3mo ago

Enterprise has no idea what to do with generative AI. This means it’s early days, and not that AI is a bubble

pivot-to-ai.com Enterprise has no idea what to do with generative AI. This means it’s early days, and not that AI is a bubble

VC firm Menlo Ventures has released its 2024 “State of Generative AI in the Enterprise” report! They found that companies don’t quite, er, know what to do with this stuff. [Menlo Ventures] Menlo su…

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Another highlight from the actual report is a massive increase in attempts to build AI in-house rather than buy, which highlights existing systems' inability to generate value. We can't find any use case for Clippy 2.0 as part of our existing software but, but the investors (and my bosses) might get spooked if we don't sound like we're on the cutting edge of this tech that everyone says is revolutionary. In the context of 70-90% of software projects failing in whole or in part I can only expect this to go well.
- I've also been involved with projects that were retro-activly renamed to AI. Implemented a new oldskool search algorithm? That's AI now! Simple decision tree with static weights? AI!
  Nobody wants investors or customers to think you're doing a bad job not putting AI in stuff, even if it doesn't really help or isn't a use case for anything related to AI.
  
  To be fair, simple decision trees with static weights used to be AI. Look, I learned how to do A* search from an AI textbook. AI is just algorithms with delusions.

The first internal combustion engines were invented in 1794, while the first production motor vehicle was in 1885. Even if technology exponentially increases, there could still be some time before we find the best application for it.
THAT BEING SAID, the application of the internal combustion engine makes me think about a Douglas Adam's quote: “In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
- before ICE there were steam engines, used for locomotives as soon as it became practical, and before that these were used as stationary power sources. these things were immediately useful
  cars were made really, really practical only with invention of tetraethyllead, which made everyone exposed stupid and aggressive, and also made petrol manufacture cheaper spurring car-centric transportation which has many harmful consequences even today
  genai is much closer to tetraethyllead in few aspects - pollutes internet for years to come and spews disinformation, increases carbon dioxide emissions without good reason and paves way for SV nepo babies into even more influence
  
  Early ICEs also saw immediate value in static applications like water pumps or printing presses. It's not like there was a century of people tinkering with the thing trying to make it work without any purpose; it rapidly showed value and then was iterated upon and improved until it became practical to use in new ways; for example being small enough and powerful enough to power a car.
  I figure there's a small chance that the AI bubble ends up acting more like the UK railroad bubble in that after the dust clears and the overproduced infrastructure gets shut down we're left with the best rail lines in Europe, but I'm not going to bet on that unless and until the salesmen stop trying to sell everyone a rail line between their bedroom and the bathroom.
  
  pollutes internet for years to come and spews disinformation,
  I wonder if future search engines will have an option to ignore results from 2022 to 20?? to avoid woeful AI content?
  
  ...which made everyone exposed stupid and aggressive...
  Funnily enough, this seems to be true for gen-ai, too!
- N-rays were discovered in 1903, clearly it's just early days

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