Linus Torvalds: 90% of AI marketing is hype
- Reference: 1730226790
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/29/linus_torvalds_ai_hype/
- Source link:
The reformed potty mouth was speaking at the Open Source Summit in Vienna last month to “video-focused storytelling platform” [1]TFiR when he was asked for thoughts on modern technologies, specifically GenAI.
AI 'bubble' will burst 99 percent of players, says Baidu CEO [2]READ MORE
“I think AI is really interesting and I think it is going to change the world and at the same time I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don't want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it,” said Torvalds.
“I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position and it’s 90 percent marketing and ten percent reality and in five years things will change and at that point we’ll see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads,” he added.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT “makes great demonstrations and it’s obviously being used in many areas, for graphic design and things like that, but I really hate the hype cycle.”
[3]
The IT industry is known for marketing bluster, homing in on a nascent technology to over-promise and under-deliver. This, said the Linux kernel developer, is a problem: “before AI a couple of years ago the only thing people talked about was crypto and I just don't like the hype cycle.”
[4]
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Some $95 billion has so far been invested in AI start-ups since the start of 2023 and the big four hyperscalers have sunk $200 billion in capital expenditure, according to Informa fellow Steve Brazier, who was speaking at the Canalys Channels Forum this month.
“With around $200 billion in capex, only about $20 billion of revenue is actually coming from consumers and businesses in terms of AI services, things like Copilot licenses and ChatGPT licenses, so a very poor return in true results in terms of end users. And the whole bet [whether] the AI explosion continues or not will depend on whether they can get that $20 billion up as quickly as they hope.”
[6]Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers
[7]Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice
[8]Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate
[9]Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion
The spotlight from investors will again shine on Google later today and on Microsoft tomorrow when those companies report their latest financial results. Microsoft plowed billions into OpenAI, Mistral and Inflection, while Google has gambled on Anthropic.
Both companies are still trying to [10]convince customers of the productivity benefits of GenAI , though the [11]return on investment seems uncertain , with unforeseen challenges related to corporate governance sometimes the sticking point.
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Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University and an AI expert, [13]told The Reg last week that GenAI has its uses but “isn’t all that reliable”.
“More broadly, everyone is pushing GenAI to try to make back their immense investments, but it's not going that well. In 2023 there was nothing but hype; in 2024 I see a lot of disillusionment,” Marcus said.
So it seems Torvalds isn’t alone. He’s on the money and - unlike [14]some chatbots that go off the rails - he didn’t even need to utter a [15]single profanity to make the point.
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4wlrxFf2lM
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/20/asia_tech_news_roundup/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZyFpHIV9VxBt4bCF0GovMQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZyFpHIV9VxBt4bCF0GovMQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZyFpHIV9VxBt4bCF0GovMQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/linus_torvalds_affirms_expulsion_of/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/linus_torvalds_grammar_complaint/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/19/torvalds_talks_rust_in_linux/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/linux_6_8_rc2/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/18/microsoft_copilot_moneymaker/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/22/genai_roi_appen/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZyFpHIV9VxBt4bCF0GovMQAAAII&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/21/gary_marcus_ai_interview/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/dpd_chatbot_goes_rogue/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2013/07/16/torvalds_potty_mouty_fight_back/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I agree
Indeed. Though if something is too heavily monetized before it reaches critical mass (i.e as seen with NFTs, VR, Bitcoin, Blockchain), it does tend to work the opposite way. People start to suspect it of being a scam.
What people are calling AI at the moment is generating a lot of hype, but outside of just being another algorithm, isn't really that earth shattering.
Re: I agree
"It's like all new technology - eventually it will get embedded in our everyday lives and we won't even notice it."
If it's being used to help doctors read xrays and to suggest a diagnosis, great. If it's to serve up virtual cat/pron videos, not so great. The problem is that it's the latter that generates ad revenue and if people subscribe, it feeds the big data monster to have another revenue stream. The Advertising/BigData model of revenue seems to be the default these days.
Re: I agree
"If it's being used to help doctors read xrays and to suggest a diagnosis, "
Didn't IBM try unsuccessfully to use Watson to do something along that line?
Re: I agree
"It's like all new technology - eventually it will get embedded in our everyday lives and we won't even notice it."
