Is AI actually worthwhile?

You could make the same points about almost all new technologies when they're in their infancy, those questions only get accurate answers as the technology develops over time and its applications are steadily developed, with the technology being integrated into human activity. Many of the benefits and costs of a technology cannot be accurately understood in those early days, they become clearer over time as the technology develops.

As for AI being a bubble, well that's also common with most new technology when people's naive optimism tends about the benefits coupled with some greed about the profit potential run far ahead of the reality, there are benefits from those technologies which prove beneficial and a profitable industry emerges around them but it tends to take lot longer than those early expectations.

Look this is the IET, formerly the Institute of Electrical Engineers and 140 years ago anyone with any sense knew this "electricity" was just a passing fad. It's very expensive, those 'generators' are terribly unreliable, the light from those arc lamps is only fit for streets and railway stations and while I read some engineers are working on 'sub-dividing the light' their lamps burn out in just a few hours, they are no match for the reliability of gas lighting or the new and vastly superior Welsbach gas mantle. As for those primitive electric motors, they don't come even remotely close to the modern steam engine. And safety.... electricity is proven to be lethal, an invisible menace. There will never be a practicable and safe way of using electricity in people's homes and businesses.  The path for the future is clear - gas lighting with Welsbach mantles and better steam engines. The best thing people could do with electricity is forget it.... there's no future in it !

yep I've been saying that all my adult life, and I work with the stuff. There really is something very nice about gas lights.

Mike.

Very good! Same about this internet fad, what good can typing into a chat room do? I can pick up the phone and speak to someone much easier... (this was said to me 30 years ago).

AI will find its niche. Sure some companies are going to go bust, just as some of the first railway and canal companies did, but individuals will get rich and we are all the better for it in the end. Maybe...

Gas mantles are an essential piece of safety equipment in the Nuclear Industry (now there's a special sort of bubble), because they contain trace radioactive thorium so can be used as test objects without a hazard warning and having to count them in and count the out again,

Aside, in my former employment they used Americium radioactive source as an internal deioniser.  Sourced from the fire alarm industry. As individual (separated from a fire alarm) sources they were classed as hazardous with hard limits on equipment stock and administration to suit. But Fire / Smoke alarms everywhere - deregulated.

AI's success is likely to hang on the regulation of social/digital media, algorithms, and digital trust. Or maybe I'm hallucinating how much is in my bank balance or the tax payable...

We've still not found the secrets of human intelligence, so automating it will be interesting. (Humans drive without laser or radar, why does AI need that?)

I'd forgotten about the canals! They stopped us being self sufficient in food.

(see Map that Changed the World; Winchester. Has side note to that effect)

I'd forgotten about the canals! They stopped us being self sufficient in food.

(see Map that Changed the World; Winchester. Has side note to that effect)