Linus Torvalds reportedly grimaced as labelled the current state of the AI market as “90% marketing and 10% reality.”<p>“I think AI is really interesting, and I think it is going to change the world," he noted, "and, at the same time, I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don’t want to go there."<p>"So my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it because I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position," Torvalds added, "however, it seems like there is almost too much AI BS around for the Fin to tolerate."<p>https://www.techradar.com/pro/linus-torvalds-slams-ai-as-90-percent-marketing-and-10-percent-reality
Linus being generous - it however is actually 99% marketing, one percent reality.<p>- The text output generated by LLMs is immediately recognisable, is not reliable enough that you hand it over writing wikis on any legal, technical or financial aspect.<p>- Code examples generated by LLMs CANNOT work without supervision and review of an experienced engineer.<p>- Outputs of various image models and their generated artwork is immediately recognisable no matter if it is in YouTube thumbnails or blog posts. For any serious work, you need a human designer to design the marketing websites etc or you are guaranteed to be not taken seriously by anyone.<p>Upside of this AI spring (after a long winter) are mostly in text to speech and speech to text which are not perfect but very useful in many domains.
Pretty obvious thoughts? Modern internet society tends to oversell everything of small interest tenfold.<p>Idk why exactly he hates the hype cycle, but for me it is the complete unsearchability of the topic. You can’t find anything because everyone shills, sells, shills again. Stupid tutorials, handwavy explanations, all sorts of obsolete copypasted recipes, “startups”, spam. We are an absolutely obnoxious kind for the internet and you can’t do anything but join the damned hype until it dies down. I hate the word and everyone who rides it with all my soul strings. A planet of apes.
I think Linus is correct, and demonstrating his new abilities with diplomacy with his phrasing.<p>Take a look at what the Metaverse bubble has left us vs what it cost, in direct dollars and in lost opportunities to pursue other goals.<p>this cycle of AI is as bad or worse. at least the leftovers when the bubble pops are going to be more generally useful than the VR detritus. Getting the Cult of CurrentThing to stop mindlessly objecting to power generation is a big win; but i doubt they've secured that long term.<p>Leftover nvidia vector processors may have legitimate uses after they get scrapped from the big AI places, too.
According to ChatGPT:<p>"Some estimates suggest that a significant portion—perhaps 30% to 50%—of what you see in marketing claims about AI may be exaggerated or overly optimistic. "<p>My own estimation is that is on the low side.