Absolutely needed: to get high efficiency for this beast … as it gets better, we’ll become too dependent.
“all of this growth is for a new technology that’s still finding its footing, and in many applications—education, medical advice, legal analysis—might be the wrong tool for the job,”
Historically AI always got much better. Usually after the field collapsed in an AI winter and several years went by in search for a new technique to then repeat the hype cycle. Tech bros want it to get better without that winter stage though.
Each winter marks the beginning and end of a generation of AI. We are now seeing more progress and as long as there is no technical limit it seems that its progress will not be interrupted.
The spice must flow
Historically “AI” still doesn’t exist.
Technically even 1950s computer chess is classified as AI.
That’s part of why they installed Donald Trump as the dictator of the United States. The other is the network states.
The issue this time around is infrastructure. The current AI Summer depends on massive datacenters with equally massive electrical needs. If companies can’t monetize that enough, they’ll pull the plug and none of this will be available to general public anymore.
This system can go backwards. Yes, the R&D will still be there after the AI Winter cycle hits, but none of the infrastructure.
We’ll still have models like deepseek, and (hopefully) discount used server hardware