Its quite likely that the AI hype (or more precisely the LLM hype) will deflate like the crypto hype even if for a different set of reasons.
People have been conditioned on expecting the next big thing, FOMO on trillion dollar companies, winner-takes-all etc. as if that is the new normal.
Its quite unlikely that things will play out this way again. The iphone moment or the google moment or the facebook moment will not keep giving "tech" moments.
Tech has both arrived and also bitten more than it can chew. Take for example the rise and fall of crypto. It may have degenerated into inane speculation but not before raising fear deep in the core of the financial system. This is was shutdown libra and prompted cbdc discussions.
Technically we have definetely turned a page in the last decade: algorithms and network protocols keep evolving.
But we have not found a new social equilibrium on how to adopt and deploy new business models. Privacy, sovereignty, power and control, regulation are now center stage.
Tech startups changing the world (for good or bad) does not look like the mode for this decade.
Established entities selling shovels will milk the trend for a while but it feels that the next decade will be decidedly different (mostly regulated corporate adoption rather than startupy).
> People have been conditioned on expecting the next big thing, FOMO on trillion dollar companies, winner-takes-all etc. as if that is the new normal.
People have been FOMO investing since the start of investment opportunities. Tulip Mania was a famous bubble in the 1600s. Even when people mostly predict the future correctly, they can be too early like with the dot com bubble (the internet seems to mostly have worked out and arguably beyond the expectations of most of the dot com speculators). AI could very well bring major improvements to productivity at some point, but if it happens, will it be while current speculators can stay solvent or will they be too early in the same way dot com speculators were?
> will it be while current speculators can stay solvent or will they be too early in the same way dot com speculators were?
I wouldn't want to hazard a guess.
Speculative tendency is a given as an underlying driver, though it can be modulated by the structure of financial instruments, markets, interest rates, taxation etc.
What is not a given is that FOMO will be continuously expressed every few years just so that a number of savvy intermediaries can keep banking on that collective defect.
Manias are also generational phenomena - people do get burned out. I do have a feeling that currently we have collectively "burned-out" from the promised tech disruption.
I may well be wrong and a powerful idea that is not subject to all the above caveats is now incubating somewhere in the long tail.
An interesting question is whether we will see it here on HN.
People have been conditioned on expecting the next big thing, FOMO on trillion dollar companies, winner-takes-all etc. as if that is the new normal.
Its quite unlikely that things will play out this way again. The iphone moment or the google moment or the facebook moment will not keep giving "tech" moments.
Tech has both arrived and also bitten more than it can chew. Take for example the rise and fall of crypto. It may have degenerated into inane speculation but not before raising fear deep in the core of the financial system. This is was shutdown libra and prompted cbdc discussions.
Technically we have definetely turned a page in the last decade: algorithms and network protocols keep evolving.
But we have not found a new social equilibrium on how to adopt and deploy new business models. Privacy, sovereignty, power and control, regulation are now center stage.
Tech startups changing the world (for good or bad) does not look like the mode for this decade.
Established entities selling shovels will milk the trend for a while but it feels that the next decade will be decidedly different (mostly regulated corporate adoption rather than startupy).