431–440 of 936 posts
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Blame short sighted investors asking Sears to "focus"
They weren't wrong. Its core business in what is still a viable-enough sector collapsed. Or if it were truly well-managed, running an ISP and a retailer should have been enough insight to be Amazon.
It almost seems as though the record-setting bonuses they were dolling out to hire the top minds in AI might have been a little shortsighted. A couple of years ago, I asked a financial investment person about AI as a trick question. She did well by recommending investing in companies that invest in AI (like MS) but who had other profitable businesses (like Azure). I was waiting for her to put her foot in her mouth an…
As someone using LLMs daily, it's always interesting to read something about AI being a bubble or just hype. I think you're going to miss the train, I am personally convinced this is the technology of our lifetime.
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Blame short sighted investors asking Sears to "focus"
They weren't wrong. Its core business in what is still a viable-enough sector collapsed. Or if it were truly well-managed, running an ISP and a retailer should have been enough insight to be Amazon.
So newer chips will not be exponentially better but will be more of incremental improvements, so unless the price of electricity comes down exponentially we might never see AGI at a price point that’s cheaper than hiring a human.
Most companies are already running AI models at a loss, scaling the models to be bigger(like GPT 4.5) only makes them more expensive to run.
The reason why internet, smartphones and computers have seen exponential growth from the 90s is due to underlying increase in computing power. I personally used a 50Mhz 486 in the 90s and now use a 8c/16t 5Ghz CPU. I highly doubt if we will see the same form of increase in the next 40 years
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Plenty of smart people prefer not to try their luck, though. A smart but risk-avoidant person will never be the one to create Facebook either.
What risk was there in creating facebook? I don't see it. Dude makes a website in his dorm room and I guess eventually accepts free money he is not obligated to pay back. What risk?
People from wealthy backgrounds often have less fear of failure, which is a big reason why success disproportionately favors that clique. But frankly, most people in that position are more likely to abuse it or ignore it than to take advantage of it. For people like Zuckerberg and Dell and Gates, the easiest thing to do would have been to slack off, chill out, play their expected role and coast through life... just like most of their peers did.
It never really made sense for Meta to get into AI, the motivations were always pretty thin and it seemed like they just wanted to ride the wave.
Meta's business model is to capture attention - largely with "content" - so they can charge lots of money to sprinkle ads amongst that content. I can see a lot of utility for Meta to get deeply involved in the unlimited custom content generating machine. They have a lot of data about what sort of content gets people to spend more time with them. They now have the ability to endlessly create exactly what it is that ke…
It's Spain sinking their own economy by importing tons of silver.
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I have an overwhelming feeling that what we're trying to do here is "Netflix over DialUp." We're clearly seeing what AI will eventually be able to do, just like many VOD, smartphone and grocery delivery companies of the 90s did with the internet. The groundwork has been laid, and it's not too hard to see the shape of things to come. This tech, however, is still far too immature for a lot of use cases. There's enough…
I'm starting to agree with this viewpoint. As the technology seems to solidify to roughly what we can do now, the aspirations are going to have to get cut back until there's a couple more breakthroughs.
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As long as you do not make ads with four-fingered hands, like those clowns ... :) https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/chroniques/2025-07-08/polemique...
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5432712/ai-video-ad-kal... Typical large team $300,000 ad made for It's going to be a bloodbath.
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Today I learned that Sears founded Prodigy! Amazing how far that company has fallen; they were sort of a force to be reckoned with in the 70's and 80's with Craftsman and Allstate and Discover and Kenmore and a bunch of other things, and now they're basically dead as far as I can tell.
My favorite anecdote about Sears is from Starbucks current HQs - the HQs used to be a warehouse for Sears. Before renovation the first floor walls next to the elevators used to have Sears' "commitment to customers" (or something like that). To me it read like it was written by Amazon decades earlier. Something about how Sears promises that customers will be 100% satisfied with the purchase, and if for whatever reason…
My dad broke a Craftsman shovel once that he had owned for four years, took it to Sears, and it was replaced immediately, no questions asked. I broke a socket wrench that I had owned for a year and had the same story.
I haven't tested these warranties since Craftsman was sold to Black and Decker, but when it was still owned by Sears I almost exclusively bought Craftsman tools as a result of their wonderful warranties.