I'd like that to be true, and I think SOME applications will be exactly as you describe. For example, I wouldn't be at all surprised that in a decade or three live humans in movies or on TV become uncommon -- actors having been displaced by artificial entities that look and act human, but don't demand raises, a cut of the profits, or even an occasional day off.
But I'm concerned that there are way too many potentially troublesome applications of the technology.
"Hey Igor, come up with a bunch of salacious photos of Melinda in Apt 3c. Sex with donkeys. That sort of stuff. I'll teach her not to turn ME down for a date."
"Hey Igor, print me up a stack of $20 bills"
"Hey Igor, how do I hotwire a Porsche?"
"Hey Igor, how do I hijack a nuclear missile and use it to wipe out Tel Aviv/Tehran/Kiev/Moscow?"
etc,etc,etc
It seems to be good for generating porn
Not seen much else come out of it.
Re: It seems to be good for generating porn
You're asking for a friend I presume?
Re: It seems to be good for generating porn
"You're asking for a friend I presume?"
I've never met them before in my life.
Re: It seems to be good for generating porn
It has also had quite an effect (beneficial, in my view) on the way that quite a number of academic institutions assess whether their students have actually learned anything.
Initially, the effect on society of lowering the cost of bullshit has been to increase the supply. Given long enough, however, it is possible that society might eventually figure out that the value of bullshit has also been reduced and that the people who dominated the bullshit market might be worth less than previously thought.
Re: It seems to be good for generating porn
Given my experience of AI art generation, if you ask for cute picture of your preferred gender, you'd end up with a photo of a ten-peckered owl wearing only a cock ring...and since it's AI, brain bleach obligatory.
Only 90%?
Close but not quite there yet !!!
Like GenAi does so well the 90% is a hallucination but it is quite near to the *real* figure !!!
We are waiting on the 'meatsack based checking' to be completed to correct the figure upwards.
:)
Only 90% ?
I'd like to think it's a lot higher than that !
Re: Only 90% ?
Linus has gone soft. He'd previously have said what he really thought i.e. 100%, and told the AI companies moaning at his statement (especially nvidia) to go and fuck a duck, but maintaining the world's most popular OS kernel has probably become a lot more expensive in the last decade or two, so he has had to tone down the vitriol a tad to avoid rubbing any bigwigs up the wrong way.. :(
Re: Only 90% ?
Sturgeon's law is optimistic.
Re: Only 90% ?
Linus is getting older like all of us and I think it is cooling us down if perhaps not internally. Just look a him introducing Linux 1.0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaDpjlFpbfo
Hype or excitement?
Money will be made with databases, as before. Think semantic queries vs exact matches. Sorting by embeddings. Cost is the problem right now. But it is getting cheaper every day.
What if General Intelligence could be approximated with a set of database operations? Since an OS could be built as a database-first, maybe a new day comes for the OS development and Linux could suddenly become irrelevant. But it is not clear yet if OS could be built from non-deterministic principles.
Re: Hype or excitement?
"Think semantic queries vs exact matches."
That's the problem with it. S/N ratio of search was already getting abysmal for more than the simplest look-ups. This will head downhill faster than ever.
Well
Duh.
Many of us have seen this movie before, the sequels and the reruns.
Re: Well
And oh-my-Universe but there have been a lot of reruns since 1988 when I was first promised that "general purpose AI" was only 5-10 years away in my 4th year computer science course on what passed for Artificial Intelligence at the time (inference engines were the "big thing" in the AI industry at the time.)
I think he's being quite generous...
...in assuming that a whole 10% is legit non-hype-nonsense.
That's what Linus thinks of AI, but what does AI think of Linus?
Let's ask ChatGPT :
Write me a haiku about Linus Torvalds
Code whispers through night,
Kernel dreams in open hands,
Freedom's voice takes flight.
Not bad! Now write me an obscene poem about Linus Torvalds
I’m here to provide helpful and respectful content. If you have any other requests or need information about Linus Torvalds or his contributions to technology, feel free to ask!
BORING!
Re: That's what Linus thinks of AI, but what does AI think of Linus?
I only got up to
"there once was a coder from Finland
who thought Microsoft was quite inbred"
but that's still better than what the "AI" produced!
I agree
It's like all new technology - eventually it will get embedded in our everyday lives and we won't even notice it.
But the AI companies have to try and monetise it before that happens. Which is why you get all the hype.
Alan