Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
AI

AI's Adoption and Growth Truly is 'Unprecedented' (techcrunch.com) 146

"If the adoption of AI feels different from any tech revolution you may have experienced before — mobile, social, cloud computing — it actually is," writes TechCrunch. They cite a new 340-page report from venture capitalist Mary Meeker that details how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history — and uses the word "unprecedented" on 51 pages: ChatGPT reaching 800 million users in 17 months: unprecedented. The number of companies and the rate at which so many others are hitting high annual recurring revenue rates: also unprecedented. The speed at which costs of usage are dropping: unprecedented. While the costs of training a model (also unprecedented) is up to $1 billion, inference costs — for example, those paying to use the tech — has already dropped 99% over two years, when calculating cost per 1 million tokens, she writes, citing research from Stanford. The pace at which competitors are matching each other's features, at a fraction of the cost, including open source options, particularly Chinese models: unprecedented...

Meanwhile, chips from Google, like its TPU (tensor processing unit), and Amazon's Trainium, are being developed at scale for their clouds — that's moving quickly, too. "These aren't side projects — they're foundational bets," she writes.

"The one area where AI hasn't outpaced every other tech revolution is in financial returns..." the article points out.

"[T]he jury is still out over which of the current crop of companies will become long-term, profitable, next-generation tech giants."

AI's Adoption and Growth Truly is 'Unprecedented'

Comments Filter:
  • The hype (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @07:39AM (#65421697) Homepage
    Unprecedented.
    • LOL. It's the Shiny New Hammer Syndrome. Feeling like a nail?

    • More specifically I'd bet the expenditure to revenue ratio of the technology is unprecedented, in a bad way.

    • Hilarious, but also untrue. The first speculative bubble in recorded history was the Dutch Tulip Bubble where people thought the value of tulip bulbs as a luxury item was so high that the price spiked about 2,000% before crashing.

      In 1841, a Scottish journalist named Charles Mackay published a study on crowd psychology called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [wikipedia.org]. It's stunning how relevant this book is today, almost 200 years after it's publication. Much of it's work on the counter

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday June 02, 2025 @07:52AM (#65421707)

    This looks pretty much like the advent of Kurzweils Singularity to me.

    The man was quite accurate with his predictions when it comes to AI, you have to give him that. On a balance of things I'm betting on him. Curiously enough, he is one of the more relaxed experts when it comes to the advent of AGI and predicts it won't be distopia but a paradise. I sure do effing hope he's right on that one.

    • it won't be distopia but a paradise. I sure do effing hope he's right on that one.

      I also lean toward a preference for paradise.

    • Curiously enough, he is one of the more relaxed experts when it comes to the advent of AGI and predicts it won't be distopia but a paradise. I sure do effing hope he's right on that one.

      Looking back at human behavior across a few thousand years of recorded history, does he have any basis for that?

      Just wondering which revolution Greed went all non-greedy and created a paradise.

      Just wondering what the fuck he sees.

      • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:46AM (#65421815) Homepage

        Life is WAY better after the industrial revolution than it was before it.

        People have this fantasy image of what life used to be like, thinking of picturesque farms, craftsmen tinkering in workshops, clean air, etc. The middle ages were filth, you worked backbreaking labour long hours of the day, commonly in highly risky environments, even the simplest necessities cost a large portion of your salary, you lived in a hovel, and you died of preventable diseases at an average age of ~35 (a number admittedly dragged down by the fact that 1/4th of children didn't even survive a single year).

        If it takes people of similar social status as you weeks of labour to produce the fibre for a set of clothes, spin it into yarn, dye it, weave it, and sew it, then guess what? It requires that plus taxes and profit weeks of your labour to be able to afford that set of clothes (and you better believe the upper classes were squeezing every ounce of profit from the lower class they could back then). Decreasing the amount of human labour needed to produce things is an immensely good thing. Furthermore, where did that freed up labour go? Into science, into medicine, into the arts, etc etc. Further improving people's quality of life.

        And if your response is "But greater production is more polluting!" - I'm sorry, do you have any understanding of how *miserably* polluted cities in the middle ages were? Where coal smoke poured out with no pollution controls, sewage ran straight into rivers that people collected water from and bathed in, where people extensively used things like arsenic and mercury and lead and asbestos, etc etc? The freed-up labour brought about by the industrial revolution allowed us to *learn* and to *fix problems*.

        • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @09:16AM (#65421875)

          Life is WAY better after the industrial revolution than it was before it.

