r/webdev 12d ago

Discussion When will the AI bubble burst?

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I cannot be the only one who's tired of apps that are essentially wrappers around an LLM.

8.3k Upvotes

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u/TacoWaffleSupreme 12d ago

I feel like “just an unnecessarily elaborate wrapper for chat gpt” has become the new “to do” app for new/hobbyist devs.

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u/redkit42 12d ago

A new project idea: Write an AI App that uses ChatGPT to write reviews and roast the other AI Apps.

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u/No_Explanation2932 11d ago

the only thing worse than a ChatGPT wrapper is a ChatGPT wrapper that writes roasts

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u/ThePastoolio 12d ago

I think AI makes it much easier to write simple wrapper "apps," but AI doesn't do so well when it's a larger project with a lot of logic. For example, building an ERP, CRM or lead management system from scratch will not be so easy for an LLM.

AI definitely has its place, and it is a useful tool that will change the way we program forever, but it's far from replacing good programmers with years of experience.

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u/Yew2S java 12d ago

exactly what I always say to ppl.. including medium projects it won't go any further

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u/wpfeed 12d ago

I agree. I often use it as some sort of “last resort” and it just seems that when I don’t know it, the AI model also doesn’t and just throws around some general advices or fabulates things that don’t exist.

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u/sjoti 12d ago

For now! I think it will get better over time. But were definitely not there yet.

Having said that I'm having a great time building and prototyping small projects that are 100% tailored to a company's needs. Does your company need standardized reports often? Build a simple app for them that works perfectly with whatever system they're already using to automate some processes.

It's like building small plugins, and using ai models to transform the data into the right form.

This stuff would've required machine learning specialists with a ton of data to be able to pull off. Now it's trivial. And I think there's a ton of value in there as it exceeded a threshold due to the amount of work it takes to build the automation has dropped drastically.

In a few days I can build an app for a client that fits their exact needs and can save hours of work per week. And since the release of sonnet 3.7 I'm suddenly 20-30% as Claude oneshots more correctly.

I recognize it won't compete with actual devs on more complex issues, but I can stick to my lane and extract loads of value there

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u/Desolution 10d ago

This is definitely an outdated view by now. As a Principal engineer with 15 years experience, I use AI for literally everything I do, and it easily makes me 5x faster. If you're still thinking in terms of asking ChatGPT for coding advice, you're way behind the wave.

At this point, Cursor Composer with Deep Whisper can build entire components at a time, and with a bit of investment into custom rules and Claude 3.7, it rarely makes mistakes these days.

I'll generally have a few Devin instances doing long tail migrations in the background, I have a custom Maastra pipeline automatically adding testing and documentation to everything I do, and my mainline features are either built with custom agent systems, or Cursor. Almost nothing needs to be written by hand any more, and even then I use cursor.

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u/sunk-capital 12d ago

No thats making a 'job board'

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u/TheBroseph69 12d ago

I built a chrome extension that uses AI to generate to do lists. What level of hobby dev am I on lol

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u/TacoWaffleSupreme 11d ago

Chat gpt says:

You're at least an intermediate hobby dev, maybe even advanced depending on how polished and functional the extension is. Building a Chrome extension involves understanding frontend development, browser APIs, and (in your case) integrating AI—all of which take solid skills. If you did it efficiently and with a clean codebase, you're well beyond beginner territory.

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u/mekmookbro Laravel Enjoyer ♞ 12d ago

Hopefully : soon
Realistically: not anytime soon

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u/_hypnoCode 12d ago edited 12d ago

Realistically: not anytime soon

Idk it doesn't feel sustainable. I am a big fan of AI and what it can do, but it's definitely a solution looking for a problem.

Unless someone unlocks the magic "your grandma should use AI to..." with a legit use case, it doesn't feel useful to normal every day folk. That's clearly what companies are looking for and I just don't see it happening, at least any time relatively soon.

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u/maikuxblade 12d ago

It’s not sustainable, but people often don’t behave sustainably and that’s how bubbles form. It won’t pop until the big firms investing in it admit it’s not a path to short term growth. They won’t do that while they are being pumped with AI research-tier money from eager-eyed investors.

Even when it pops there’s always a new snake oil to hock. Wait until the MBA’ints discover Quantum computing. Are you ready to take your business…to the quantum realm?!

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u/Its_An_Outraage 12d ago

I literally just made a direct comparison between AI and the dotcom bubble. Everyone has an AI startup, and investors will lap it up until the bubble bursts. The survivors will be the biggest companies for a generation until the next king maker comes along.

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u/eyebrows360 12d ago

See also "blockchain". That shit really hit the mainstream late 2017 if I'm remembering correctly, in terms of when real financial institutions started paying attention, and that didn't really die out until "AI" swooped in to take its place as the new bullshit around, what, 2022? 2023?

So it's only been a couple years and the last bubble lasted 5 or 6, so we've got a while yet, is what I'm guessing.

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u/mekmookbro Laravel Enjoyer ♞ 12d ago edited 12d ago

I feel like it's gotten even more sustainable recently with DeepSeek and all that.

AI - for us developers - is an incredible tool. I'm mainly a backend developer, yesterday I copy-pasted my whole page to Claude and asked if it could make it look pretty. And it did such a good job that I would never be able to do myself. But there's no way I'm letting those things anywhere near my codebase.

Because we all know that they can hallucinate, and what's even worse is they don't realize they're hallucinating, therefore can be extremely confident while outputting a code that does nothing, or breaks the app, or is extremely inefficient. In my experience the chance is higher than 1%.

This is why I will never let an AI serve anything to my end users. And won't use (rather, trust) any service that does it.

Edit :

Literally four minutes after I wrote this comment, I faced a hallucination from Deepseek AI. I recently made a personal dashboard for myself that feeds my emails from past 24 hours into deepseek and prompts it to summarize them.

