Are we like dinosaurs to mammals and AI is the asteroid?

[benjamaan]

As AI evolves, the parallels to the asteroid event that wiped out the dinosaurs seem worth pondering. Just as climate change wiped out the dinosaurs, AI could become a similarly unstoppable force that humans cannot fully prepare for or control. Dinosaurs, as dominant as they were, lacked the adaptability to survive the sudden environmental changes. In contrast, small mammals thrived because they could burrow underground, live on less, and adapt to new conditions.

If AI is the metaphorical asteroid, then we must ask: are we the dinosaurs in this story? If so, what, or who, might be like the mammals?

[talldayo]

I think the assumption is flawed because the value generated by AI is spurious. The demand is there, and the supply hasn't yet run out, but people aren't rushing to rework their lives around AI. We haven't seen serious advancements that AI can spearhead besides non-LLM applications like computer vision. And those aren't new, they're decades-old.

To bring another analogy into the equation, AI isn't crude oil. No country depends on AI to operate, for defensive purposes or as a critical decision-making heuristic - it's a speculative market. AI is another test for businesses a-la cryptocurrency, probing the few last firms that claim to "innovate" to see what they can put out. So far they've done excellent on the marketing side, but just about nothing in terms of practical or valuable problem solving. In 5 years I feel pretty confident that LLMs will be treated like a sideshow attraction and not a practical tool used by earnest humans.