GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

Post by sebastiennight » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #12

JCM9 wrote: post #2

There’s no question we’re in a “GenAI” bubble, the only question is how big of a smoking crater in the ground is going to be created when this thing pops. The tech isn’t going away, and is cool/useful, but from a business standpoint this whole thing looks like a dumpster fire burning next to a gasoline truck. Right now VC FOMO is the only thing stopping all that from blowing up. When that slows down buckle up.

CEOs are just salivating at the prospect of firing most of their staff and replacing them with AIs. And then you have hype men at these AI companies blowing a burning coal mine of smoke up their asses. And every month the products become even more expensive for even more incremental gains. The hype is unsustainable. How many "we will have AGI by X/X/201X" predictions have we blown past already?

Post by sebastiennight » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #52

jstummbillig wrote: post #24

What arrogant and cynical way of looking at business operations. You don't know how anything interesting turns out in the future. You make educated guesses and those cost money. When you run a business, everything costs money. But that is not "lighting money on fire", that is how all learning happens. If anyone thinks they have figured it all out, stop blabbering around. Short the market.

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain insolvent." --John Maynard Keynes Lots of people lost their shirts shorting the housing market prior to the 2008 crash. (_The Big Short_ highlights those who were successful, but plenty of people weren't.) But it was undoubtedly a bubble and there was a world-wide recession when it popped.

Post by phonon » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

inkyoto wrote: post #76

kayodelycaon wrote: post #16

Well, at least AI is going to be better than the blockchain hype. No one knew what “blockchain” was, how it worked, or what could be used for. I had a very hard time explaining once you put something in the chain, you can’t easily pull it back out. If you wanted to verify documents, all you have to do is put a hash in a database table. Which we already had. It has exactly one purpose: prevent any single entity from c…

> No one knew what “blockchain” was, how it worked, or what could be used for. Not the blockchain itself, but the concept of an immutable, append only, tamper-proof ledger underpinning it is a very useful one in many contexts where the question of authenticity of datasets arises – the blockchain has given us a ledger database. The ledger database is more than just a hash as it also provides a cryptographic proof that…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

inkyoto wrote: post #76

kayodelycaon wrote: post #16

Well, at least AI is going to be better than the blockchain hype. No one knew what “blockchain” was, how it worked, or what could be used for. I had a very hard time explaining once you put something in the chain, you can’t easily pull it back out. If you wanted to verify documents, all you have to do is put a hash in a database table. Which we already had. It has exactly one purpose: prevent any single entity from c…

> No one knew what “blockchain” was, how it worked, or what could be used for. Not the blockchain itself, but the concept of an immutable, append only, tamper-proof ledger underpinning it is a very useful one in many contexts where the question of authenticity of datasets arises – the blockchain has given us a ledger database. The ledger database is more than just a hash as it also provides a cryptographic proof that…

Post by jimmaswell » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 2:15 AM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #80

Well run large companies often waste a lot, in order to (1) hedge risks of being left behind, (2) ensure they have options in the future in possible growth or new efficiency areas, and (3) to start on long learning curves for skills and capabilities that appear likely to be a baseline necessity in the long run. Bonfires of money. Predictably. Because all three of those concerns require highly speculative action to pr…