"If Silicon Valley is going to stave off another devastating AI winter — let alone usher us into an AI utopia — then it's going to need more than just the brute power of compute, data, and cash. It'll also need to exploit the power of belief.
We have plenty of recent examples that show even investing billions of dollars into a speculative tech may not be enough to guarantee the realization of a dream if people lose interest and stop feeding it with their attention. Metaverse? A distant memory. Web3? Sorry, wrong number. Google Glass? Never heard of it.
AI depends on vital support from people hard at work in the futurism factory. These are the executives, consultants, journalists, and other thought leaders whose job is the selling of things to come. They craft visions of a specific future — such as ones where AI models built by companies like OpenAI or Microsoft are undeniable forces of progress — and they build expectations in the public about the inevitable capabilities and irresistible outcomes of these tech products.
By flooding the zone with an endless stream of new partnerships, new products, new promises, the tech industry makes us feel disoriented and overwhelmed by a future rushing at us faster than we can handle. The desire to not be left behind — or taken advantage of — is a powerful motivator that keeps us engaged in the AI sales pitch. The breathless hype surrounding AI is more than just a side-effect of over-eager entrepreneurs; it’s a load-bearing column for the tech sector. If people believe hard enough in the future manufactured by Silicon Valley, then they start acting like it already exists before it happens. Thus the impacts of technologies like AI become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
https://futurism.com/ai-tinkerbell
#AI #GenerativeAI #AIBubble #AIHype #SiliconValley #Ideology
