Stuff made open source/without a profit motive.
If there’s a profit motive, it’s not looking to solve a problem or make things better. It’s looking to make profit.
None of them really, they were all novel technology ideas snd advancements that every company and their mom adopted because it became the next silicon valley investment money printer.
Blockchain started out as a decentralized network concept that’s still useful today.
AI started out as a tensor statistical concept that’s still useful today.
People say QC is a grift because every silicon valley giant has invested heavily into it because they want to be the first if it becomes viable. It’s just what they do. They throw money into everything and if they get something successful, they pump it as much as they can before it dumps.
Even FOSS software isn’t invulnerable. Half of AWS’s SaaS platforms are just automated FOSS software running on their cloud infrastructure without so much as a hint of donation or development into the project itself. They just want money, they don’t care how they get it.
The technologies themselves aren’t grifts, but grifters are notoriously “first-adopters” of new technologies.
I’m hoping repairable tech is going to become more and more common. So far neither Framework nor Fairphone seem like grifters while some that came before didn’t end up fulfilling their promises.
Really without major social or political change all commercial technology will serve incumbent power.
AI is not a grift but it is very much a dangerous rudderless ship right now.
Quantum computing is also not a grift.
Hell I feel dirty saying this but you could argue blockchain is not a grift either.
The problem in all these things is the people not the technology.
That’s the thing. When you were browsing bitcoin subreddits during the “golden days” it was pretty bizzare to see people talking about how cool it is and thia is the future and all, and to make it viable, you have to use it, like you know… A currency. But then they also made fun of the guy who bought a pizza with his bitcoin. Haha what a loser, he bought. A pizza for 40k no now 100k dollars. We are all holding, right, no one is selling, right guys?? We’re all in the same boat.
Motherfucker, it’s so obvious that EVERYONE was treating it like a get rich quick scheme.
Holy loaded question batman! Yeah I’m not gonna take this seriously with you just making these sweeping assertions with no evidence.
The assertion that lemmy users call Blockchain and AI a grift is not without evidence(just browse around on any thread related to the topic) people calling QC a grift is more nuanced and something I have picked up on, you could make the case when ‘it happens’ lemmites would call QC a grift.
People say quantum computing is a grift?
The other two are are only “grifts” because capitalism has shoved them into things that have no business involving them and breeds opportunistic get rich quick mindsets around the technologies. So any time you hear them mentioned it’s more than likely to be a grift. They are fine in certain niches and very stupid everywhere else, like every other technology.
people will say QC is a grift when it eventually becomes commercially viable(Just look at the second level comments here)
Calling blockchain a pure grift ignores the serious enterprise-level work being done to solve real logistical problems. The technology behind NFTs isn’t just for JPEGs it’s used to create a unique and immutable digital identity for stuff like physical shipping containers and pallets as digital twins. In a global supply chain where a single shipment passes through dozens of untrusted parties like factories, freight forwarders, ports, customs, and warehouses a distributed blockchain ledger provides a single source of truth that replaces manual emails, scanned paper documents, and spreadsheets. Smart contracts can automate releases upon verified scans, directly reducing the demurrage and detention fees that cost millions of dollars. The big hurdle isn’t that the tech doesn’t work or is a grift, it’s getting competing companies to agree on common standards and invest in the infrastructure. The speculation was a sideshow, but the underlying utility for tracking physical assets across trust boundaries is a real thing
Capitalism is what makes them grifts. Llms could be neat. Theft at scale, environmental impact, and using it to kill little kids (anyone but jfc the kids killed wtf) is the problem. Its always the horrid companies and governments who look at any tech like “can i hurt people with this? I totally can…”
These technologies are not grifts.
The way they are often employed is absolutely a grift.
Blockchain is a very cool concept. Getting people to pay $1,000 for a picture of a cat and imply that it has value because it’s on a blockchain is grift.
Ai is a cool technology. It has become a grift because the companies behind it are sucking up massive investor dollars, destroying the worldwide computing parts market, and persuading managers to axe jobs promising the AI can take their place.
If quantum computing actually starts to work some of it will be used for grift because many current encryption schemes could potentially be cracked using quantum computers.
The picture wasn’t even on the blockchain. It was a url which links to a picture of a cat sitting on someone else’s server
Was it even that or just a hash of the url (or whatever text/data was being “confirmed”)?
It was some sort of hash system. The blockchain didn’t want to store large amounts of data on the chain itself so it would store some sort of hash of the image file and as I recall a pointer to a server where that file was located.
The whole thing was totally fucking stupid but people poured tons of money into it
I think we are in a key moment for change to happen at a big societal level. As others have said the problem isn’t any of the technologies listed, it’s how they are being exploited and the perception of them maligned by said exploitation.
Capitalism is a big part of this problem. As is the messy elastic way that human society implements change over time. tl;dr - some people will pull society forward, others pull it back a bit. That’s the “elasticity” at a macro level.
For most of my life I’ve witnessed a gradual degradation, a reduction, entropy and resignation. Balance requires that we now leap forward again. I remain hopeful that a great correction is not just inevitable, it’s coming in my lifetime.
If you agree with the basic view that any software that does not respect your rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute it, is a form of unjust power over you - then that principle becomes a convenient acid test for virtually all computer technology. Any tech that enables and enhances those rights is not a grift. Any tech that restricts those rights is a grift.
Of course there are edge-cases. Blockchain stuff is usually open-source, and yet it’s a tool that has been designed by and for the most extreme right-wing libertarian types, so while the underlying technologies could hypothetically be used for good, the forms that they’re implemented in are pretty clearly a grift. So intention and design matter too.
I’d also like to see how the Hyppocratic License shapes software over time.
Would also love to see more developments in Farm Hack, Appropriate Technology, and Open Source Ecology.
thats why I think there should be a fsf led effort to make some version of FOSS agentic AI(i know its just a marketing term).
I hate that the ability to just sit at the computer and go
Hey, can you go through the hundreds of images i have in my Downloads folder, and transfer the images in which i appear in the center to this directory, also make it so in the future any pdf with a specific header goes into this directorywill M$ exclusive feature.Ping me when this becomes reality and let’s check then if there are any FOSS alternatives.
they will all be enshittified so whats the point
uhm well how about anti-enshittification/corruption technology, wheres that
All technology from this point on will be a grift, because the grifters have all the power.
Seriously
