When a technology has proven business value, it's too late for seed investment. Existing companies are usually better at commercializing tech with proven business value.
The economic purpose of seed investors is to take on technology-market risk. It's a necessary part of the economy, since the only way to find out if a technology has business value is to have companies build things with it. Without investors willing to take on that risk (and lose frequently -- more than half the time) there'd be only incremental technology progress.
Is HN’s continual downplaying of AI’s impact and economic potential against all evidence just the new version of the mentality that precipitated the famous Dropbox comment? The comments in anything AI related on this website are so predictable
If by quantitative evidence you mean that very few have made it to series A, that doesn’t preclude the overall economic impact or potential of AI, solely that its a crowded field where the exact niches haven’t been ironed out yet. This is the same for all nascent industries, but to assume such implies it is all a scam with no economic viability feels more like wishful thinking than a reasonable inference from trends.
It might prove to be their downfall.