Their real brilliance is in identifying worthwhile candidates for prolonged shysterism and sophistic schmoozing, and, like an exceptionally gifted oil and gas industry geologist, to extract that stored potential hype energy to a degree no normal person would think possible.
This happened with Agile, with TDD, with pretty much any technocratic crapola that was laundered through the ostensible prestige of TED, and by god, did it ever happen with "blockchain", NFTs, and anything crypto-related.
Outside our particular sociocultural nexus, you most often see it with sundry species of MLM grifters, in the tradition pioneered by Quixtar-Amway and widely emulated, well, everywhere that lower middle-class consumer eyeballs go.
It's the difference between investing and day trading. Day traders may get lucky and post massive, envy-inducing gains, but boring long term investors keep building during the downturns that wipe out the day traders, and so win in the long run.
Besides, being forced to live frugally doesn't sound that great to me. You aren't free, you're just constrained by money instead of people. Guess for some people it's worth it, but to me they're just two sides of the same coin. There are many meaningful experiences in life that cannot be had below a certain level of prosperity.
"If you don't learn about every single GPT frontend tool made this week in my twitter thread you will be poor!"
times like these you need to think about the Lindey effect(LLMs, general AI advances) and not the flavor of the month stuff. Similar to software engineering, don't obsess with every new frontend framework, learn fundamentals that will always be useful to know
You're the smarter one, because you're reflecting on who is the smarter one.
You may know one of the ones that made it for real, but I see a lot of delusional hopefuls simply copying what the others are doing and hoping to strike it rich.
This is a really strange way to start an article, because I can tell you that here in small town middle of nowhere America, even the old guys down at the VFW hall are talking about AI. I can't get through a full day without someone at random (at Rotary, in the grocery checkout line...) talking about it. Which tells me there's probably as much "get rich quick" and other "gold rush" type BS happening here as there is good computer science.
LinkedIn discourse hasn't changed since.
There's a pattern developing on twitter (and other socials).
Life coach types, just shill the next big thing.
It was Crypto, then NFTs, now AI.
Wonder what will be next?
The funny thing the biggest export of these hustle guys is teaching other people how to jump on keywords for attention.
(I kid. (mostly))
As an open-source AI developer myself I'm discouraged because anything I'd release would be drowned out by hypebros.
Maybe this is new because your interest/hobby tech is now associated with the "hustle" trend jumpers but it's always been that with with startups so I'm used to it.
Otherwise whining about how low budget social media users "Must be stopped" instead of just blocking/unfollowing and moving on is a waste of life because they aren't going away.
> What they share across platforms and fields is less any particular insight and more a deep and abiding faith in the accuracy and power of a still-developing technology about which not much is known (and where what little is known is often kept secret by the private companies developing it).
2. I think specifically _because_ most people won't understand it at a deep level, and it is still a bit inchoate but with potentially wide scope, it _invites_ influencers who don't know or don't care to know what they're talking about in the same way as crypto, the web, DNA sequencing, or nuclear fission. We were promised nuclear cars and planes, medical care tailored to our personal genetics, a global computer that democratizes access to all human knowledge, and useful and ubiquitous digital currencies. Even when the tech is really transformative, the early pundits aren't going to have an accurate view of what the transformation will look like. And it doesn't help that we didn't hold the line on saying "ML" instead of "AI".
I'd guess the actions of Gary Vaynerchuk wanna-be's are probably not in the top 10.
More likely, we are currently experiencing a calibration phase for a new technology, during which individuals are attempting to gauge others' understanding and interest in it.
Right now, everybody is shouting "You have to look at this awesome thing!!", while in fact others are already aware of it, or even tired of it. Hence the complaints. This will pass quickly.
I have seen this exact pattern with other things like "front-end development", "stocks and investing" and many other topics where there's money to be made by selling something to somebody. It gives the whole of Twitter a cynical, soullessness that's growing by the day.
This need to constantly curate is what made me leave Twitter years ago (well before Musk bought it). It's just too much work too little reward.
This made me curious what the general consensus of LessWrong is outside of LessWrong.
But hucksters on Twitter have been around since well before the acquisition. AI is just the latest snake oil they're selling. Previously it was NFTs, blockchain, dropshipping, 101-level coding 'tips'.
Social media algorithms have always embraced bullshittery. There's a reason why "influencer" is a 4 letter word.
> Many investors lost huge money with crypto; I do not see the same for AI.
Oh I absolutely do see this coming. The difference between this and cryptocurrency is that the amount and scope of the damage won't be as wide-ranging.
News at 6 PM.