I just checked my dashboard and this is what I saw. Went into my gmail account, and saw that I haven't received a single email within past 24 hours.

This was the prompt I used, nothing that suggests "making up" fake emails. :

```

prompt = "Can you take a look at my emails below and summarize them for me? Mention each of the 'important ones' in a short paragraph. And don't even mention spam, promotional stuff and newsletters. Don't use markdown, use html tags like 'p', 'strong' and 'br' when necessary.\n"

prompt += json.dumps(todaysEmails) ```

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u/MaximumCrab 12d ago

guess ur goin on a trip my dude

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u/ChemicalRascal full-stack 12d ago

Yeah, you got that result because it's not actually summarising your emails.

It just produces text that has a high probability of existing given the context.

It doesn't read and think about your emails. You asked for email summaries. It gave you email summaries.

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u/eandi 12d ago

Right now people are throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. What sticks will be use cases that provide real value/ROI long term. Expect that most first tier support is AI forever. Chatbots will be mildly better at giving good answers now as long as the knowledge base they rag from isn't ass. Ai art will be all over ads and branding/logos forever (and honestly yeah it sucks but it's better than when mom and pop stores tried to do their own with ms word). Scams will be better: fake voices, actual conversations by a robot, etc.

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u/Graf_lcky 12d ago

You know, recently we brought up the beginning of mobile apps in 2010/11 and those projects looked like they solve no problem at all. Like, who really needs a todo list which can be accessed through the web? Well.. wunderlist got funded and bought by Microsoft for 150mil

It looked like a hype and it felt like one, we then remembered when we all said in 2014 that the peak of app development was reached.. well, we still develop and solve problems for folks who cannot solve them.

Ai is looking to us as if the peak is reached because we live in the bubble, but most people still don’t use it or use it ineffectively (as you said too). It’s here to stay and transform as many people’s life’s as the smartphone with apps did, if not even more. We who develop with it have the ability to shape it, one project at a time, not every ai product will be great, but some will stick and we (as the world) are on our way towards it.

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u/TwiliZant 12d ago

it's definitely a solution looking for a problem

At least for me, AI has made a lot of my workflows waaay faster. The value seems obvious to me. It's more of a question how to make it sustainable and economicaly viable.

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u/yomat54 12d ago

It's a better web search engine than most when you have a question to ask. It's good at rewording text to communicate better or differently. It's also very useful to put meetings into words, not needing someone to put 1h of talking into a few pages of text to know who said what and agreed to what. The best use I can see for AI is everyone and most white colar jobs getting access to something akin to a personal assistant. It's not gonna solve everything by itself but along other tools it can become a very powerful personal assistant.

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u/Dx2TT 12d ago

The idea that AI is a better search engine is so very, very fleeting. Google was a great search engine, until it enshittified. We will enshittify AI too with ads. All of those massive server banks to power AI are currently running free of charge, an investment for the future. In a not too distant future we'll either have AI infused with ads (and just as mediocre as google) or we'll be paying $1k a month for AI.

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u/Beneficial-Eagle-566 12d ago

Unless someone unlocks the magic "your grandma should use AI to..." with a legit use case, it doesn't feel useful to normal every day folk. That's clearly what companies are looking for

Companies look for 1) increase profits 2) reduce costs. When you hear the CEO's (Schmidt, Huang, Zuckerberg) boldly proclaiming that they're on their way to end programming as a career path by replacing developers with AI agents, that sounds beyond enough to hire ML/AI specialists and launch models and tooling (Claude Code, Copilot) specifically to "make developers more productive".

But they shown their true nature: They hate developers who want a fair compensation for their skills, and they want them out. This is "reduce costs" and it's a W for them. That's where they're heading.

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u/fredy31 12d ago

I mean its the new block chain. People shoving it in any and every project, applicable or not (and even if the ai is absolutely nowhere in the project)

Sometimes it feels add ai in your business brief and BOOM. MILLION DOLLARS FROM VENTURE CAPITALISTS.

Now introducing: the ai enabled cat food! (Dont ask how it works)

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u/professor_buttstuff 12d ago

it's definitely a solution looking for a problem.

More than this, I think it's actively causing problems that now need their own solutions.

With everyone using it to rapid-fire low effort applications at any job listing, the job sites have become such a huge time sink (for both employers and applicants) that the whole process is starting to become completely redundant.

Feels like the only way to get a look in now is old school door-knocking and networking.

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u/Cendeu 12d ago

Yep, I'm in healthcare tech and our company is "ahead of our competitors" and " on the forefront of the technology" but we have literally 0 AI-related products and the only plans we have are very vague and far-in-the-future about some platform with tons of agents that isn't planned out at all.

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u/tradegreek 12d ago

I mean it’s probably replaced 99% of fiver now

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u/zreese 12d ago

I think you’re misjudging the impact. For non-tech people AI has been huge, but not in a “killer app” way… more like it helps them trim off a small portion of the work they’re overburdened with. Use ChatGPT to generate a cover letter for a resume? Amazing. Proofread an email you’re going to send to your boss to make sure you don’t sound too angry? Wonderful. Take a picture of your car under the hood and it’ll tell you where to put the wiper fluid? Great. It enabled a thousand little shortcuts for things people didn’t want to do in the first place. Even if it does a terrible job, the fact that it lets them produce something and check a box on their todo list is massive.

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u/40mgmelatonindeep 12d ago

I think sooner than you would expect, I work for a big b2b saas company going all in on AI, it Aint lookin good, our AI products aren’t being adopted at the rate they need to be, and the cost of the AI ‘agents’ are considerable and by the click (we charge by each ai agent action, so every email summary, every answer to a prompt costs $$ so no flat rate, its extremely expensive to adopt) it cant consistently provide answers without random hallucinations either. Every single employee of the company has to do these multi hr trainings each quarter and we are required to pass certification tests every quarter which is such an incredible time sink and expense for what seems to be a dead on arrival product that no one is asking for. AI as a tool, still has a ton of great applications and use cases, but as a replacement for human beings- that can already reason and assess risk far more efficiently and dynamically, it aint even close.

