- 2 hours
These technologies are not grifts.
The way they are often employed is absolutely a grift.
Blockchain is a very cool concept. Getting people to pay $1,000 for a picture of a cat and imply that it has value because it’s on a blockchain is grift.
Ai is a cool technology. It has become a grift because the companies behind it are sucking up massive investor dollars, destroying the worldwide computing parts market, and persuading managers to axe jobs promising the AI can take their place.
If quantum computing actually starts to work some of it will be used for grift because many current encryption schemes could potentially be cracked using quantum computers.
- 2 hours
The picture wasn’t even on the blockchain. It was a url which links to a picture of a cat sitting on someone else’s server
- 1 hour
Was it even that or just a hash of the url (or whatever text/data was being “confirmed”)?
- 15 minutes
It was some sort of hash system. The blockchain didn’t want to store large amounts of data on the chain itself so it would store some sort of hash of the image file and as I recall a pointer to a server where that file was located.
The whole thing was totally fucking stupid but people poured tons of money into it
- 3 hours
The first two are grifts and I have yet to see anyone say quantum computing is going to be a grift anywhere, so because of your other comment I’m going to assume you’re just someone who likes crypto and AI and are mad that people are pointing out how they are grifts with huge environmental and social problems
- 34 minutes
FOSS isn’t a “new and emergent technology”. The OSI was founded in 1998. Richard Stallman started the FSF in the 80’s.
- 6 minutes
By that metric, llms aren’t new either and the blockchain was invented in 2008.
None of them are a grift. They get used by financial traders for performing grifts, but the grift was and always has been stock market manipulation. AI is incredibly useful and many competent engineers now use it effectively. I expect the bubble of anthropic/openai will pop once local or on-prem models get better.
- 7 hours
All technology from this point on will be a grift, because the grifters have all the power.
- Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
I’m learning more and more that blaspheming against predominant gospel on lemmy isn’t worth the effort.
- 57 minutes
Yet you are doing it right now. Curious.
- turning point USA or something
- 7 hours
None of these technologies are a grift per say, the economic system we use to develop them and the marketing needed to ensure funding under the aforementioned hellscape are a grift.
- 9 hours
Nah they’re not inherently grifts; they’re pushed by grifters making money off the back of them.
I think Lemmy users are more likely to call these grifters out for what they are, because the user base has proportionally more technically minded people who understand what the technology is. Lemmy users have to an extent self-selected themselves into the fediverse. On other social media the absolute number of technically minded people will be higher but the proportion of technically minded people is much lower, so the voices are drowned out by those who don’t understand he technology and it’s limitations. And of course the grifters target those platforms with a lot of propaganda, because ultimately it’s about selling shares and inflating share prices.
Anyway to answer you question, CRISPR gene editing is revolutionary and will have major impact. Nuclear Fusion despite it’s slow emergence will also be revolutionary. Immunotherapy is an ongoing revolution; it’s not a quiet revolution but it’s also not getting the general focus it probably should be as AI appears to dominate the current zeitgeist.
We are actually living through extraordinary times; AI is a part of it but AI seems to be the bit getting most of the attention because we’re in the middle of a stock bubble driven by AI speculation.
- 5 hours
At this point, the only thing that wouldn’t be a grift is a proof that P=NP, so that we can break all DRM effortlessly.
- 11 hours
I don’t see why put quantum computer in that group.
It’s a scientific research topic. It is know what it does and what it doesn’t do. And they are not selling you it’s going to be the future.
It’s just a developing technology which have potential to make some algorithms more efficient than binary computation.
They don’t sell you quantum computation, they don’t tell you to invest in it. It’s just something being researched by computer scientists.
Let’s not be that much anti-any-kind-of-progress, shall we?
- xyguy@startrek.websiteEnglish2 hours
I agree from the standpoint of research for research sake is still worth doing but anyone telling you that they have a working quantum computer that is just around the corner from working is most likely grifting.
