The technology behind LLMs is a 1000000x force multiplier for scammers, spammers, astroturfers. For your average person, it's like Spell Check 2.0.
A lot of companies are taking their existing AI-less SaaS products and are looking to upcharge $10-$50/month for reselling you a handful of "Open"AI API calls.
The free and open web is closing shop because they don't want to be scraped by LLM trainers. Or because Google algorithms allow a rando to buy a domain, put a "reword this article" LLM proxy over your website to steal all your organic traffic.
Contenders include tesla's humanoid robots, neural implants for the average consumer, using quantum computers for tasks they aren't meant for, and a flying car startup that accidentally sparks a dozen miniature 9/11s
I feel like of the VC tech buzzes, the "ai" thing has had the most use to the capitalist class as a tool of labour discipline. It doesn't have to be that good (read: good at what it says it does) to do that.
They'll finally invent teleportation, but it's the most unhealthy version of it, but because it's so hyped up, the ultra wealthy use it all the time not realizing you lose 0.001% of all your mass each time you do it, until an influencer realizes he lost weight using the teleporter and uses it over and over again, until he had teleported away approximately 1% of his body weight. Unfortunately a large amount of that small percentage was most of the wall of his Aortic valve, causing him to internally bleed out in a single minute, when it inevitably tore mid teleport.
It's going back to On-Prem computing, driven by large reductions in VC funding. This will drive tools and products that make the transition easier. It'll reach a hype pitch as everybody rediscovers how to run their own servers, until the maintenance bit comes 'round and The Cloud (aka, managed services) makes a comeback.
Transparent displays. Samsung and LG were showing off transparent screens at CES this year. Transparent TVs will be extremely expensive and not practical at all but they look cool so it will be the new techbro status symbol.
Weird I thought the ChatBot stuff was actually a bit more legit than these other things. Like, not in that it was actual AI or anything but that it worked well enough that actual proper capitalists, not just VC "nouveau" riche dorks, were considering using it for actual stuff, or at least trying to.
A decent amount of people on the lefty web seemed worried about it
Short-term, they will probably just invest in defense tech and retreat to their guarded villas while they ruthlessly wield the platforms they own to extract maximum wealth now that the growth game is up. Or maybe something with biotech, I don’t really know.
Long-term (10 years) it won’t matter what western VCs think because the world’s innovative capacity is all concentrated in east asia (source). It takes about 10 years for research to show up in industry. So maybe they double down on South Korean and Japanese empire holdings, provided both of those vassals remain loyal.
Or maybe YCombinator becomes America’s SoftBank and heavily invests abroad. It will be interesting to see.
With all the money being thrown at militarising the west I think there's a good chance the next tech fads will be attempts to get your hands on that money:
Digital Red Scare: You go on the computer to identify, silence and possibly punish the scary Russian/Chinese/KHamas bogeymen spreading propaganda against our wholesome chungus democracy.
Radio Free Reddit: You go on the computer to fight Russian/Chinese/KHamas disinformation by spreading the true gospel of the blessings of liberal democracy and the savagery of the jungle.
The thing is the LLMs can bullshit well enough to do quite a lot. It’s always substandard to what a human produces, but grifters behind it really think you’ll buy a robot butler for the price of a car and it’ll do the household chores. OpenAI is already putting out marketing for this. And Americans are so lazy and dumb they’ll fall for it and the grift will keep going forever and ever promising “AI is about to advance through the roof and take over the world” because it’s a religion at this point.