          We’re not in the “after” period, now are we? I love how everyone that defends revolutions conveniently skips over that whole transition period of massive disruption and death. As if history paints that period as a fucking honeymoon every time.

          Not to mention most of those industrialists that came about 100+ years ago are directly responsible for considerable amounts of death due to industrial pollution. Radium, coal soot, and asbestos were just those “pesky” parts of the job. Until dead workers started representing that.

          Also, that whole “go re-learn a new trade” advice that was THE only advice for revolution victims, is now extinct in the era of AI. That’s the human mind Greed is after. And you’ve got no replacement.

          I have a lot of confidence in that AI could make things better. I also have every confidence that Greed will not give a single flying fuck about firing hundreds of millions of unemployable humans who need employment to sustain their own survival. I also believe that Greed is far too deaf, dumb, and blind to realize firing your customer base and replacing it with AI, doesn’t magically shit revenue gold all over the stock price. UBI will become nothing more than Welfare v2.0 for the unemployable masses. If we’re lucky enough to even get that. Good fucking luck sustaining the GDP stream of obscene excess with a planet on Welfare.

          • I also believe that Greed is far too deaf, dumb, and blind to realize firing your customer base and replacing it with AI, doesnâ(TM)t magically shit revenue gold all over the stock price.

            I think you're right, but it's actually even dumber than that. Greed is also too dumb to understand that getting yours and getting out only hastens the demise of the entire financial system which underpins the value of what's yours, so the only question is how soon it will happen and how many of the people who made it happen will share the fate of the rest of us, trapped in failing societies that no longer provide for our needs. For every winner who has enough stuff at enough of a remove from civilization w

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          The "Good Old Days", damn were they awful.

          The Inca, possibly the most advanced civilization on the planet at the time, were brought down by the diseases bred in the filth of medieval Europe, where peasants in many areas slept with their livestock and measured status by the height of the manure piled against the wall of the house. It's estimated 70-90 percent of everyone between Point Barrow and Tierra de Fuego died when the European diseases arrived.

          • The Inca, possibly the most advanced civilization on the planet at the time

            What an idiotic statement.

            were brought down by the diseases bred in the filth of medieval Europe

            Brought over by motherfuckers in sailing ships the size of small Inca cities using astronavigation.

            FYI, Carlin was talking about you.

      • Just wondering which revolution Greed went all non-greedy and created a paradise.

        The revolutions that tried to eliminate greed created the worst dystopias.

        Kurzweil is predicting a post-scarcity society, where greed is kinda pointless.

    • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:24AM (#65421749)

      report from venture capitalist Mary Meeker that details how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history

      IIRC, this Mary was making similar predictions back before the first dot-com burst and made quite a few people who chose to listen to her drivel quite poor.

      Her company, Merill or Morgan Stanley, I forget which one, had to shell out a not insignificant amount of money to settle with SEC.

      So please keep on listening to her.

    • The trouble I see with AI is that it's not a singular thing to judge.
      AI in and of itself is a great tool. It can process information much faster and speed up progress in just about any field of science.
      The current (mainstream) AI attempts have the problem of garbage input of data, technology that is still far from what's needed to store and process the data as it should, and the greedy intentions behind the ones hyping and pushing said fundamentally flawed "AI"s onto everyone and everything.

      The few times I

      • It all comes down to what we call AI.
        If we're limiting it to LLMs, then I more or less agree with your assessment.
        If we're referring to non-language models using technology learned from the LLM explusion (evoformers, etc) then it has already changed the face of science.
    • We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca

      Said a wealthy, supremely well-connected, upper class male Roman citizen.

  • "The is still out over which of the current crop of companies will become long-term, profitable, next-generation tech giants."

    Translation: An unemployable planet awaits breathlessly too see which “giants’ will be left standing their holding AI revenue projection charts in their hands wondering where all the revenue went after they fired all the humans.

    No wise man has ever claimed that Greed wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      This is what I think the talking heads and the people who prattle on about trade specialization and stuff fail to understand about AI.

      Real actual intelligence where you'd hire it to be the CEO and not second guess its choice would be a revolution, what we have is an evolution, the AI we have today is never going to be the shot caller. It can't be allowed to do anything of real consequence without some human super vision. Even banal tasks like QC'ing boxes of snadwhich cookies, some process engineer form t

      • by jp10558 ( 748604 )

        I'm a bit confused by why you think producing goods domestically would help much in the future you envision? Maybe you mean as some sort of communist utopia so we have to make it in the country where we set the rules?

