The cargo cult metaphor is weak. If an article written in the year of our FSM 2025 describes Melanesian cargo cults to make a point, they're probably just copying a trope from other articles. Cargo culting, if you will, much like Melanesian cargo cults that would wear bamboo earpieces and...
Is it a gold rush? Absolutely. There is a massive FOMO and everyone is rushing to claim some land, while the biggest profiteers of all are ones selling the shovels and pick axes. It's all going to wash out and in the end a very small number of players will be making money, while everyone else goes bust.
While many people think the broadly described AI is overhyped, I think people are grossly underestimating how much this changes almost everything. Very few industries will be untouched.
The author is an anthropologist, I think she knows the original meaning of "cargo cult".
The 'cult' behaviour described in the article is that of building big data centres without knowing how they will make money for the real business of the tech companies doing it. They have all bought AI startups but that doesn't mean that the management of the wider company understands it.
>The author is an anthropologist, I think she knows the original meaning of "cargo cult".
I am perplexed how you thought this refuted or offered any value to what I said. Or are you under delusions that her being an anthropologist also makes her an expert on AI and the tech industry, ergo ipso facto her metaphor isn't incredibly dumb and ill-suited?
I never questioned if they knew the "original meaning". Yes, we've all read the meaning countless, countless times, in a million trope-filled blog entries. And indeed, the whole basis of her tosser "article" is some random blog entry that, as millions before have, decided to make everything about Cargo Cults.
Protip: If you are busy writing a blog entry and you decide to describe some island tribe (it does not actually matter where said tribe is) that had bamboo headsets, delete the entire thing and go do something actually useful.
It is a profoundly boring story at this point. And in this case, like with many, the metaphor is incredibly stupid and ill-suited. If these businesses were building "data centres" out of mud and drawings of GPUs it would be pertinent, but instead it's describing a gold rush where a lot of players are doing precisely the right thing to try to land grab o an obviously massive and important space (and in a very useful to them sense, see enormous capitalization gains in doing so), then trying to ham-fist some cliche "story" in.
Like, if that tribe built functional runways with ATC towers, and then a fleet of cargo planes -- being well funded in the process by outsiders who see how lucrative the cargo business is -- but then it turns out that the cargo business is a bit saturated so it's going to be tough for them to make it profitable on their EBIDTA statements, boy, fire up the typewriter you got a winner!
>The 'cult' behaviour described in the article is that of building big data centres without knowing how they will make money
Melanesian, not Micronesian (or Polynesian as you originally said). I know all those Pacific islands look the same, but it's not the same thing at all.
Oh, damn, Melanesian? Well this changes everything! I do remember when Melanesia built those computation centres and it turns out that neighbouring Polynesia went with the newer generation of fabric and upended their business. Truly a great metaphor for so many things!
Firing up notepad and going to author the next paper that does numbers among the Shakes Fists At Clouds crowd that spend their day tilting at windmills.
Yeah, if cargo cult were applied aptly, it would be more for the folks who are all-in on using LLMs yet not really getting any net productivity boost. Those basically just LARPing a dream world, but with no tangible benefit compared to the Old Ways.
Yeah, Not seeing the connection to cargo cult unless AGI already appeared, offered us incredible bounty of benefits and then left, so we all created a religion in order to summon AGI back.
Is it a gold rush? Absolutely. There is a massive FOMO and everyone is rushing to claim some land, while the biggest profiteers of all are ones selling the shovels and pick axes. It's all going to wash out and in the end a very small number of players will be making money, while everyone else goes bust.
While many people think the broadly described AI is overhyped, I think people are grossly underestimating how much this changes almost everything. Very few industries will be untouched.