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https://amycastor.com/2023/09/12/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain/>
"Since the buzzword “artificial intelligence” was coined in the 1950s, AI has
gone through several boom and bust cycles.
A new technological approach looks interesting and gets a few results. It gets
ridiculously hyped up and lands funding. The tech turns out to be not so great,
so the funding gets cut. The down cycles are called AI winters.
Past AI booms were funded mainly by the US Department of Defense. But the
current AI boom has been almost completely funded by venture capital.
The VCs who spent 2021 and 2022 pouring money into crypto startups are pivoting
to AI startups, because people buy the idea that AI will change the world. In
the first half of 2023, VCs invested more than $40 billion into AI startups,
and $11 billion just in May 2023. This is even as overall VC funding for
startups dropped by half in the same period from the year before. [
Reuters;
Washington Post]
The entire NASDAQ is being propped up by AI. It’s one of the only fields that
is still hiring.
In contrast, the DOD only requested $1.8 billion for AI funding in its 2024
budget. [
DefenseScoop]
So why are VCs pouring money into AI?
Venture capital is professional gambling. VCs are looking for a liquidity
event. One big winner can pay for a lot of failures.
Finding someone to buy a startup you’ve funded takes marketing and hype. The
company doing anything useful, or anything that even works, is optional."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
