The onrushing AI era was supposed to create boom times for great gadgets. Not long ago, analysts were predicting that Apple Intelligence would start a “supercycle” of smartphone upgrades, with tons of new AI features compelling people to buy them. Amazon and Google and others were explaining how their ecosystems of devices would make computing seamless, natural, and personal. Startups were flooding the market with ChatGPT-powered gadgets, so you’d never be out of touch. AI was going to make every gadget great, and every gadget was going to change to embrace the AI world.
This whole promise hinged on the idea that Siri, Alexa, Gemini, ChatGPT, and other chatbots had gotten so good, they’d change how we do everything. Typing and tapping would soon be passé, all replaced by multimodal, omnipresent AI helpers. You wouldn’t need to do things yourself; you’d just tell your assistant what you need, and it would tap into the whole world of apps and information to do it for you. Tech companies large and small have been betting on virtual assistants for more than a decade, to little avail. But this new generation of AI was going to change things.
There was just one problem with the whole theory: the tech still doesn’t work. Chatbots may be fun to talk to and an occasionally useful replacement for Google, but truly game-changing virtual assistants are nowhere close to ready. And without them, the gadget revolution we were promised has utterly failed to materialize.
In the meantime, the tech industry allowed itself to be so distracted by these shiny language models that it basically stopped trying to make otherwise good gadgets. Some companies have more or less stopped making new things altogether, waiting for AI to be good enough before it ships. Others have resorted to shipping more iterative, less interesting upgrades because they have run out of ideas other than “put AI in it.” That has made the post-ChatGPT product cycle bland and boring, in a moment that could otherwise have been incredibly exciting. AI isn’t good enough, and it’s dragging everything else down with it.
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This just reminds me of the blockchain/NFT craze. NFT is stupid as shit but blockchain has its uses, just like LLMs. I refuse to call it AI because it’s not, it’s a language generator. A particularly expensive language generator that cost a lot of in terms of resources but still just a language generator. It’s not all that different from the crypto craze, especially if you want a GPU for other things.
As you say, LLMs have really useful applications. The problem is that “being a reliable virtual assistant” is not one of them. This current push is driven by shareholders and companies who are afraid to be seen as missing out. It’s the classic case of having what you think is a solution and trying to find the problem, rather than starting from a problem and trying to find a solution.
I use LLMs for some things and they are great, but to be honest, I haven't seen any real world usage of blockchains besides cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-walmart-canada-uses-blockchain-to-solve-supply-chain-challenges
https://alastria.io/en/renewable-energy-certification/
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/south-american-airline-adopts-travelxs-nftickets-on-the-algorand-blockchain-pioneering-a-new-era-in-travel-industry-301785516.html