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How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

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Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#101

Post by layer8 »

jennyholzer wrote: post #67
philippta wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they definitely improves average programmer efficiency Do we really need more efficient average programmers? Are we in a shortage of average software?

> Are we in a shortage of average software? Yes. The "true" average software quality is far, far lower than the average person perceives it to be. ChatGPT and other LLM tools have contributed massively to lowering average software quality.

I don’t understand how your three sentences mesh with each other. In any case, making the development of average software more efficient doesn’t by itself change anything about its quality. You just get more of it faster. I do agree that average software quality isn’t great, though I wouldn’t attribute it to LLMs (yet).

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#102

Post by aurareturn »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #60
aurareturn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the business value? Right now it doesn't really exist, adoption is low to nonexistent outside of programming and even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers. I have a friend who works at PwC doing M&A. This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. PwC has an internal AI chat implementation. Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of progr…

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. Is she more productive though? People who smoke cigarettes will be unable to work without their regular smoke breaks. Doesn’t mean smoking cigarettes is good for working. Personally I am an AI booster and I think even LLMs can take us much farther. But people on both sides need to stop accepting claims uncritically.

No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work.

/s

What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some kind of addiction similar to drugs? Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#103

Post by Wowfunhappy »

asdf1280 wrote: post #76
cornholio wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to say that the only objective that will vindicate AI investments is AGI. Current batch of deep learning models are fundamentally a technology for labor automation. This is immensely useful in itself, without the need to do AGI. The Sora2 capabilities are absolutely wild (see a great example here of what non-professional users are already able to create with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXp8_w3XzgU…

The problem is that it’s already commodified; there’s no moat. The general tech practice has been capture the market by burning vc money, then jack up prices to profit. All these companies are burning billions to generate a new model and users have already proven there is no brand loyalty. They just hop to the new one when it comes out. So no one can corner the market and when the VC money runs out they’ll have to ja…

> The problem is that it’s already commodified; there’s no moat.

From an economy-wide perspective, why does that matter?

> users have already proven there is no brand loyalty. They just hop to the new one when it comes out.

Great, that means there might be real competition! This generally keeps prices down, it doesn't push them up! It's true that VCs may end up unhappy, but will they be able to do anything about it?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#104

Post by bakugo »

jacknews wrote: post #83

I think these articles slightly miss the point. Sure, AI as a tool, as it currently is, will take a very long time to earn back the $B being invested. But what if someone reaches autonomous AGI with this push? Everything changes. So I think there's a massive, massive upside risk being priced into these investments.

> But what if someone reaches autonomous AGI with this push?

What is "autonomous AGI"? How do we know when we've reached it?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#105

Post by frogperson »

asdf1280 wrote: post #76
cornholio wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to say that the only objective that will vindicate AI investments is AGI. Current batch of deep learning models are fundamentally a technology for labor automation. This is immensely useful in itself, without the need to do AGI. The Sora2 capabilities are absolutely wild (see a great example here of what non-professional users are already able to create with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXp8_w3XzgU…

The problem is that it’s already commodified; there’s no moat. The general tech practice has been capture the market by burning vc money, then jack up prices to profit. All these companies are burning billions to generate a new model and users have already proven there is no brand loyalty. They just hop to the new one when it comes out. So no one can corner the market and when the VC money runs out they’ll have to ja…

The most isnt with the llm crestors, its with nvidia, but even that is under seige by Chinese mskers.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#106

Post by lm28469 »

therealmarv wrote: post #46

It reminds me what I said to somebody recently: All my friends and family are using the free version of ChatGPT or something similar. They will never pay (although they have enough money to do so). Even in my very narrow subjective circles it does not add up. Who pays for AI and how? And when in the future?

I use it professionally and I rotate 5 free accounts on all platforms, money doesn't have any values anymore, people will spend $100 a month on LLMs and another $100 on streaming services, that's like half of my household monthly food budget

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#107

Post by echelon »

aurareturn wrote: post #102
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. Is she more productive though? People who smoke cigarettes will be unable to work without their regular smoke breaks. Doesn’t mean smoking cigarettes is good for working. Personally I am an AI booster and I think even LLMs can take us much farther. But people on both sides need to stop accepting claims uncritically.

No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work. /s What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some…

Serious thought.

What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working?

This, to me, feels incredibly plausible.

Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat.

"My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off."

That three day report still takes three days, wink wink.

AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x.

And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea.

Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#108

Post by raincole »

aurareturn wrote: post #102
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. Is she more productive though? People who smoke cigarettes will be unable to work without their regular smoke breaks. Doesn’t mean smoking cigarettes is good for working. Personally I am an AI booster and I think even LLMs can take us much farther. But people on both sides need to stop accepting claims uncritically.

No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work. /s What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some…

[flagged]

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#109

Post by jacknews »

rimeice wrote: post #2

> Some people think artificial intelligence will be the most important technology of the 21st century. I don’t, I think a workable fusion reactor will be the most important technology of the 21st century.

How so?

The maximum possible benefit of fusion (aside from the science gained in the attempt) is cheap energy.

We'll get very cheap energy just by massively rolling out existing solar panels (maybe some at sea), and other renewables, HVDC and batteries/storage.

Fusion is almost certain to be uneconomical in comparison if it's even feasible technically.

AI, is already dramtically impacting some fields, including science (eg deepfold), and AGI would be a step-change.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#110

Post by hemloc_io »

kumarm wrote: post #12
hemloc_io wrote: post #7

The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…

[even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers.] Try building something new in claude code (or codex etc) using a programming language you have not used before. Your opinion might change drastically. Current AI tools may not beat the best programmer, they definitely improves average programmer efficiency.

Yeah I've used it for personal projects and it's 50/50 for me.

Some of the stuff generated I can't believe is actually good to work with long term, and I wonder about the economics of it. It's fun to get something vaguely workable quickly though.

Things like deepwiki are useful too for open source work.

For me though the core problem I have with AI programming tools is that they're targeting a problem that doesn't really exist outside of startups, not writing enough code, instead of the real part of inefficiency in any reasonably sized org, coordination problems.

Of course if you tried to solve coordination problems, then it would probably be a lot harder to sell to management because we'd have to do some collective introspection as to where they come from.

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