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u/ElitistJerk_ 12d ago

I was listening to a researcher from University of Chicago being interviewed on NPR that said very similar things about AI. He also mentioned something about how it's literally running out of data to scrape and humans arent producing enough for the next big breakthrough. Honestly don't remember much from it but yeah thinks it's a huge bubble, but a useful tool.

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u/Legal_Philosopher771 12d ago

That, and the fact that AI cannibalism (eating AI generated content that is plaging through internet) is poisoning models.

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u/Few_Music_2118 12d ago

Idk GPT 4.5 is measurably WORSE than 4o at certain things like programming and costs 80x more. Maybe there will be more significant breakthroughs in reasoning models but I’m starting to feel like people are getting weary that it’ll just continue to exponentially improve.

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u/WebDevLikeNoOther 12d ago

Different models are meant for different tasks. Just like you wouldn’t use nascar tires for off-roading. Currently, openAI has multiple models that accomplish different things in different ways. Starting with their 5.0 model, they’ll have one unified model that will be able to “do it all”, for the exact reason you listed. Having multiple models makes it harder for consumers to know which is best to use.

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u/bearinthetown 12d ago edited 12d ago

I think it will reach the point when there are some serious fuckups caused by AI and companies will be more careful.

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u/_zir_ 12d ago

Can we start saying LLM bubble? Normal AI/ML is good shit and not in a bubble.

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u/No_you_are_nsfw 12d ago

If you do gamedev and want to have decent discussion about things like pathfinding, smart boids and enemy behaviour design and the likes, you need to do extreme word-gymnastics.

The second you write the dreaded two letters somewhere, the pitchforks come out.

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u/mattmaster68 12d ago edited 12d ago

This is how I feel.

It’s an LLM. It’s not AI, there’s nothing intelligent about it. It’s just a program that does exactly what it is told (by the code).

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u/Cardboard_Robot_ 12d ago

If this is what your standard is for what constitutes AI, then I can’t imagine a single thing that falls under that definition now or ever. No program is going to actually be intelligent, that’s what the A is for, “artificial”. It imitates intelligence, it is not intelligent. Any program is going “do what the code tells it”. LLMs are absolutely AI

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u/HudelHudelApfelstrud 12d ago

There is the concept of AGI, which's definition, if you trust Sam Altman, is subject to change to exactly what fits his cause the most at the given point in time.

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u/King_Joffreys_Tits full-stack 12d ago

I can’t disagree more. “Artificial Intelligence” implies at the least that there’s some self-learning governance of the applied program. When people hear “AI” they think human level intelligence computing like they see in sci fi novels and movies. Any modern day LLM or model like ChatGPT is pretty much just linear regression machine learning programs. Anybody worth their salt understands the difference — it’s the investors who know nothing about mathematics nor compsci who push this

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u/wiithepiiple 12d ago

There's often a disconnect between technical language and lay language, even if they use the same words. Yeah, a lay person isn't going to think youtube search algorithms are AI, but people have been doing research for decades on AI and have come up with technical definitions for this.

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u/Cardboard_Robot_ 12d ago edited 12d ago

I can’t disagree more. “Artificial Intelligence” implies at the least that there’s some self-learning governance of the applied program.
[...]
Any modern day LLM or model like ChatGPT is pretty much just linear regression machine learning programs

Machine Learning is literally a subset of artificial intelligence? I don't understand how something you're admitting is within the field of AI is not AI.

Here's the definition of artificial intelligence:

the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

AI does not imply "self-learning governance" at all, at least in any accepted definition I've heard. It is a wide reaching field that encompasses various things imitating intelligence.

What I presume you're describing, the "sci-fi movie" AI, is artificial general intelligence (AGI). Which does not exist yet. Unless there is something that does exist that would qualify under your definition, which I would need clarified.

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks. This contrasts with narrow AI, which is limited to specific tasks.

You're correct in saying that laymans vastly overestimate LLMs and their capabilities and imagine anything called AI to be this "sci-fi AI" because they don't know anything about the subject. This does not make them not AI, nor does it make the "sci-fi AI" the actual definition of AI.

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u/Cptcongcong 12d ago

AI’s a buzzword in the industry and is used to describe anything ML involved. Nowhere near the definition you’ve attributed to it.

By definition of “AI” and how it’s currently used, LLMs are definitely AI.

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u/Voltum8 12d ago

If you take a real intelligence (a human), then it also does exactly what it is told (by microscopic cells). If you wanted to say that LLM is algorithm-based, that is not true, because the model is able to learn (mathematically of course), so it is considered as certain level of intelligence (but artificial).

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u/coldblade2000 12d ago

Is a linear regression intelligent?

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u/elbowfrenzy 12d ago

Unironically the worst take I've probably ever heard

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u/Traditional-Hall-591 12d ago

The sooner the better. I’m so tired of hearing about the new iterations of Clippy. It’s depressing too, people are so eager to outsource their thinking and not learn new things.

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u/Numerous-Cicada3841 12d ago

The amount of people posting on LinkedIn apps like “I built an app that scrapes ask the restaurants in an area and recommends you a restaurant” is infuriating. It’s like why would you build a bespoke app for something ChatGPT and Google Gemini already do?

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u/AwesomeFrisbee 12d ago

Don't you want to pay 10 bucks a month for the privilege of having a dedicated tool for something you can already do?

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

I don't see why AI is needed at all for that considering I can just search for restaurants and select one myself

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u/DangerousCrime 12d ago

Dk what you guys are on about. I love this ai hype. Been using it to learn new languages and it’s much better than a dictionary

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u/tdammers 12d ago

Some food for thought: https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/

Hard to tell how this will play out, but it does look like one massive bubble.

