alt Hacker News"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different.
Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no technology in history with these curves.
The real debate isn't whether AI is transformative. It's whether current investment levels are proportionate to the transformation. That's a much harder and more interesting question than reflexively citing a phrase that pattern-matches to past bubbles.
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The problem is in the middle of such a change it's hard to recognize if this is a real change or if this is another Wankel motor.
Plenty a visual programming language has tried to toot their own horns as being the next transformative change in everything, and they are mostly just obscure DSLs at this point.
The other issue is nobody knows what the future will actually look like and they'll often be wrong with their predictions. For example, with the rise of robotics, plenty of 1950s scifi thought it was just logical that androids and smart mechanic arms would be developed next year. I mean, you can find cartoons where people envisioned smart hands giving people a clean shave. (Sounds like the making of a scifi horror novel :D Sweeney Todd scifi redux)
I think AI is here to stay. At very least it seems to have practical value in software development. That won't be erased anytime soon. Claims beyond that, though, need a lot more evidence to support them. Right now it feels like people just shoving AI into 1000 places hoping that they can find an new industry like software dev.
> Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12)
You're comparing a service that mostly costs a free account registration and is harder to avoid than to use, with devices that cost thousands of dollars in the early days.
> 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12).
There's another perspective you can see in the comparison with the dot com boom. The web is here to stay, but a lot of ideas from the beginning didn't work out and a lot of companies turned bankrupt.
> Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years
Source?
The four technologies I look at are 3D televisions, VR, tablets, and the electric car. 3D televisions and VR have yet to find their moment. Judging tablets by the Apple Newton and electric cars by the EV1, this time is different turns out to be the correct model looking at the iPad and Tesla, but not for 3d televisions or VR (yet). So, it could be, but my time machine is as good as yours (mine goes 1 minute per minute, and only forwards, reverse is broken right now.), so unless you've got money on it, we'll just have to wait and see where it goes.
> The real debate isn't whether AI is transformative.
No, the debate is very much whether AI is transformative. You don't get to smuggle your viewpoint as an assumption as if there was consensus on this point. There isn't consensus at all.