        Otherwise I would think economies of scale still make sense... Even if it's all automated, just having less travel time between each stage of manufacturing would seem to save money.

        And OTOH if we no longer have anything to trade (which I'm still a bit doubtful of) then eventually everything wil

  • Because... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FritzTheCat1030 ( 758024 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:09AM (#65421729)
    At no time in the past have corporate execs showed such little interest in whether something actually works before betting their entire businesses on it. Hey, they can get free labor...who cares if it's only 30% quality? What's the worst that could happen? The business collapses and they still get to walk away with millions of dollars?
    • by unami ( 1042872 )
      Seems like it's 70% quality. But when it's wrong, it misses the mark quite obviously. Not like humans who then start blaming others or manage to wiggle through. And, tbh, a lot of employed people only work 30% of their potential. So, I'd rather see AI making tabula rasa with bullshit-jobs first.
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      These were likely the same corporate executives who tried outsourcing their IT, development, and tech support to foreign counties in the 2000's to cut their costs and improve their bonuses. That didn't work out well for most of them. Hell... I'll bet that many of these executives are still trying to defend their decisions to outsource their data centers to cloud hosting providers in the 2010's. Those AWS and Azure bills are getting pretty big, though... time to start using AI agents in the 2020's to try to

    • Re:Because... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @09:54AM (#65421961) Homepage Journal

      Agreed - although I think this time, it's because ordinary people can use AI.

      Going back a few years, "big data" was going to transform businesses, unprecidented, paradigm shift, etc etc. The thing was, no one could just try out "big data" whilst bored at work. They had to guess, then bet big on the idea and see if it turned out any sort of benefit. This created a natural financial separation between those that did, and those that couldn't. Lots of people found they really didn't have much data, and so "big data" was unnecessary for them... the hype went away and people went on looking for the next Big Thing.

      In the case of "AI", any old idiot can try out ChatGPT and because they're an idiot will see all sorts of things that aren't there. They *won't* see the shortcomings, but if they do, they'll wave them away because the benefits seem so enormous. Let's be honest, ChatGPT (et al) are pretty "magical" if you don't think too hard about them - they can tell you stuff you don't know, they can summarise long documents you don't have the attention span to read, and they can make up the reports your crappy job requires you send on a weekly basis.

      As such, because "the normals" are able to try this out (and there's not much need to justify a budget for it), they're hyping it as much as anyone. Had it been left to the techies, we'd have slagged it off months ago.

    • At no time in the past have corporate execs showed such little interest in whether something actually works before betting their entire businesses on it. Hey, they can get free labor...who cares if it's only 30% quality? What's the worst that could happen? The business collapses and they still get to walk away with millions of dollars?

      I’d estimate no more than a 30% global unemployment level before a massively suffering species decides those MOST responsible for that much direct job loss and human suffering, are on the menu and quite edible.

      I imagine they won’t be walking anywhere. They’ll be running.

      To another planet.

    • At no time in the past have corporate execs showed such little interest in whether something actually works before betting their entire businesses on it.

      A direct result of the fact that at no time in the past have corporate execs cared less about whether the business they operate succeeds. Somehow we've got to prevent them from getting paid for destroying other people's livelihoods for short-term profit, or this will just keep getting worse. They get paid to produce short-term gains which cause other people to become unemployed, in a society which treats the unemployed like garbage. Causing people to suffer and sometimes die causes their bank balances to in

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Most business doesn't care about absolute quality anyway, only quality relative to expectations and competition. If everyone uses AI, then the only problem is short-term, expectations need to be adjusted, not products.

      Literally everything we see with AI is propaganda telling you (a) that everyone else is using it and (b) that AI results are the new standard. It's all about forcing AI past this short term problem.

      AI is going to create an opportunity, there will become a market for stuff that actually works

  • by gary s ( 5206985 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:15AM (#65421739)
    AI is growing because people are throwing lots of VC money at the issue. Its popular because its making VC money. To paraphrase "AI scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
    • It's popular with me, I use it in my work as a programmer, and I deliver higher quality code more quickly. I also started writing a book on the side, and I'm not an author, but I still have something to say.
      • Re:AI growth. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:48AM (#65421821)

        I also started writing a book on the side

        Please please please don't be using LLM to generate text for a book you expect people to actually read. All LLMs do to such work is make it mind numbingly more verbose and draining. Every time I see someone use LLM to make "nice text" particularly trying to entertain it's just a whole stream of garbage that could have been more artfully conveyed in a sentence or two.