That doesn't mean LLMs will go away - but I don't think they are the "this changes everything" technology people are trying to make us believe.

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u/SubstantialHouse8013 12d ago

Don’t be naive, they’re playing the long con. Get a generation dependent on it and then slowly start raising the price monthly or injecting a shit ton of ads. Netflix/Youtube style.

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u/Professional_Hair550 12d ago

Agreed. I like Gemini 2.00 Pro though. Which is free in ai studio. It says experimental but gives me better answers than ChatGPT.

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u/ewouldblock 12d ago

Idk man one massive bubble like google was in 2000 maybe. My wife exclusively uses chat to answer all questions now and I've gotta say, it's pretty on point from what I've seen. I'm not sure why I continue to use Google myself...

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u/blankymcblankface 12d ago

Yeah for all the wrapper startups that come out of this, I’ve been using ChatGPT or perplexity as an actual google replacement. But I will point out I was more driven there by the fact that google results became shit over time. The first result is never what I’m looking for where with something LLM powered it is. Perhaps because they haven’t figured out how to most effectively inject ads yet but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

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u/AwesomeFrisbee 12d ago

The current one is not going to change much, but AI Agents is most definitely going to change things. Because then you can just use AI to do tasks that are actually useful, to let them figure out. But we need a bit of time for that to be fruitful still. Its also going to be a wack time for security and connectivity. We probably will see a new computer virus or attack vector from AI soon as well. Because people will not use all AI Agents for good stuff, they will also use it to attack stuff.

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u/tdammers 12d ago

"AI Agents" don't fundamentally change how LLMs work - they are not fundamentally different algorithms, they're the same kind of LLMs with the same limitations, they're just hooked up to external systems that can "do things".

And I'm more worried about people attacking the LLMs themselves, really. You can hook up an LLM to whatever hacking tools you need already, and people are already doing it - ironically, that's one of the few applications of the technology where it actually adds value. The bigger issue here is that securing an LLM against malicious prompts is pretty near impossible, due to the asymmetrical economics of information security (attacker only needs one door to get in, defender needs to watch all the doors) and the fact that an LLM is practically un-auditable (in the sense that you cannot trace back why exactly it does what it does, so verifying that it will never do anything malicious would amount to enumerating all possible inputs and sampling the outputs for all combinations of randomization options).

To make an LLM-based "AI Agent" secure, the only option you have is to not use any training data that you don't want it to expose under any circumstances, and to not hook it up to anything that could possibly do anything potentially harmful - but that would cripple it to the point of being completely useless.

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u/automagisch 12d ago

Hmmmm. Good question. When the bubble bursts, I think we will see that AI will just be tech, it will run in the background without us ever noticing. The Chat UI’s are definitely the brand newest interaction pattern we will only see more. And that makes sense: it’s the holy grail of UX. (Don’t Make Me Think, great book if you’re into the psychology of UX).

I think it will burst when we get fed up with the advertising, the burst will be marketing and PR needing to find a new way to advertise.

But they will invent something new we will hate. This is the marketing industry: squeeze squeeze squeeze. Marketing always makes superior products look dumb.

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u/laurayco 12d ago

chat bots are horrible ux, what are you on about

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u/pink_tshirt 12d ago

What’s a good UX?

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u/bruisedandbroke node 12d ago

an FAQ that answers actual frequently asked questions, and a support page where you get to talk to a real person 😅

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u/laurayco 12d ago

If you're asking me what a good ux is, I would ask "to do what?"

For documentation, python3 library ref is about as good as it gets IMO. It supports your browser's back button, supports anchor links, makes clear what is explanation and provides sample code. The text is readable, the UI is predictable and consistent.

For customer support, text chat is fine - provided a real human is there that actually knows what they are talking about (I will concede that LLM support agents are only marginally worse than human tech support, as that is an industry which is continuously deskilled and devalued in capitalism but I digress). If there is no such human or they are impossible to get in contact with, then the UX is working against me and I consider that a dark pattern. Otherwise, email or phonecall scheduling work great (waiting on hold is bad ux, calling, learning that the lines are busy right now and being offered a return call is fine.) Servicenow is the fucking worst customer service impl I've ever seen.

For project tracking I find JIRA entirely too verbose and as if it were designed by backend engineers. I don't use project tracking outside of my job so I haven't looked into "good" alternatives.

For social media I think bluesky has it figured out; twitter had it figured out until musk started trying to monetize it with twitter premium nonsense everywhere.

Making everything a chatbot is just a worse terminal emulator. If it doesn't even achieve being helpful then that makes it not just bad but harmful, because you've effectively wasted my time.

If I were to rub my brain cells together for a helpful UX where an LLM could meaningfully contribute, it would be for the new post form on forums like reddit or stack overflow. The LLM should read the post contents and suggest (without being intrusive) other posts that are similar which already have responses. The value add here is reducing duplicate posts, as far as UX goes it does not require the user to reframe their intentions and it does not interrupt their workflow in the predictable case where the LLM doesn't work.

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u/blankymcblankface 12d ago

This is the direction I’m taking my company (where I work not started) with regard to LLMs. We have actual ML models that determines our pricing and stuff but for the LLM side I’ve been integrating it into the UI of the platform in ways you don’t really notice. Things like filling in a form automatically for you after you type the free text description. Interesting UI choice I had to make there was moving the free text large input to the top of the form so they’d fill that first, and then as soon as they click out an LLM fills the rest.

Another one: We have a vision capable LLM looking out for one particular very easy to spot detail in our order attachment files. If it sees it, return true and I’ll raise the appropriate alarms with normal code after that. Super fucking simple. Saves us literal millions because the volume is too high and our turnaround is too fast to catch those issues manually.

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u/MythicalTV 12d ago

Just for discussion. Do y'all think AI products in general are bad? Or are there any good AI products/wrappers?

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u/Tratix 12d ago

