• masterspace@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Capitalism wastes money chasing new shiny tech thing

    Yeah, we know. AI’s not special.

  • model_tar_gz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’m an AI Engineer, been doing this for a long time. I’ve seen plenty of projects that stagnate, wither and get abandoned. I agree with the top 5 in this article, but I might change the priority sequence.

    Five leading root causes of the failure of AI projects were identified

    • First, industry stakeholders often misunderstand — or miscommunicate — what problem needs to be solved using AI.
    • Second, many AI projects fail because the organization lacks the necessary data to adequately train an effective AI model.
    • Third, in some cases, AI projects fail because the organization focuses more on using the latest and greatest technology than on solving real problems for their intended users.
    • Fourth, organizations might not have adequate infrastructure to manage their data and deploy completed AI models, which increases the likelihood of project failure.
    • Finally, in some cases, AI projects fail because the technology is applied to problems that are too difficult for AI to solve.

    4 & 2 —>1. IF they even have enough data to train an effective model, most organizations have no clue how to handle the sheer variety, volume, velocity, and veracity of the big data that AI needs. It’s a specialized engineering discipline to handle that (data engineer). Let alone how to deploy and manage the infra that models need—also a specialized discipline has emerged to handle that aspect (ML engineer). Often they sit at the same desk.

    1 & 5 —> 2: stakeholders seem to want AI to be a boil-the-ocean solution. They want it to do everything and be awesome at it. What they often don’t realize is that AI can be a really awesome specialist tool, that really sucks on testing scenarios that it hasn’t been trained on. Transfer learning is a thing but that requires fine tuning and additional training. Huge models like LLMs are starting to bridge this somewhat, but at the expense of the really sharp specialization. So without a really clear understanding of what can be done with AI really well, and perhaps more importantly, what problems are a poor fit for AI solutions, of course they’ll be destined to fail.

    3 —> 3: This isn’t a problem with just AI. It’s all shiny new tech. Standard Gardner hype cycle stuff. Remember how they were saying we’d have crypto-refrigerators back in 2016?

    • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Not to detail, but may I ask how did you become an AI Engineer? I’m a software dev by trade, but it feels like a hard field to get into even if I start training for the AI part of it, because I’d need the data to practice =(

      But it’s such a big buzz word I feel like I need to start looking that direction if i want to stay employed.

      • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        For me it helps to have a project. I learned SciKit in order to analyze trading data to beat the “market”. I was focusing on crypto but there’s lots of trading data available in general. Unsurprisingly I didn’t make any money, but it was fun to learn more about data processing, statistics, and modeling with functions.

        (FWIW I’m crypto-neutral depending on the topic and anti-“AI” because it doesn’t exist.)

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Ha ha I got into genetic algorithms for the same reason, market prediction. Ended up exactly at zero in terms of net gains and losses - if you don’t count commissions, anyway. :(

      • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachts
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        3 months ago

        if I want to stay employed

        I think this is a little paranoid. Somebody has to handle the production models - deploying them to servers, maintaining the servers, developing the APIs and front ends that provide access to the models… I don’t think software dev jobs are going anywhere

  • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Isn’t it good that the money is being put back into circulation instead of being hoarded? I’m all in for the wealthy wasting their money.

    • finley@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Kinda, but it’s like feeding a starving child nothing but candy until they die.

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’m willing to bet the vast majority of that money is changing hands among tech companies like Intel, AMD, nVidia, AWS, etc. Only a small percentage would go to salaries, etc. and I doubt those rates have changed much…

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        3 months ago

        They typically use internal personnel and being parcimonious about it so you’re right about that.

  • chris@l.roofo.cc
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    3 months ago

    Most people don’t want to pay for AI. So they are building stuff that costs a lot for a market that is not willing to pay for it. It is mostly a gimmick for most people.

    • DragonConsort@pawb.social
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      3 months ago

      And like, it’s not even a good gimmick. It’s a serious labour issue because the primary intent behind a lot of AI has always been to just phase out workers.

