[allen_berg]

AI is just a way to market software. In the 70s and 80s we had "expert systems". Knowledge packed into software. Now when you buy hardware such as the new 3d xray systems for airports it can use high and low energy xray and density data to guess the substance of objects. This is an expert system, but it's trivialized to the point where it's not labelled as something special, it's just a feature.

This is a natural process. Hype up new stuff as "intelligent", "expert", "AI". Down the line it will be just another piece of software functionality. Doesn't mean anything special.

Right now "generative AI" is being heavily subsidized to gain market share. All these prompts generating text and image cost A LOT of money in training, inference, etc. If we were charged the real cost, it wouldn't seem like such a magical thing.