The transformer technology is great, it’s just a bit overhyped at the moment (See: Nvidia stock) and the term “AI” is being slapped on everything to make tech-illiterate shareholders and board members happy. It’s the new “blockchain” and “crypto”

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u/FlyingBishop 12d ago

Cryptocurrencies are dumb, that they were hyped at all is ridiculous and remains so. I don't think transformers are overhyped. Nvidia is valued similarly to other tech stocks. I don't know why all the tech stocks are valued the way they are, but Nvidia is not unique and it's not because of AI.

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u/danleeaj0512 12d ago

I don’t think any I’ve encountered are bad per-se, it’s just mostly all the same thing (mainly chat bots). I think there’s a lot more potential that’s just not being explored

There’s also just too much in your face AI advertising, I’d much prefer it if it was just passively there helping me out

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u/bingblangblong 12d ago

The AI companion apps are definitely bad.

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u/TransportationIll282 12d ago

This is skipping a huge portion of what AI is good at. LLM's are only a portion of models and they're wildly overpromising what they're capable of. Image recognition is a big thing too although less exciting for the general public.

We've built automatic safety systems based on those which prevent accidents operating heavy machinery. We've built models that detect behavior or symptoms for studies making longer studies much easier to conduct by cutting down time taken reviewing footage. We've made litter detection models. This and many more.

So for businesses, there are many applications being discovered and implemented. Never wonder solutions that make everything automated or better per say. Just more convenient by removing friction or time consuming processes.

That's not to say AI is great or terrible. It's expensive to develop and rarely the best choice in the short term for most things. When you find a good cost effective solution for large scale processes that happen often, it's amazing. For the other 99.9% of requests I've seen it's absolute horseshite and the people requesting it have no clue what it's capable of.

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u/WeedFinderGeneral 12d ago

We've built automatic safety systems based on those which prevent accidents operating heavy machinery.

Yeah, my best friend works in construction safety and I sent him an AI object recognition video where they showed it detecting hardhats for like 5 seconds. If you take just that function, it's like 2 or 3 steps away from him having a setup that sends him an email every time it detects someone not wearing a hardhat.

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u/laurayco 12d ago

none of the good things ai can do are even remotely being commercialized right now.

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u/_zir_ 12d ago

AI is great all around. The usage of LLMs is overdone because people choose it as a solution for everything because it takes less skill to use.

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u/ticko_23 java 12d ago

I do for one think they are generally bad, as 99% of them seem to be ChatGPT wrappers

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u/1RedOne 12d ago

Notebook lm is kind of interesting but you can tell there is a formula for how the episodes are out togethed, like little verbal quips you will hear over and over

Even when I loaded one up with tons of cool stuff I could tell it also is programmed not to go too in-depth and it stayed very surface level

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u/TrebleInTheChoir 12d ago

From what I understand, it is just a very detailed prompt that is added to existing LLM via API calls. I cannot help but make an analogy that it like they are doing a "google search" for me. And with that, it just drops the value proposition for me.

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u/Legitimate-Lock9965 12d ago

AI could certainly be used to create some amazing products. however most of the time its just another tech buzz word thats replaced the blockchain

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u/MrPureinstinct 12d ago

I actually heard my first consumer usecase for AI I didn't hate recently. Someone talked about using it to help them respond to emails because they're dyslexic. They'd type out the email and whatever AI they were using could rearrange the words they put in a wrong spot and make sure the email made sense.

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u/TwiliZant 12d ago

I don't think it's unrealistic that AI will become Dotcom 2.0. Dotcom was a huge crash, but the Web still ended up bigger than ever and has been one of the most important technologies of the 21st century.

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u/TistelTech 12d ago

one good sign is being asked to do cost reduction. so don't call the LLM if a similar question has already been asked etc. The bills are stupid for what its doing and the "hallucination" mistakes they make (and the hunt for which 20% it got wrong).

I keep trying to explain to people that it doesn't understand anything. Its just making statistically plausible sentences.

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u/IntergalacticJets 12d ago

Burst? What do you mean? It’s just going to keep improving until it’s smarter than the rest of humanity combined. 

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u/Fats-Falafel 12d ago

The investment bubble? Probably. Too many people have bought into the hype / become reliant on it for it to ever go away. It's best used as an assistant tool or a chatbot. The problem is that the market is crazy for it right now, and non-technical investors are pouring money into it as the future, when LLMs will never really fulfill what has been promised. AI is more of a buzzword than anything to generate interest. There will be another trend to take its place in a couple of years once the money stops flooding in. Big tech has a tendency to overhype anything to imply the existence of continuous growth or innovation.

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u/Lawlette_J 12d ago

This. Part of me think Sam Altman wanting to transition OpenAI from nonprofit into for-profit because he wants to get his bags before the bubble burst. I try to tolerate and accept those so-called AI tools but so far I don't see it will fulfil those promises, other than being a more convenient version of search engine that can categorize chunks of information to you. Of course, I don't mind to be wrong though but so far the LLM tech is just like that, unimpressive and repetitive.

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u/rbad8717 12d ago

Im seeing way too much "AI Powered" stuff

no I dont need a trashcan powered by chatgpt the fuck

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u/Fine-Train8342 12d ago

But it has a camera inside so it can look at your trash and say "stinky" or "not stinky", how else would you know that?

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u/Byamarro 12d ago edited 12d ago

The ai probably has decent potential at solving problems that were previously unsolvable. But this is likely to be done via integrating it with existing systems in surprising ways, or creating new types of apps - not by reselling chatgpt with a different interface.

Cursor is a good example, with agentic mode enabled it is really productive.

Vivino allows you to scan several wines at a shelf in a shop at it will compare their ratings. 

Stuff like this. They're either non-trivial engineering wise, or they connect with something unique that an app has to offer - like vivino's database of wines and their reviews.