      I’m all for ending work through technological advancement and universal income, but this definitely wasn’t going to get us that, so…

      Well, why would I support something that mostly just threatens people’s livelihoods and gives even more power to the 0.1%?

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      True for the consumer side, but I’d be willing to bet that a decent chunk of that money that giant corporations burned funded some serious research on AI that can go on to actually useful science things

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Why don’t companies get this? If you make something free in the beginning, people will become conditioned that it’s not worth paying for.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Wasting?

    A bunch of rich guy’s money going to other people, enriching some of the recipients, in hopes of making the rich guy even richer? And the point of AI is to eliminate jobs that cost rich people money?

    I’m all for more foolish AI failed investments.

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      It’s a circle jerk, don’t get fooled into thinking this is some new version of trickle down economics

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’ve been reading a book about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scam, and the parallels with Gen AI seem pretty astounding. Gen AI is known to be so buggy the industry even created a euphemistic term so they wouldn’t have to call it buggy: Hallucinations.

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    Is that better or worse than IT and software projects in general? It sounds like it might be better.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        I guess I should a) read the article and b) have a slightly better outlook of the field I’m in.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      It’s much worse. Generally speaking projects in large corporations at least try to make sense and to have a decent chance to return something of value. But with AI projects is like they all went insane, they disregard basic things, common sense, fundamental logic etc.

  • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    As I said in a project call where someone was pumping up AI, this is just the latest bubble ready to pop. Everyone is dumping $$ into AI, a couple decent ones will survive but the bulk is either barely functional or just vaporware.

    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Isn’t that how innovation has always worked?

      I feel like all this AI hate is comparable to any other innovation cycle.

      Millions of light fabric and dowels wasted on crack pot “air heads” trying to design first ever flying vehicle

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      My new job even said they are using AI. It usurb every goddamm company shoving AI features on us.

      • Living_Dead@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        My new job said this aswell. When I got into the position I found out it was actually a machine learning model and they were trying to use it but didn’t have the time to create a clean dataset for the learning so it has never worked. This hasn’t stopped them from advertising that they are using AI.

  • Phoenix3875@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The interviews revealed that data scientists sometimes get distracted by the latest developments in AI and implement them in their projects without looking at the value that it will deliver.

    At least part of this is due to resume-oriented development.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      I read bits of a programming book once, can’t remember which one.

      Halfway through it was revealed that all the code snippets they had were from a project that was abandoned before it was finished, once the people paying for it realised they no longer wanted it and stopped funding them.

      I wasn’t sure what message to take from the book after that. Like, sure, my code is a load of shit, hodge-podged together at the request of people who don’t really know what they want, but at least I’ve got people out there using it…

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Yeah. I’d love to see this compared to other R&D success rates.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    3 months ago

    I think the whole system of venture capital might be garbage. We have bros spending millions of dollars like gif sharing while the oceans boil, our schools rot, and our infrastructure rusts or is sold off. Or, I guess I’m just indicting capitalism more generally. But having a few bros decide what to fund based on gutfeel and powerpoints seems like a particularly malignant form.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You think it might be??

      Bro say that shit with some confidence.

      Venture capital does not contribute beneficially to society.

    • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Venture Capital is probably the best way to drain the billionaires. Those billions in capital weren’t wasted, that money just went to pay people who do actual work for a living. What good is all that money doing just sitting in some hedge fund account?

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        3 months ago

        I don’t think it’s the best way out of all possible options. Even if it does “create jobs”, a lot of those jobs aren’t producing much of wider value, and most of the wealth stays in the hands of the ownership class. And a lot of the jobs are exploitive, like how “gig workers” are often treated.

        Changes to tax law and enforcing anti-trust stuff would probably be more effective. We probably shouldn’t have bogus high finance shenanigans either. We definitely shouldn’t have billionaires.