The topic of AI has come up in a lot of different threads, so I figured I'd make one here as a place to discuss (and learn!).

Please keep political BS out of this so the thread doesn't have to get nuked. 

I am pretty deeply involved in AI activity as used in large corporations. I do consulting in AI implementations in FinTech for several large (fortune 500) companies and experiment with all things AI at home to stay up on the latest tech.

First, you hear the term "AI" tossed around in all sorts of ways, but there are very different types of AI that have very different implications.  Generative AI, agentic AI, Function specific AI and so on.  The list of applications is pretty much limitless. But it also comes with significant cost and dangers, and I think people in general are getting pretty worried about some of the implications of what is happening with AI.

My take on where we are right now with AI is that it's very similar to the dot.com bubble in the late 90's.  The technology and promises of what it can do are undeniable and real.  At the same time, it's the wild west and the landscape needs years to really settle down so we can figure out what adds real value versus what is waste of resources.  There's pretty much unlimited spending right now on AI (companies like OpenAI have insane valuations as a result).  Companies like Meta, Alphabet, Anthropic are in mad dash to stake their claim in this space so they spend hundreds of billions on data centers and infrastructure, but in reality most of them are still trying really hard to conceptualize how to monetize this stuff.   Yeah, having a little helper in your phone that can translate, compose emails and such is great, but how much would you be willing to pay for that?  Right now it's all "free" because companies are pushing marketshare gain over everything....  But that will change. 

Make no mistake, the cost of the data centers, energy and so forth are MUCH higher than what you pay for it (in most cases, it's pretty much free for end users right now). But companies are willing to eat those losses to try and gain marketshare.  There's no doubt about it AI is the cheapest it will ever be.  As the space matures, you'll see the $20 monthly OpenAI plan go to $30, then $50, $100 and so on, just like cable TV did.  And at some point consumers say "yeah, ai is cool and useful, but there's a limit on how much I'll pay for it each month".  

Obviously there's going to have to be a lot of things worked out in terms of social guardrails, legal frameworks and on and on, but that will get sorted out.  Some things are absolutely here to stay, while other AI stuff is more like "hey, that's great, but I wouldn't really pay for it".  I honestly don't think it's hyperbole to say that within 5 years or so there will be no humans doing any actual coding.  The SaaS-pocalypse is evidence of that - companies like Salesforce, Workday, Adobe are making money hand over fist, but their stock is getting crushed for the past year because people in the tech space know that the software as a service model is pretty much dead at scale because of the capabilities of AI that are being developed now.  Other things like AI generated slop images and fake youtube shorts?  That's going to get way more expensive to create (it's not a coincidence that OpenAI is shuttering Sora), that kind of stuff is going to be limited to those who want to spend money on it rather to everyone who want to generate AI slop content for free.

Anyway, sorry about the long post, just wanted to start somewhere.   Got comments? Lets hear them.  Got questions?  I'll be happy to help, and hopefully we can all learn something in the process.