The California gold rush. This was an actual, legit thing where there were more people trying to score bigtime selling supplies to prospectors and miners than there were prospectors and miners trying to score bigtime with striking gold.
During the “Gold Rush” era (Wild West 1800s), there were plenty of people descending onto California to try and make their fortunes by staking out land to mine and pan for gold.
However, the first millionaire wasn’t anyone who got lucky staking out a mine. It was the largest store owner in the area selling all these prospective miners their shovels to dig with.
The “AI industry” has a lot of parallels here, but everyone wants to be the store owner, and hardly anyone has a genuine need for their tools.
It’s quite wild. He’s also considered the first to publicize that there is a gold rush, much like these modern AI companies hype up their products to no end.
What is the connection between San Francisco and shovels?
The California gold rush. This was an actual, legit thing where there were more people trying to score bigtime selling supplies to prospectors and miners than there were prospectors and miners trying to score bigtime with striking gold.
That was 200 years ago, though… Is it still some viral local joke?
It’s a metaphor being applied to AI companies. A major one in SF has ads literally saying “stop hiring humans.”
I didn’t get this, thank you for the explanation
It’s a metaphor on the current ai industry which is centered in silicon valley.
Including the headline of this post, you can’t manage to figure out the context?
During the “Gold Rush” era (Wild West 1800s), there were plenty of people descending onto California to try and make their fortunes by staking out land to mine and pan for gold.
However, the first millionaire wasn’t anyone who got lucky staking out a mine. It was the largest store owner in the area selling all these prospective miners their shovels to dig with.
The “AI industry” has a lot of parallels here, but everyone wants to be the store owner, and hardly anyone has a genuine need for their tools.
Said first millionaire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan
It’s quite wild. He’s also considered the first to publicize that there is a gold rush, much like these modern AI companies hype up their products to no end.
The actual store owner is nvidia and they make filthy money right now
Boy, I can’t wait to buy two 5090s so I can play Starfield and make that black guy white with postprocessing.
“prospective”
You sly dog.