Is The AI Hype New Crypto Bubble

Except you are from another planet in the cosmos, the drive to incorporate AI in everything software related could not have gone amiss. The Silicon Valley motto of " move fast and break things" to get ahead is truly in hyperdrive mode. Whichever way you look, industries across a wide sway are using or thinking of implementing a large language model (LLM) in some areas of their operation if not all. The competitive advantage to be had is all so alluring it is almost akin to the gold rush era in the US (1848). The perception of missing out is just too overwhelming to bare. Hence, characterizing this rush as drinking from a fire hose to quench the thirst is far from being hyperbolic.

The phrase "move fast and break things" is a development mantra popularized by Facebook. It means that if you aren’t breaking things, you’re delivering value too slowly. In science and engineering industries, it means that making mistakes is a natural consequence of innovation in a highly competitive and complex environment. The motto emphasizes speed and experimentation. Some entrepreneurs and corporate ventures prefer to take a methodical approach to their businesses, while others prefer to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. For the latter type, “move fast and break things” seems to be their motto. With the current flux in "Generative Artificial Intelligence," one can only come to the conclusion that they are of the latter type too.

There is a precedence and cryptocurrencies come to mind. It was also heralded as a "defining moment" by large corporations and institutions. Money printing by central banks and the co-existential mutual back-scratching with bankers will be doomed. The decentralized model employing "blockchain technology" will abolish the corporate middlemen and central banks and in so doing create a bona fide level playing field for all and sundry. Blockchain is still a brilliant technology that is yet to achieve its full potential. As for cryptocurrencies, Ponzi schemes come to mind. Sam Backman-Fried the latest in a series of bad actors getting extremely rich and influential comes to the fore. Just before his comeuppance, major banks, institutions, and politicians were all only too willing to sing his praises for some financial handout. Now that we know who this so-called "Effective Altruist" is for real, are we any wiser? Still, remember the energetic Crypto Queen" in Europe (Ruja Ignatova)? Best known as the founder of the cryptocurrency "OneCoin". Described by The Times as one of the biggest scams in history. When asked to show us the money(crypto), she vanished into thin air without traces and so too did the hardscrabble retirement savings poured in by hard-working people.

Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest but the people who gave him money (banks mostly - hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity) are looking for new scams. The commonality here is the distortion of reality. The Earth will revolve around the sun in perpetuity anything else that can not go on forever will eventually come to a halt. Trillions of dollars worth of crypto have been wiped out over the past year, but these losses are nowhere to be seen in the real economy where "fiat" is the only sole arbiter. And this is because the wealth that was wiped out by the crypto bubble never existed in the first place.

Wherever you look, there is some new AI software venture promoting and selling a derivative of ChatGPT - generating text, image, audio, video, and some combo - with capabilities to add real productivity boost to your business. For individual entrepreneurs and creatives, it is clearly stated that your imagination is your only limiting factor. Most people still perceived Generative AI's endpoint to be its chat form. It has though served as an excellent marketing vehicle, bringing it to the public's attention.

The chat form was never meant to be the finale but merely the overture to the symphony of AI applications. This perception often leads to a misunderstanding of the use cases and a shift in investments toward pilot projects that might not fully exploit AI's potential. Industry giants Microsoft (surrogate of OpenAI) and Google are already moving beyond this, embedding AI into their tools and applications, thus dispensing with the chat interface. This trend marks a shift in how we will interact with AI in the future. It begs the question - if these two industry behemoths are fighting cats and dogs in this generative AI nascent technology is there really any room for small players?

Today you are constantly bombarded that AI is a $trillion opportunity and that AI is the future. Blockchain was a solution searching for a problem. AI, on the other hand, seems to be a solution for increased productivity. But at what cost? You will hear most commentators defining the arrival of ChatGPT last November as a "defining moment" similar to the internet in the 90s. The internet had an incredibly low barrier to entry and was not dominated by large corporations. If anything, it had them running scared. The AI bubble here, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement and hype boils down to "this can destroy humanity as we know if we do not collaborate with some guardrails". So, we have made something that is so powerful that it could destroy humanity! Luckily, we are wise stewards of this thing, so it is fine. And it will make us trillions of dollars.

Hence, while AI will likely transform many industries, inflated expectations risk speculative excess and consolidation of power among a few players. A measured approach centered on managing risks and equitable access would better serve the public good. With emerging technologies, optimism must be tempered with vigilance against overreach. The fruits of human ingenuity are not to be worshipped, but wisely cultivated.