        I personally can't relate to it helping write quality code, of about 5 functions I tried to use it for over the past little bit, it has gotten every single one of them wrong in some way, though admittedly in one case the wrong answer contained within it a clue about the existence and nature of a step in implementations that was omitted in the standards documentation. Maybe it's more helpful in other domains of programming, but in mine it's been pretty useless. Most tricky was when I tried to use it to describe how to implement a particular security practice, and it was both wrong (it hallucinated an API call that didn't exist) but also the code given incorrectly used it in a way that would have been a security vulenerability had it actually existed.

        • But this is the end-game of AI - so much noise out there that people will start seeking to avoid it.

          Imagine you need a room painted, a painter comes in asks the color scheme and gets to work - you get what you wanted.

          But instead AI enters the room and you tell it the color scheme you want and the AI gets to work - you get a different color on every wall, only one wall is all one color, the trim is primed but not painted; the ceiling is the color you wanted on the walls; and finally, it also put wallpa
        • by allo ( 1728082 )

          Yes, most LLMs are terrible at writing good prose unguided, but you might be able to direct them. The naive approach with nearly every model I've seen results in adjective-laden texts filled with repetitive pseudo-intellectual phrases. However, if YOU want to write a book but struggle to string two sentences together, you can certainly use a LLM to enhance your text without ending up with typical LLM writing.

          Just letting a LLM write without knowing what you want to write about is pointless. If the reader wa

          • by Junta ( 36770 )

            If the length of the output is about the same as the length of the prompt, ok I could see it helping to restructure ugly mess into more acceptable prose.

            But if using LLM as a text extender... Ugh...

            *Maybe* someone likes their fiction to fill up more of their time, but I'm particularly exposed to people trying to take purely informational text and bury that in a sea of slop because it seems "polished" or something instead of just getting to the point.

        • I personally can't relate to it helping write quality code, of about 5 functions I tried to use it for over the past little bit, it has gotten every single one of them wrong in some way, though admittedly in one case the wrong answer contained within it a clue about the existence and nature of a step in implementations that was omitted in the standards documentation. Maybe it's more helpful in other domains of programming, but in mine it's been pretty useless.

          Where I find current-generation AI helpful in writing code is not in writing it so much as modifying it. It's especially helpful when you decide to make some change that requires updating dozens of lines of code over several files. Sometimes such changes can be performed by a simple search and replace, but often you have to examine and edit each one individually. It's tremendously helpful to be able to tell the LLM to go find all the places a change is required and make it. You still have to look at each

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "...but I still have something to say."

        I doubt it. More like you have money to grab.

    • by allo ( 1728082 )

      Science isn't about the why. It's about the why not.

  • You take $10 down to your local Starbucks and they will sell you a Grande Latte. The fact AI service adoption is fast is irrelevant. I read the entire pptx and you know what is missing? Break throughs, societal change, mom & pop putting it to work.

    Because AI can write a term paper or email, don't mean *hit so far. Talk to me when it cures a cancer. extends life, addresses homelessness, or finds a logical follow up to Taco Tuesday.

    If flat earthers and anit-vaxers exist, it is obvious we are too stupi

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      finds a logical follow up to Taco Tuesday.

      Well, I put that one to an LLM and:
      Waffle Wednesday

      So there we go, one of your criteria has been met.

      • finds a logical follow up to Taco Tuesday.

        Well, I put that one to an LLM and:
        Waffle Wednesday

        So there we go, one of your criteria has been met.

        THE SINGULARITY IS NIGH!!!

      • by jp10558 ( 748604 )

        That is the first "OMG - that's actually good" I've had with AI so far.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Here's a particularly horrifying 'breakthrough'. Russian drones are using AI to attack and destroy targets in Ukraine without human intervention, and doing it quite successfully. More successfully than humans in areas where electronic warfare measures are in action.

  • "A bunch of companies forced their users to sign up for basic AI stuff like copilot and they're counting that for some reason" - big corporations, if they'd stop lying to justify why they're dumping their entire net worth into AI.
  • with all the environmental consequences: unprecedented.
    • Scrooge McDuck once said "Work smarter, not harder".

