this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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People love to say things like this but it's kinda ridiculous, pretty much every new tech is hugely successful. Those battery advances that no one really believes in? You've probably got one of them in your hand now, you're probably physically closer to someone using chatGPT than you are to someone reading a book - if not you almost certainly met more people today who have used gpt more recently than they've read from a book. Vr adoption continues to grow, automation solutions are getting installed all over the place at a rapid rate, electric cars are gaining market share, whole countries are using desalination for their water supply, everyone that's said anything about Osiris rex has been excited about the move towards space based industry.
The bulk of the population is loving the endless tech upgrades and eager for more, yeah not everything is good and most people are adult enough to realise that.
(No I did not read the article, someone said it was shit and I don't doubt them)
Of course new tech is used in industry but consumer products are a different story. And it's complex. People like spending money on stuff, it makes them feel better, so when the world gets depressing they buy things. Also, a side effect of not being able to afford a home is that people have more disposable income to spend on toys. Why save money if you will never save enough? So yes, people buy new products but do they really buy them because they are exited about new tech? I doubt it. You can easily run a 10 year old laptop and (if you're lucky and it's not broken) 5 year old phone today and you wouldn't be missing anything. No one really asked for AI, 5G and AR.
But this is not true, everyone has been asking for better internet speed and natural language computing. 5G was required because everyone is online all the time, yeah people aren't hyped about it because it's boring but if we didn't have 5g and archaic infrastructure didn't scale with demand then you bet people would be yelling about it - when a train goes by there's a hundred people using mobile internet, likely none of them care about 5g but they love being able to work, chat and browse the internet on their journey.
Ai is absurdly beneficial to people already and it's incredibly early days, again people aren't going to be especially hyped by most it's uses, in fact they won't notice most of them but it'll help fix a lot of things that really annoy or negatively affect them.
As someone who has spent a lot of time learning about and designing GUIs I can tell you that designing a system to give all the different user sets and types the controls they need is super complex - as someone who actually programs them I can assure you implementing whatever system is created to do this is even more painfully difficult. Now imagine not having to do that, imagine I can make a tool and the user just has to say 'import this old file in an obscure format then do these obscure but relatively simple things...' this is huge from a development point of view and even huger from a user point of view.
Ever have a family member ask you for the tenth time how to find their emails? Or hand you a device you've never seen before and say 'can you change the font size' and you have to go through menus and Google how to do it? Soon it'll be fairly standard to just tell things what you want and for them to actually understand.
This is just one small benefit that LLMs and natural language computing bring, I could list other benefits for days
I didn't say it's not useful, I said people are not buying products because of them. People are not running to the stores to get the new 5G phone. I remember 4G roll-out and it was a big thing. You suddenly could use the internet the same way you did at home. With 5G there are no new usecases. You're not going to watch 4K movie on your phone. LLMs also don't sell devices. Siri and Alexa were kind of interesting when they came out and sold many smart speakers but LLMs are a tool, not a gadget.
I also didn't read the article but there is something to it. Are you exited about Threads the same way everyone was exited about gmail? Are you exited about Vision Pro the same way everyone went crazy for the iPhone? More and more often I'm searching for a product now and simply end up disappointed. There are no smart watches I would like to buy (the new features they have are all useless), new phones have less features (where's my headphones jack? where's my hardware keyboard?), the best new thing about laptops is flat RAM... Consumer products have stalled. It's all gimmicks now instead of actually interesting features. I think it's all good enough and we simply don't have the tech to offer actual breakthrough in usability.
We thought that with the blackberry. We thought that with vacuum tubes. We that that with chip scaling.
Thinking that will make it true.
I didn't say such breakthrough is not possible. Just that it didn't happen yet so most new products are gimmicks. When they will come up with actual improvement we will know.