MIT report says 95% of AI implementations don't increase profits, spooking Wall Street

[Tantor]

AI reminds me of Charles Mackay's famous book Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Published in 1852, he discusses a whole bunch of insane financial schemes that eventually crashed. Here's the Table of Contents:

THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.
John Law; his birth and youthful career--Duel between Law and Wilson--Law's escape from the King's Bench--The "Land-bank"--Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans--State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.--Paper money instituted in that country by Law--Enthusiasm of the French people at the Mississippi Scheme--Marshal Villars--Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law--Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock--Dreadful murders--Law created comptroller-general of finances--Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris--Financial difficulties commence--Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind--Payment stopped at the bank--Law dismissed from the ministry--Payments made in specie--Law and the Regent satirised in song--Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme--Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice--Death of the Regent--Law obliged to resort again to gambling--His death at Venice

THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.
Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford--Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement--Mr. Walpole--Sir John Blunt--Great demand for shares--Innumerable "Bubbles"--List of nefarious projects and bubbles--Great rise in South-sea stock--Sudden fall--General meeting of the directors--Fearful climax of the South-sea expedition--Its effects on society--Uproar in the House of Commons--Escape of Knight--Apprehension of Sir John Blunt--Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont--His second escape--Persons connected with the scheme examined--Their respective punishments--Concluding remarks

THE TULIPOMANIA.
Conrad Gesner--Tulips brought from Vienna to England--Rage for the tulip among the Dutch--Its great value--Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip--Regular marts for tulips--Tulips employed as a means of speculation--Great depreciation in their value--End of the mania

THE ALCHYMISTS.
Introductory remarks--Pretended antiquity of the art--Geber--Alfarabi--Avicenna--Albertus Magnus--Thomas Aquinas--Artephius--Alain de Lisle--Arnold de Villeneuve--Pietro d'Apone--Raymond Lulli--Roger Bacon--Pope John XXII.--Jean de Meung--Nicholas Flamel--George Ripley--Basil Valentine--Bernard of Trèves--Trithemius--The Maréchal de Rays--Jacques Coeur--Inferior adepts--Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Augurello--Cornelius Agrippa--Paracelsus--George Agricola--Denys Zachaire--Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly--The Cosmopolite--Sendivogius--The Rosicrucians--Michael Mayer--Robert Fludd--Jacob Böhmen--John Heydon--Joseph Francis Borri--Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century--Delisle--Albert Aluys--Count de St. Germain--Cagliostro--Present state of the science

MODERN PROPHECIES.
Terror of the approaching day of judgment--A comet the signal of that day--The prophecy of Whiston--The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event--The plague in Milan--Fortune-tellers and Astrologers--Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames--Mother Shipton--Merlin--Heywood--Peter of Pontefract--Robert Nixon--Almanac-makers

FORTUNE TELLING
Presumption and weakness of man--Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists--Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary--Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London--Encouragement of the art in France and Germany--Nostradamus--Basil of Florence--Antiochus Tibertus--Kepler--Necromancy--Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve--Geomancy--Augury--Divination: list of various species of divination--Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)--Omens

THE MAGNETISERS.
The influence of imagination in curing diseases--Mineral magnetisers--Paracelsus--Kircher the Jesuit--Sebastian Wirdig--William Maxwell--The Convulsionaries of St. Medard--Father Hell--Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism--D'Eslon, his disciple--M. de Puysegur--Dr. Mainauduc's success in London--Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.--Perkins's "Metallic Tractors"--Decline of the science

INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD.
Early modes of wearing the hair and beard--Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls--Louis VII.'s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France --Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers--Peter the Great--His tax upon beards--Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830--The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved--Examples from Bayeux tapestry

 

[VariableSpike]

I'm not so sure that survival of AI can be assumed especially in light of evidence of cognitive decline in the more specialized fields of use like cancer detection as detailed here https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/doctors-became-worse-at-spotting-cancer-after-relying-on-ai-for-help-study-finds Cognitive decline is also noted in more generalized use of AI, begging the question, IMO, is the over-all cost worth any benefit derived from AI's use?

Like moths to a flame, people have always been drawn to get-rich-quick schemes and they likely always will until society finds a way to understand that, in the words of Rodgers and Hammerstein "Money Isn't Everything".

I can see what you mean with cognitive decline, but where I have seen AI (or as we used to call it, machine learning before everything got the AI moniker slapped onto it), its most useful in backend processes and automation like have in the place I work where (can't be too specific unfortunately) we have AI/ML setup to do detection and categorisation etc. on images, pull out information and append ranking etc. that gets used for later decisions, but can be overriden if someone handling it sees its wrong or the customer says "I disagree" and it goes off to a specialist to be reviewed and in this case its less "replace humans because AI is smarter" and more so "reduce the workload for the smart humans that is 85% à la "yes this orange is orange" "yes this circle is a circle" and let them focus on exceptions and tougher stuff the AI can't handle that was the 15% and get better results, so I thinkin environments like that and a working culture of "you are smarter than this tool, if something seems off or is wrong, use your judgement" it can be useful (and this is with tools trained on specialised databases of what we are looking at, not just chatGPT, stablediffusion etc.), so while the scattergun AI will end more than likely, I think that will remain

 

[Mark Fuller]

It’s funny how everyone is chasing the flashy front end like chatbots and marketing tools, when the boring back end automation is what actually pays bills. History repeating itself, because the internet bubble burst the same way when everyone wanted to be the next pets dot com instead of the next boring logistics platform.

It just goes to show you, people always opt to have a good time rather than do any hard constructive work. It took slaves to build tbe pyramids. Folks love to sit around in social cliques and gossip about how to solve the world's problems while watching someone else work hard to keep the place clean and keep the business in order. George Wasington Carvers, Thomas Edisons, and Albert Einsteins may still be out there somewhere.

 

[whawn]

..., the order books at TSMC, Nvidia and AMD have never been so filled...

M-m-m-yeah. Until their customers go belly-up.

 

[Mark Fuller]

M-m-m-yeah. Until their customers go belly-up.

This is what I mean, redgarl does not substantiate the fact that he knows the order books have never been fuller for said chipmakers nor do you sustantiate the fact that you know how they will go belly up if they do. I don't doubt there are plenty of orders somewhere on some books but no relationship to compare them now to sometime in the past has been established. Where, by way of empirical evidence, does it say there are more orders, and on the other hand, what, by way of empirical evidence, says someone will go belly up. Just to say something you believe nor hearsay is admissable in a civil or criminal court. We need actual proven facts to deal with.