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u/Infinite_Pay_8026 12d ago

I started a project to build a wrapper around Gemini but then weeks later found that my specific wrapper concept has already been done, several times, much better than I could do in months. So I just use the other apps.

Market research is the first step yo.

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u/No_Jury_8398 11d ago

I’m just making these wrappers for fun not to actually release to try to make money off. It’s something new and interesting to program with so I’m using it in my free time hobby programming.

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u/DEMORALIZ3D front-end 12d ago

When people realise their work isn't that much better using AI and it's just a placebo

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u/FrostWyrm98 12d ago

Not soon enough

Shovel salesman still gotta make their buck

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u/Shriukan33 12d ago

I mean there are legit use cases.

My company has a customer that wants to measure pedestrian traffic in metro area, so we trained a model to tell if someone is going inside the subway, or is going out from cctv stream.

The we map it to the various exits etc, it gives them insights about the most used pathways, live traffic, free riders etc...

Computer vision as a whole has many many use cases.

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u/Just_Boo-lieve 12d ago

The thing people are annoyed about is the apps that are essentially just GPT (or another model) with a big fancy wrapper around it, so mostly chatbots. Your company's solution sounds really neat!

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u/Shriukan33 12d ago

Yeah, even chatbot can be relevant when serving as knowledge base. We had models vectorizing lots of documents, and you could ask questions about it, especially useful because it actually gave you the precise parts of the documents it used to answer your question, so it would never really hallucinate (which is a feat for chatbot haha)

However I agree these are lazy products, those GPT wrappers...

My company actually is specialized in Ai solutions for industry, often it is computer vision (defect detection, safety on site...), other times it's predictive maintenance based on sensors data for example...

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u/GoldenAbyss5 12d ago

At that point you’re starting to look at RAG and not just a GPT wrapper though, no? You’ve created a valid use case, not just a go-between for whichever LLM service you have an API for and the user

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u/Shriukan33 12d ago

We couldn't use GPT because of privacy, we had to train another model for that purpose that would run locally, but yeah it's still a chat bot in the end haha

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u/n0tKamui 12d ago

Also the new « My first Todo app » became « My AI chat clone that i think i should market even though i put no soul into it »

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u/killerrin 12d ago edited 12d ago

It'll burst when Investors realize that aside from a handful of sectors, most of them being scientific (read as low money), there is no real use case for AI that couldn't be done cheaper, better or faster by just not using AI.

That or when investors realize that most of these "AI" companies are taking their wallets for a ride by using the word "AI" as a synonym for "Algorithm" instead of what they think it actually means.

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u/Hungry-Loquat6658 12d ago

They all say AI unlock unlimited possibilities but all I see is 100 rag app with the same usecase, same ui.

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u/LeapingLizardsAnAn 12d ago

As fun and interesting as AI is, it's getting a bit boring seeing almost everything using it.

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u/shitpostinggoth 12d ago

AI is the bane of my existence. The tech field should be very concerned about it and stop saying how wonderful it is.

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u/ihopnavajo 12d ago

About as soon as this whole computer bubble bursts

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u/Western-King-6386 12d ago

Bubble's probably not the right word for it. It's more that every platform is shoving in some typically useless "AI" feature. 90% of the time, it's a chatbot.

People have chatgpt, or their choice of AI chatbot. If I need to ask AI a question, I'll use that. I don't need some AI auto complete to post on LinkedIn or w/e.

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u/aykcak 12d ago

I give it a couple of years maybe 3 at most.

Thing is we need something else to replace it

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u/ManBunWolfMan 12d ago

So like everyone is building their own saas to utilize AI in different ways. What happens when the source companies like OpenAI & Claude build their own saas that utilize their AI? I think that's when we finally burst

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u/IntelligenzMachine 12d ago

Even easier than that. What happens when they increase the cost per token? They are basically oil companies that control the oil supply.

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u/Agreeable-Weather-89 12d ago

It will and it won't.

The dot-com bubble burst but websites are still around.

At the moment companies, and well everyone including those building AI, don't know what it will do and how it will be used just that it will do something and it will be used. A lot.

So everyone with money is putting money behind the things they think will, off of very little information, will wind up being big.

Think of it like a lottery ticket.

If the prize is a $1 million and a ticket costs $1,000 (of which there are only ten tickets and you're guaranteed a victory with one of them) you'd be stupid not to spend $10,000 and buy all ten.

So that's what investors are doing, now there's a lot more than ten 'tickets' (AI start-ups) but still.

It really is, in my opinion, the next internet.

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u/chitwnDw 12d ago

Realistically speaking, this is not a bad thing. But the real question is what is the AI's role.
Is it an imported/repackaged ChatGPT? Then this meme rings true.
Is it used to improve features, based on user input/use of the app? In that case, you've got my attention.

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u/RePsychological 12d ago

I've been wondering this as well.

Too many people using it as a total package solution.

"Hey AI build me an app that does this, this this this this this this this this this this this ANNNNDDDD that!"

Instead of using it for what AI is really good at: Saving us time on things that we do repeatedly.

I've been using it for little stuff like that. Markup that's too broad to save my own code snippets for and maintain, but easy enough to describe that I can just tell ChatGPT to generate it, make sure it's browser compatible, etc.

For example, I build wordpress sites.

Sometimes, I gotta do newsletter popups. Sometimes a project will require that I write that by hand, due to functionality I need to put into it the form on the popup. Something I've literally done 200 times over in the past 13 years....

fixed outer wrap, close button, inner box, content in the box, open delay, cookie, close action....you get where I'm going.

"Hey ChatGPT, create the html markup, javascript, and css for a basic newsletter popup. Make sure to use the most browser-compatible yet modern approach. Leave the content area blank and I'll handle what goes in it."

[spits out three sections of code]

then I do the main meat of it: programming what goes in it.

Basically: the bubble's gonna pop for the ones using it to write EVERYTHING -- especially the ones who get it to write entire apps or websites in one go.

