The most successful approach to modern AI has been the data-oriented version. Using statistical learning methods, we have created systems that can recognize, and generate information. While there are numerous benefits to these paradigms as can be seen obviously many new techniques that have become commonplace in daily life, from more accurate recommendation systems to text and image generation systems that make it easier to retrieve human knowledge in a compressed form, these methods are limited in the sense that they depend on human-generated data to be "intelligent". The main issue arises from our understanding of what intelligence requires. Our educational systems have conditioned us to think that intelligence requires the absorption and retrieval of information, and so we have created systems that do these actions to a greater or lesser degree. If this is what we consider intelligence, then the LLMs and image generation systems of today are the totality of what tha...
Unless there is another XEROX PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) moment, we will not see any boom in tech for the next decade or so. I know this sounds pessimistic, but before you get your arrows out, know that I am a programmer who has never worked in big tech, so this issue affects me greatly also. While big tech companies, and many small tech companies following in a copycat manner, are posturing to investors by firing employees, which is a very bad sign for future growth, all this posturing will not result in a resurgence of tech because there is a problem at the roots, of which consequences we are observing now. So what is the deep problem at the roots causing the current destruction of value in the tech market, ignoring the temporary green we see from time to time that pops up in the stock? It is an excessive focus on value extraction and very little given to wild creative exploration. Sometimes too much structure can lead to restriction, tech companies mostl...