Blockchain was an incredibly transparent grift. AI is a fascinating technology that’s being used and abused by the worst people on the planet and will probably cause society as we know it to collapse. Quantum computers are a very niche, very specific tool that are super cool but get talked about weirdly by the media.

Virtual reality is neat and I think it hasn’t really been used as a grift yet. I don’t think we’ve really solved its UX nor explored all its possibilities. It seems like as a consumer device it will be a niche product, but the applications for companies and organizations are very untapped.

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The problem is not that this technologies are or aren’t a grift, the problem is that they are used to grift (and that the 4th power that is supposed to protect us against this isn’t doing its job).

In that sense : every next technology will be a grift. Look at spaces, he sold refueling booster as the next step in human space exploration evolution and finally its just another company used to mine our data. Grift

Gene therapy and stem cells.

There is one from Japan about regrowing teeth, and then the one (forget where) about a 4 hour gene therapy treatment that basically cures issues some people have around cholesterol.

Although maybe the first one might turn into a grift. Like honestly, if I could GMO in/ Stem cell in like, just one alligator tooth into my grill, I might just.

I wouldn’t say all “AI” was a grift. Machine learning is a useful tool, like a hammer, it’s just not a magic genie for everything. Always has been, always will be.

Same with blockchain, albeit in a much narrower niche. I do think it’s a terrible system for a widely-used currency, though.

Same with quantum computing. It’s a niche.

The pattern is that Tech Bros inflate something narrowly interesting into a “it’s going to ascend the human race if you give us enough money” FOMO thing.

…And, currently, the next target seems to be space travel.

Again, I emphasize. Very useful in certain niches, like science. Stupendously impractical outside of them.

I agree about block chain, but AI and quantum have real life practical purposes. The current models are not good but they will improve eventually.

For me, I would say that a grift is not a technology, but the housing market itself. There is no reason for the house prices and rent to go up to extortionate level. Some will say “oh but it’s the market”. Buddy, tell me what do you do and do you own a property and how much is it when you bought it and if you sell it now? I know of someone who was happy enough to get 100k profit from when he initially bought his house and sold it. But bidders kept asking for more until he profited 300k. He didn’t say anything because that’s how the bidding went. He admitted that the housing market is a scam essentially-- a grift.

I don’t know about you guys but where I live, there is always a news of residents opposing the building of social housing nearby for whatever frivolous reasons. These are usually in affluent areas, which used to be middle or working class in which their very own houses were built by the government. But if social housing is built, it is in the middle of nowhere with no opportunities leading to ghost estates. The houses are left rotting but allowed to stand to artificially inflate the house prices. And the rich and middle class wonder why the working class are revolting. I mean, as a middle class, the middle class knows the problem but doesn’t care because we benefit from economic privileges. We are repeating the gilded age.

Nah they’re not inherently grifts; they’re pushed by grifters making money off the back of them.

I think Lemmy users are more likely to call these grifters out for what they are, because the user base has proportionally more technically minded people who understand what the technology is. Lemmy users have to an extent self-selected themselves into the fediverse. On other social media the absolute number of technically minded people will be higher but the proportion of technically minded people is much lower, so the voices are drowned out by those who don’t understand he technology and it’s limitations. And of course the grifters target those platforms with a lot of propaganda, because ultimately it’s about selling shares and inflating share prices.

Anyway to answer you question, CRISPR gene editing is revolutionary and will have major impact. Nuclear Fusion despite it’s slow emergence will also be revolutionary. Immunotherapy is an ongoing revolution; it’s not a quiet revolution but it’s also not getting the general focus it probably should be as AI appears to dominate the current zeitgeist.

We are actually living through extraordinary times; AI is a part of it but AI seems to be the bit getting most of the attention because we’re in the middle of a stock bubble driven by AI speculation.

All technology from this point on will be a grift, because the grifters have all the power.

Anything china makes*

There’s quite a lot happening in 3d printing that is kind of life changing, and not getting any press coverage because no single obscenely wealthy person can use it to hype a pump and dump.

Weird specific stuff exists now, that never did before - like custom cases for weird sizes of batteries, and a pen-holder that looks exactly like the latest manga character to make a splash.

Quantum non-fungible tokens won’t be a grift. Trust me.

(Hopefully this obvious sarcasm is obvious.)

At this point, the only thing that wouldn’t be a grift is a proof that P=NP, so that we can break all DRM effortlessly.

None of them are a grift. They get used by financial traders for performing grifts, but the grift was and always has been stock market manipulation. AI is incredibly useful and many competent engineers now use it effectively. I expect the bubble of anthropic/openai will pop once local or on-prem models get better.

Why do folks think quantum computing is a grift? I haven’t heard that yet.