      But instead of improving the systems, it seems that everyone builds a bigger data center and feeds it more power. Spending more to make less is the industry's current AI strategy. xAI is running data centers on natural gas (VoltaGrid) and it's an absolute clown show. But even if data centers are pulling from the grid, they're still running off HFO and natural gas because the infrastructure isn't ready and won't be green as long as Republicans are blocking

    • by allo ( 1728082 )

      AI is minor compared to ... for example fortnite.

      https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.kyleggiero.me%2FIma... [kyleggiero.me]

  • by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @08:44AM (#65421809)

    ... for profitability. I believe the investors are already asking for returns and they are not materializing with generative AI sliding into the "trough of disillusionment": https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fbusi... [economist.com]
    Also, Nadella of Microsoft not being in speaking terms with the CEO of OpenAI is not very encouraging. Microsoft is not seeing a return on the 10s of billions dumped into Energophag Eliza and the shareholders are asking questions.
    To save his own skin Nadella has recently implemented massive layoffs at Microsoft, in order to recoup some of the cash.
    It looks like a lot of people have bet massively on AI which is being pushed on the users at every opportunity. The potential users are not asking for it, it is being pushed on them.
    If the AI bubble goes like the dot com bubble I believe a lot of politicians will be very grumpy with their personal fortunes greatly reduced.
    In the meantime, what happened to the blockchain? It was all the rage only 3 years ago.

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      In the meantime, what happened to the blockchain? It was all the rage only 3 years ago.

      The Ethereum blockchain's "Merge", switching from proof of work to proof of stake, freed up all the GPUs for the generative AI boom.

    • ..In the meantime, what happened to the blockchain? It was all the rage only 3 years ago.

      BlockChain is dead. Long live ChatBrain!

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday June 02, 2025 @09:05AM (#65421841) Homepage Journal

    Every new revolution is faster than the one before, because faster development of technology leads to more developments in technology... faster. It shouldn't need to be said, but apparently it does, because people are still surprised by it.

  • On its effects on education, where hallucinations are equivalent to Wikipedia's vandalism except it can't be reverted. No internet source can ever be trusted again, unless it was write protected before 11/30/2022. (The day ChatGPT launched).
  • I remember a decade where we went from most people rarely use an online service for communicating (be it AOL or the Internet). To email being a daily habit and we all suddenly realized that we are connected more than ever before. The telephone still reigned supreme, especially mobile phones, but in a matter of years; thousands of Internet businesses rose and fell. The Internet went mainstream and very, very commercial. By the mid-2000's we saw the merger of Internet habits and mobile phone habits in some ve

    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      They don't necessarily need to replace people to be profitable.

      If costs keep coming down and they can license to companies access for something like $1,000/seat/year (maybe more for more capable models), that's serious potential.

      I know it'd certainly be worth that much for me where I work, but concerns about data leak prevent its usage.

  • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @09:58AM (#65421983) Homepage
    And bubbles always dry out.
  • as the claims made about ai
  • In light of the "adoption rate," I want to make it clear that Google has recently hijacked anyone's phone using their Assistant product and switched it to Gemni.

    It can be gotten rid of, and you can return to using Assistant. I'm not going to post a tutorial. I asked Gemni, which I found to be deliciously ironic. It gave a deceptive answer on the first prompt, so I refined my prompt and it finally said "Good News! You can go back to using Assistant," and then proceeded to give me an inaccurate process, but e

  • Hey, Microsoft Office also just stealth turned on Copilot for me! When it launched, it asserted itself in the ribbon in Word. I turned the icon off. No interest. I am an expert writer.

    Apparently a lot of people did the same, because...

    Today, there's a little gray "Draft with Copilot" icon that appeared in the margin as I was typing. Right clicking on it gave no options to get rid of it. I went on a what I thought would be a fishing expedition in options. It was easy to find. There was a "Copilot" tab. It wa

  • If all the big tech companies force it onto everyone.

    Look at the office 365 bullshit where they stealth upgraded everyone to an AI tier subscription. And then they put AI behind buttons & screens that didn't used to have AI, and suddenly, all office 365 users use AI.

    And all the other tech companies are going for the same strategy. So yeah, if you literally force it down everyones throat, i'm sure it's fastest adoption ever seen.

    What that adoption actually means seeing the practices of the companies forc

  • So says a venture capitalist with his money on which bet? AI is just the current phase of the Computer revolution which began in the early late 40s. It's been happening for a while.

  • by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @06:49PM (#65423327)
    There are so many hallucinations whenever I use LLMs, it's a wonder why people are pushing these. It's like they need something new to jangle in front of consumers to make themselves feel relevant. I don't need this AI, thank you.

Nothing is faster than the speed of light ... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on.

Working...