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Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#11

Post by ratg13 »

AI is going to create endless jobs by allowing everyone to make a huge mess.

We are currently in the early phase where people are creating code messes with little oversight and future people will be expected to build on them, which will either take expanded effort or complete re-writes from scratch.

The quality of all products will suffer for the foreseeable future.

It's now a several times a day occurrence for me of trying to help someone figure out a problem, and when I ask them why they did that, the answer is always that the AI told them to.

If the people that are using these tools don't know right from wrong, it's a recipe for disaster.

This problem is amplified in non-technical fields where people are creating tools for businesses without even the knowledge of what a code review is.

AI will be around forever, and the problems it will create are immeasurable, but unfortunately, it will likely always be seen as the solution to the problem as well.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#12

Post by telesilla »

api wrote: post #7
DanielHB wrote: post #6

I was too young at the time, but people who were there at internet companies in the 2000s what was it like? Did people think the same way as today where there is too money going in and not enough value coming out? Was it obvious to insiders only or to the general public as well? These days it seems even a significant porting of the general public is aware of the overhype. But back then internet wasn't much of a thing…

It was largely the same. A ton of Internet companies struggled to find a way to make money after the initial land grab, and most failed. The hype was breathless and over the top. A lot of late 90s to early 2000s hype has come true. Today we have substantial companies with no physical office and that have never used physical mail, delivery for everything, and ubiquitous connectivity for devices. It just took about 15-…

It felt like we all had an equal chance at success back then. Now it's limited to those with enough money or very rare luck. The riches of today were sown almost in the first decade of the 2000s, it seems. Who today will get rich from AI starting from nothing? (not that wealth is the end goal, but in the context of this thread it is)

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#13

Post by austin-cheney »

You can game this mathematically. Compare historical rates of investment in AI against AI revenue and return on investment. Then once those lines are graphed do the same for the dot com bust and compare the two resulting graphs.

If the two graphs so far look the same you have your answer. Ultimately this will not be a finance problem but a market and behavior problem. People are predictable with confidence.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#14

Post by scarface_74 »

Not remotely. It’s not even logical.

From an employees standpoint, most of the employers weren’t profitable and when they went out of business, employees weren’t having a hard time finding a job.

But honestly, it was only people working for “tech” companies. I was working in Atlanta as a Windows developer with four years of experience working for a boring old bill printing company. Other profitable enterprise companies were still hiring like banks, insurance companies, airlines, etc.

Today, all of the major tech employer’s are trillion dollar profitable companies with real businesses that are not dependent on Gen AI. They have been using machine learning forever and still will.

Every company doesn’t need to be a software development shop. But every company doesn’t need to be into data analytics.

On the other hand, from the investor’s standpoint, the only publicly traded company that will live or die by AI is Nvidia - and Tesla which has always been a meme stock. If investor money is lost in the private market, who cares?

Yes I know that there is a push to allow private equity investing in 401K plans and pensions. I really only have sympathy for pension fund holders who don’t have a choice.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#15

Post by porridgeraisin »

alberth wrote: post #8

I think it’s similar in that… - Everyone knew the Internet (and now AI) was going to be transformational. - It was clear it would reshape economies and open up entirely new possibilities. - But no one really knew what the killer use case would be, or how big any given Internet (now AI) business might get. So, like a gold rush, huge amounts of money poured in, and everyone hoped their idea would turn into the next mas…

This.

I am still thinking and trying to figure out what the new concepts i.e social media, streaming, etc, of the AI era will be. There are of course the extrapolations of existing concepts, e.g shopping just like it adapted to the internet world will adapt to the AI world and you'll have a few companies there -- equivalents of uber, amazon, zomato, etc (or maybe those companies themselves).

