The Influentists: AI hype without proof

Re:The Influentists: AI hype without proof by alexpotato on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:17PM (#46626042)

One of my favorite stories from the dotcom bust is when people, after the bust, said something along the lines of: "Take Pets.com. Who the hell would buy 40lb dogfood bags over the internet? And what business would offer that?? It doesn't make sense at all economically! No wonder they went out of business."

Yet here we are, 20 years later, routinely ordering FURNITURE on the internent and often delivered "free".

My point being, sure, there is a lot of hype around AI but that doesn't mean that there aren't nuggets of very useful projects happening.

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Re:The Influentists: AI hype without proof by AstroBen on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:36PM (#46626230)

"Look at what happened with the internet!" also doesn't mean the same will happen with AI

Neither argument works

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Re:The Influentists: AI hype without proof by coffeefirst on Thursday January 15, 2026 @02:19AM (#46629187)

True, but I think the point of that story is it’s really hard to predict what’s crap and what’s just too early.

It doesn’t guarantee the skeptics are wrong all the time.

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Re:The Influentists: AI hype without proof by astura on Thursday January 15, 2026 @07:26AM (#46631466)

Pets.com was both selling everything at a loss and spending millions on advertising. It wasn't the concept that was the issue.

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Re:The Influentists: AI hype without proof by PKop on Thursday January 15, 2026 @09:59AM (#46633446)

There's 0 requirement that [new technology] must follow the path of the internet though. So it's kind of an irrelevant non sequitur.

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