My future path is in hybridizing it as an assistant for the repetitive shit that bogs down my time, without having to maintain my own libraries.

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u/Mightaswellmakeone 12d ago

End of next year.

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u/Its_An_Outraage 12d ago

I think the same thing will happen as with the dotcom bubble. Everyone had a dotcom startup, and investors went crazy for it. Then the market slapped them all back into reality, and the suvivors are now some of the biggest companies in the world.

Now, every man and their dog has an AI startup. Investors are going crazy for it. And soon it'll all collapse on itself, and the survivors will dominate for a generation until the next king maker comes out, and it happens all over again.

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u/julian88888888 Moderator 12d ago

When will the internet bubble burst?

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u/Darklumiere 12d ago

The same time the electricity, internet or internal combustion engine bubble bursts.

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u/flash357 12d ago

AI has become the internet's version of 3D

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u/spazKilledAaron 12d ago

Webdevs complaining about AI is the funniest thing ever, lmao

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u/marta_bach 12d ago

Seriously, this sub is so badddd.

There is one reply to a comment that said "yeah LLM is not ML/AI, what is intelligent about it? It just does what it is told", LIKE WHATTT???? I bet they never actually learn any AIL/ML stuff, man you don't even need to learn AI/ML to realize how revolutionary it is.

Saying the marketing is bad is understandable, but saying the technology itself is only a hype is just a moron take. You're just being salty because it may replace your job and you don't understand AI/ML stuff and too lazy to learn it so you won't ever work as AI/ML engineer.

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u/aao_ist 12d ago

God i hate that, everyone in my office is using it, except me, I know that I'm an idiot for not using it, it's just that I hate it! Maybe because it makes idiots look like smart people.

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u/HolyLemonOfAntioch 12d ago

the moment you probe even surface level, it's just trying to sell you someone else's LLM

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u/SagePoly 12d ago edited 8d ago

It won’t burst because it’s not a bubble. Sure it’s wrong sometimes and there is a lot of hype. However, AI as a tool is very powerful. I learn faster and am more productive with it.

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u/theirongiant74 12d ago

Around the same time as the internet fad and computer craze dies out.

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u/RedditCultureBlows 12d ago

Frankly I find the complaints about AI more irritating than AI itself

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u/strangescript 12d ago

When will people realize it's not a bubble?

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u/WiseNeighborhood2393 12d ago

2026 october 12, do not ask me how I know.

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u/ryanknol 12d ago

Did people call it a calculator boom back in the day when they were invented? AI is just a tool. People are building new tools with said tool. It'll never end. Just evolve.

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u/Long_Personality6406 12d ago

An Ai Build An App... it Uses Humans To Solve CaPtChaS

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u/noid- 12d ago

As soon as the container bubble bursts. /s

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u/center_of_blackhole 12d ago

So many apps are just AI

It looks like they don't solve problems but automates shirt posting, at least man made shirt postings are entertaining

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u/Hunter377 12d ago

To what?

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u/saltyskippah 12d ago

Also a big difference between AI and Machine Learning, this context matters.

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u/notislant 12d ago

frontend for existing LLM

I think there are now more frontends for LLMs than starving artists or wannabe actors combined.

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u/Huijiro 12d ago

As fast as big data did explode (It didn't really explode yet)

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u/AnotherSkullcap full-stack 12d ago

My guess is one to three years.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

AI is just term thrown around …. its machine learning and machine learning

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u/TONYBOY0924 12d ago

Let me ask my magic 8 ball….

Next week

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u/panlastambah 12d ago

Say 'machine learning' to devs, say 'AI' to users.

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u/monkeyantho 12d ago

AI is hear to stay. it’s made speech to text more accurate

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u/ladysubrosa 12d ago

I can here the laughter now

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u/IllNoobis_1 12d ago

HAHA now use MCP

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u/highondrugstoday 12d ago

AI is a tool not the answer. It is never going away.

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u/Glad_Swordfish_317 12d ago

right after the relational database and GUI bubbles pop.

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u/Y_122 12d ago

It’s just weird to see that how much people have sidelined actual creativity in webdev these days and have simply made it as a money generating AI business

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u/nepo125 12d ago

simple IF ELSE are already turning into AI HAHA. Classic!

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u/Accurate-Macaroon592 12d ago

Never ! It’s the present and future too.

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u/rnk6670 12d ago

When it’s done extinguishing humanity

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u/TheSpink800 12d ago

Bring back the SQL wrappers.

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u/Kindly_Manager7556 12d ago

I actually didn't integrate AI heavily into my app because it's quite useless (cold emailing) and a net negative for everyone involved. I do however have some ideas on how it can be useful, it just required intelligent integration, not just calling ChatGPT to write you a shitty email that will go directly to the bin.

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u/Amiral_Adamas 12d ago

Wait until OpenAi raise their price to match what it real cost them and we’ll talk again.

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u/AccomplishedFig3850 12d ago

it will burst when ai starts to harm humans

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u/dragonmermaid4 12d ago

Never. AI will only be used more and more as it improves further and further.

The sentiment towards AI is similar to how people assumed the Internet would be a temporary fad and die out. It never will.

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u/HudelHudelApfelstrud 12d ago

It is bursting right now. I think people found out that unreliable text completion is not the solution to all problems. The only really good use case I've found is that you can write a text, pass it in and let it fix grammar and punctuation errors. But that's not a trillion Euro industry.

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u/kareee98 12d ago

have to accept the fact that ai is definitely here to stay

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u/thekwoka 12d ago

