I’m not much of an AI skeptic compared to most on Lemmy. I think the technology is incredibly useful and probably beneficial to society if we can remove the control of the ruling class.

That said I truly don’t understand how the AI business model is supposed to work. I’m sure there is some market for businesses, governments, etc., basically people who have too much money who may want to pay for the latest and greatest models.

But I don’t really see the average consumer doing this when slightly less good versions will almost certainly be available for free. And the above customers will not be able to support the level of investment that’s going on right now.

technology is incredibly useful and probably beneficial to society

For what? It’s not reliable enough to actually automate anything and people that use it regularly inevitably stop checking the output and start falling victim to hallucinations. It’s pretty good at rifling through social media posts which I don’t think is good for society and it’s OK as a frontline support system but even that they normally go too far and just make it infuriating

It doesn’t need to fully automate anything to make people more productive. And I think there’s ample evidence it can greatly increase productivity in some fields. We’re in the bumpy phase of finding out how much human supervision is needed in each field so you’re bound to hear about ways it has been misused but everyone I’ve talked to who uses it professionally thinks it helps them get a lot more done than without it.