Products with no margin such as translation will of course get a million times better, but I mean in terms of economic value.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#16

Post by scarface_74 »

DanielHB wrote: post #6

I was too young at the time, but people who were there at internet companies in the 2000s what was it like? Did people think the same way as today where there is too money going in and not enough value coming out? Was it obvious to insiders only or to the general public as well? These days it seems even a significant porting of the general public is aware of the overhype. But back then internet wasn't much of a thing…

I was working in Atlanta GA for boring old profitable enterprise companies and the environment didn’t change at all.

I started working in 1996. By 2001, I was making $70K. The company I worked for did bill printing for utility companies. To put that in perspective, I had my first house built in the suburbs for $175k. This was well within the rule of thumb of not spending more than 3.5x income for a house.

On the other hand, I didn’t have that much invested in the stock market. The entire dot com bust was a shrug and curiousity to me while it was happening.

On the other hand, the real estate crash in 2008…

While all of my latest projects (cloud consulting) have in some form another involved “AI”, they are really just AWS API calls that are much easier using Gen AI LLMs. But could have been done with much more development and training of ML models before.

When the AI bust happens, it will have the same affect on me - none. Until businesses stop needing people who know how to translate the latest tech into business value, my career is safe.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#17

Post by takinola »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #15
alberth wrote: post #8

I think it’s similar in that… - Everyone knew the Internet (and now AI) was going to be transformational. - It was clear it would reshape economies and open up entirely new possibilities. - But no one really knew what the killer use case would be, or how big any given Internet (now AI) business might get. So, like a gold rush, huge amounts of money poured in, and everyone hoped their idea would turn into the next mas…

This. I am still thinking and trying to figure out what the new concepts i.e social media, streaming, etc, of the AI era will be. There are of course the extrapolations of existing concepts, e.g shopping just like it adapted to the internet world will adapt to the AI world and you'll have a few companies there -- equivalents of uber, amazon, zomato, etc (or maybe those companies themselves). Products with no margin s…

5% of my social media feed is AI generated. I can easily imagine a completely AI generated feed that is custom tailored to my interests. The future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#18

Post by aynyc »

Personally, I don't believe they are the same. I view AI as the next natural update to worker productivity like PC and windows. It's like the old days where people put MS Office on their resume as a skill, prompt engineering or whatever AI is gonna be exactly like that.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#19

Post by kingstnap »

A bubble sort of implies this ephemeral quality that is just super wrong.

I think its better to describe AI as a big shake up. Like a Cambrian explosion of sorts.

We will see tons of bankruptcies, in both AI and not AI companies. A ton of low profile ones and likely many high profile ones. It's just the nature of it.

Re: Ask HN: Is the rise of AI tools going to be the next 'dot com' bust?

#20

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

alberth wrote: post #8

I think it’s similar in that… - Everyone knew the Internet (and now AI) was going to be transformational. - It was clear it would reshape economies and open up entirely new possibilities. - But no one really knew what the killer use case would be, or how big any given Internet (now AI) business might get. So, like a gold rush, huge amounts of money poured in, and everyone hoped their idea would turn into the next mas…

Cisco still exists and was a winner for a long time. The company that emerged hugely successful out of the dot com era was Amazon, they dominate ecommerce today.

Take a look further back to the Personal Computer era in the 80's into early 90's. There were tons of PC makers out there, IBM became dominant but they haven't been in that business for a long time now. Microsoft was the enormous winner coming out of that.

When grandma starts talking about GPU's and NVIDIA stock, this AI bubble might be at its peak. I think if history rhymes with past lyrics (that whole history doesn't repeat but rhymes thing), its more likely that a software company (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft) is going to be the dominant player emerging from a potential bubble burst.

A potential pin-prick to the bubble (looking into my crystal ball): pricing for AI - once companies realize their runways are running out and they want to turn a profit of some kind to stakeholders they will need to raise prices to offset the energy and hardware build outs. Customers may realize they aren't getting the productivity to offset those increased costs and hold back budgets on AI spend. Or chip tariffs depending on TACO volatility.

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