- megopie@beehaw.orgEnglish5 hours
Quantum computers are a thing, and they’re very useful for certain things…
But business idiots in the tech world do be slapping the word “quantum” on stuff. It’s not a huge thing at the moment, but it’s probably gonna be the next insufferable hype cycle after they get tired of branding random shit as “AI enabled” because they stapled a chat bot on to it.
Like, give it a few years, someone will be trying to tell you that a quantum computer will somehow make a vacuum robot able to do your laundry because “something something better path finding”
- 10 hours
Quantum computers are more secure but could also be used to break that security. That’s why the major customers of quantum computers are banks and governments. It is not really for wide mass consumption. Although I heard quantum chips are better and more environmentally friendly but i am not a tech guy so i could be wrong on that or the quantum chip itself.
- 8 hours
but could also be used to break that security
Not really, unless really stupid encryption was used. The best quantum can do is the log of a problem space. It can do log(N) if the problem space is N.
- chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish7 hours
I mean it’s definitely something that companies are trying to sell. Even if it’s just marketing BS right now, they’re using this to sell their LLM products.
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/majorana-2-microsoft-discovery-agentic-ai/
- 7 hours
They are not selling that to end users or business.
That’s a line of product for research purposes.
They sell that to people researching quantum computer.
6 hoursHow about Mullvad advertising quantum protection or whatever?
- 5 hours
What?
Post quantum encryption algorithms are the ones that any serious company should use right now.
Because one of the algorithms that it’s stated to be far more efficient on a quantum computer than a binary one are number factorization, which is the bases of many public private enceyption algorithms like RSA.
Right now it’s not possible, but listen now decrypt later means that anything encrypted now might be decrypted in not so many years by a quantum computer.
They are not selling you a quantum computer, they are “selling” the algorithm you should be using if you don’t want your communications to be easily decrypted when a quantum computer with a higher number of stable qbits hits production.
Those algorithms are, anyway, public and well know, like parabolic curve algorithm or lattices. You could implement them yourself, any company can do so.
- 11 hours
I am not against any of the tech i listed, i think they all are neat and quite interesting to study and use.
you have probably not been around the forums to realise why i put it there, QC discussion these days are leaning towards the it’s a grift/ it will never be viable territory. This is mostly in large part due to M$ and their claims. there is also some subtle fear mongering going on with the recent push towards quantam resistant encryption standards.
So i am not calling QC a grift, I am calling out that whenever it becomes viable for the companies that are researching it to rent their computers to consumers, people will start calling it the next grift.
- 8 hours
Maybe you’ve mistaken criticisms of the MS claims for criticisms of quantum technology in general?
- 2 hours
The renewable energy industry. The tech is good and getting better rapidly. Costs continue to drop, consumer grade solar is becoming widely accessible.
- 6 hours
This to me is the most exciting thing. And not just solar, but also modular nuclear power, fusion power, battery tech. The PRC is at the forefront of this green revolution.
- 10 hours
I agree. No matter how much a technology will eventually be useful, it’s always turned into a gift beforehand, then there’s the collapse and only after that it settles into a reasonable thing.
See: the dot-com bubble
- 15 hours
+1 for stating that the technologies themselves are not the grifts.
LLMs are fantastic tools. Quantum Computing will have meaningful uses.
The grift is the marketing and the dumb C-Suites that fall for it.
To answer your real question though, I need an AI that will actually convert a basket of dirty laundry into a stack of neatly folded clean clothes. That shit will be revolutionary.
- 14 hours
To answer your real question though, I need an AI that will actually convert a basket of dirty laundry into a stack of neatly folded clean clothes.
I mean we have two machines that together convert a basket of dirty laundry into clean clothes. And then by appeal to authority (“There’s no law that says I have to fold my clean clothes.”), voila! It’s done.
- 5 hours
Unacceptable. Pathetic. Is that the best humanity has to offer? Some brutish, crude machine that just agitates my clothes in soapy water? And a second machine that just blows hot air on it as it spins it?
No.
I should be able to put my dirty clothes in a receptacle, and say “Hey,
Robot OverlordGoogle. Start clothes cleaning cycle” and when I return the clothes are separated, cleaned, and neatly folded. At a minimum. Really the clothes should also be put away in my dresser by the AI.
