involve ETA predictions? Because those are all built on ML. Image recognition, speech-to-text, even the camera on most smartphones--it all relies on ML.
Even looking purely at LLMs, they've reached a point of adoption that blockchain never did. ChatGPT alone reports over 200 million users per week. Google search, possibly the most ubiquitous product in the history of the internet, uses LLMs as a standard part of search.
You may have criticisms of the technology, you may think it is overhyped or that companies are making a mistake by leaning into it, but it's difficult to rationally dismiss it as a purely speculative hype bubble when its usage is so widespread.
I love how Trump put Crypto and AI in the same department under a VC vulture Czar. At least he understood that they are meant to be in the same department.