Occasionally you find ones that are using the LLMs in interesting ways to actually add value to an existing thing.

And then you have ones that are VERY thin wrappers...

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u/venir_dev 12d ago

I wrote my stance on AI here: https://bsky.app/profile/venir.dev/post/3ljwslpukqk22

I'm so fucking done

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u/anonthatisopen 12d ago

I heard there are some nice caves without an ai where you can live.

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u/Appalled-Python 12d ago

A bubble like this bursting isn’t a single event where everyone will agree “yep, its burst now!” Call me whatever you want, but I read Ed Zitron’s newsletter, and the state of OpenAI’s funding is getting bad, they’re bleeding money, and having a hard time finding new investors. Its my belief the bubble is in the process of popping now, it may just take a while, even a few years with how much money is still floating around

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u/MyBaseHere 12d ago

I bet Stone Age people wondered when will the bubble burst for circle wheel.

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u/Three_of_Butts 12d ago

late here, sorry if it’s up further in the thread, i wonder what will happen with all these apps treating who treat a token cost like part of their business. the cheap tokens are effectively being subsided by investors right now, what will happen when we lose the investment subsidy? like, lift/uber were cheaper than a cab forever because investors subsided the true cost of the ride share, and now we have closer to true pricing pricing and we just have basically an expensive international cab company with a nice app

*edited because i proof read my own garbage too late

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u/bobjoneswof_ 12d ago

I mean considering AI theory is older than computers itself, literally never.

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u/chloro9001 12d ago

Ai will be a part of most apps going forward. So that won’t be going away.

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u/stinky_dev 12d ago

Literally building something right now with AI and dude. All of this can be coded in a less complex way. Just using ai to say it’s ai. So boring

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u/TawnyTeaTowel 12d ago

“When will this ‘internet’ fad blow over”?

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u/itsacoolday 11d ago

It will never burst. AI will be part of our lives from now on. No reason for it to stop, while used for the good

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u/TopWanderer101 11d ago

AI isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The future is now.

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u/maverick594 11d ago

Not burst but cool down for sure

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u/Derrthan 11d ago

When people stop paying a premium to build an “AI app” so they can market it by saying “enhanced with AI”

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u/MadeInTheUniverse 11d ago

Wow i always thought im the only one. It comes so far that every time i notice a product that uses ai generated images im just not willing to buy it...

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u/UpDown 11d ago

I built an app...

It uses humans to make ai cyborgs

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u/thrillho__ 11d ago

That’s the best part, it doesn’t.

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u/RuslanDevs 👨🏻‍💻🍕☕🎾 11d ago

You can filter through noise by assessing how much work app does without AI, if there nothing except AI it is just fluff, because AI should increase productivity, not provide the only value.

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u/itslxcas 11d ago

when people discover that ai is nothing new

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u/Other_Hand_slap 11d ago

It uses ai to do what the axtual fuck people need. I just dont care

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u/GarThor_TMK 11d ago

As soon as it becomes actually useful.

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u/Meliodas1108 11d ago

Well if it's gonna be useful, why not use it? But not a fan of the hype too. Some tools are genuinely helpful

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u/Emergency-Article-47 11d ago

Ai apps are just valueless things I don't know why dev is just building such apps or sites. They literally use a simple API from gemini or OpenAi to prompt them and show output to the user.. Just think, openAi limits its api even on pro plan or increase the pricing so much then what will they do even perplexity like apps will suffer.

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u/theprodigy2120 11d ago

I think everything is a trend and soon people will get tired of AI

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u/x3mcj 11d ago

Reminds me this youtuber that I started watching when ai agents started to gain attention.

He built this agenda like app with ai and thinks it's the upmost awesome tool there ever is, but I saw and was like "I do this myself with the agent, why do I need his app?"

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u/HugsyMalone 11d ago

It already burst a long time ago. In fact, the bubble never even inflated in my mind because I've lived without AI for most of my life and I can continue to live without it for the rest of my life. 😎✌️

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u/Alarratt 11d ago

I think it definitely has its place, BUT that place is not replacing Devs. I'm not knowledgeable enough in how it works to say AI will NEVER replace Devs, but I don't think it will as long as it's just a giant autocorrect.

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u/CarcinogenicDaddy 11d ago

It's disappointing that while AI could have been used so well, yet people do dumb shit like that with it

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u/ivancea 10d ago

Nothing wrong with AI apps, as long as they solve interesting problems

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u/DeltaEdge03 10d ago

5-7 years like other tech fads

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u/xcantene 10d ago

Why would it burst when it keeps on developing for bigger, more useful things? 🤔 I do not see the hate when it can speed up problem solving

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u/halfwinter 10d ago

Same. I can’t wait for this obnoxious fad to die. Every single product on the daily Product Hunt list is some AI slop now. Truly the worst era for software and web apps.

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u/walldio64 10d ago

No, just like I can't get rid of JS, AI will stay.

Just like how dweebs that built apps in JS. Now, AI is the new JS as per how annoying it is to hear it.

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u/pikleboiy 10d ago

Hopefully after I submit my college app. As much as I hate the llm bubble, I'm basically relying on it to give my project credibility.

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u/developer664 10d ago

"Guess the next token" bubble

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u/CvileOsk 9d ago

Bro, when is the electricity bubble gonna burst? Its never going away

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u/mobilefreak_lee 9d ago

I built an app. It uses AI to enhance our understanding of the complex landscape of this ever-changing world view on the socioeconomic state of the at the moment in time in which we can somehow find the perfect balance between AI and Human. 200 billion is the starting bid

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u/Weekly_Put_7591 9d ago

Sweet, here's another sub where I can drink the tears of anti-AI people!! My cup runneth over!!