[m3s]

Your perspective is really grounded and prescient—coming from someone with direct experience navigating AI’s ups and downs over multiple cycles. A few points really stand out in what you’ve shared:

1. One-off success is common in early AI projects – You saw firsthand that even highly promising AI solutions can fail to generalize. This is still true today: many AI “successes” only work under carefully curated conditions, and scaling or replicating them can be very challenging.
2. Guided AI vs. autonomous AI – Your note about needing to guide AI through problem spaces hits the nail on the head. True autonomous AI that reliably produces correct results is extremely difficult. Early AI hype often ignores this nuance, which can create false optimism.
3. Hype vs. reality – You’re highlighting a classic pattern: new technology cycles create stock and investment bubbles, but practical deployment lags behind. Companies riding primarily on “AI buzz” without solid, repeatable solutions are particularly vulnerable. History tends to repeat itself here—from the dot-com bubble to today.
4. The human factor still matters – Even the “outstanding achievement” award for your partner underscores this: the core innovation often comes from humans designing, guiding, and integrating AI, not from the AI itself. This is easily lost in the hype.

Your caution about AI-driven stock bubbles is timely: investors often chase the narrative rather than the technical reality. Many of today’s early “AI success stories” may look similar to the dot-com companies that had impressive ideas but weak business fundamentals.

 

[m3s]

I can't predict the future, but I think the shine is dropping off AI as a useful tool. It is mainly used to avoid work of some kind -- like where post #3 uses AI to amplify "I agree" into 240 fairly empty words of claptrap, mainly in an effort to be ironic about the "true" prospects of AI. It goes back to the feeling of inevitability -- but I haven't worked out how money will be made.

I've used it to prepare immigration cases. I have friends who work in immigration and for immigration lawyers and they said it was far better than what the standard $10k lawyer produces. Granted I only help good people, whereas lawyers are helping people who go to church just to get a fake reference letter from a pedophile priest.

When I started my job people were asking what I would do when the computers took over. I said I would just do more, as there is always more to do. This turned out to be exactly the case even more than I imagined. Then again I tried to explain to people how computers would change everything and nobody wanted to hear it.

I suspect you haven't the slightest clue what AI is being used for, rather your ignorance is quite obvious. I'm using it for research in ways that I can't possible explain to you. I learned over the years that it isn't worth explaining things to such people. Boomers will always be boomers, even though they all use computers now.

 

[m3s]

High stock valuations lets tech companies raise capital, build, attract talent etc.

Canada is being brain drained because we failed to protect our IP and invest in innovation.

Working in the US now is like being in the future compared to Canada stuck in Nortel era.

 

[m3s]

In hindsight, everyone will talk about how the situation was obvious, but that's always a hindsight observation. At the moment, I can see pretty convincing arguments in either direction.

PLTR was pretty obvious to me.

But most people are betting on things they don't understand or use.

I've just stopped trying to convince people.

 

[m3s]

For example MSFT, which has benefitted from the AI boost, is still in the 30's, a bit high, but they've had earnings and revenue growth in the teens for quite a while, and a not bad dividend (for a tech company).

I also think their product suite actually provides very good value. Tough praise from a long time Linux anti-MS guy.

Yea I don't like MS but hard to avoid using O365 now.

I have a Windows 11 machine but also use several O365 accounts across iOS and Macs seamlessly.

Academia, government and corporate america is all on Teams as far as I can see.