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How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

131–140 of 531 posts

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#131

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?

People are always so fidegty about this stuff — for super understandable reason, to be clear. People not much smarter than anyone else try to reason about numbers that are hard to reason about. But unless you have the actual numbers, I always find it a bit strange to assume that all people involved, who deal with large amounts of money all the time, lost all ability to reason about this thing. Because right now that…

Pets.com, Enron, Lehman Bros, WeWork, Theranos, too many to mention.

Investors aren’t always right. The FOMO in that industry is like no other

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#132
AI, if nothing else, is already completely up-ending the Search industry. You probably already find yourself going to ChatGPT for lots of things you would have previously gone to Google for. That's not going to stop. And the ads marketplaces are coming.

We're also finding incredibly valuable use for it in processing unstructured documents into structured data. Even if it only gets it 80-90% there, it's so much faster for a human to check the work and complete the process than it is for them to open a blank spreadsheet and start copy/pasting things over.

There's obviously loads of hype around AI, and loads of skepticism. In that way this is similar to 2001. And the bubble will likely pop at some point, but the long tail value of the technology is very, very real. Just like the internet in 2001.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#133
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where's the business value? " Have you ever used an LLM? I use it every day to help me with research and completing technical reports (which used to be a lot more of my time). Of course you can't just use it blindly, but it definitely adds value.

Does it bring more value than it cost ? That's the real question. Nobody doubt it works, everybody doubt Altboy when he asks $7 trillion

This question is pretty hard to answer without knowing the actual costs.

Current offerings are usually worth more than they cost. But since the prices are not really reflective of the costs it gets pretty muddy if it is a value add or not.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#134

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?

Someone is paying. OpenAI revenue was $4.3 billion in the first half of this year.

You forgot that part:

> The artificial intelligence firm reported a net loss of US$13.5 billion during the same period

If you sell gold at $10 a gram you'll also make billions in revenues.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is the kind of question that takes into account that people thinking that they are more productive does not imply that they actually are. This happens in a wide range of contexts, from AI to drugs.

It isn’t a question asked by people generally suspicious of productivity claims. It’s only asked by LLM skeptics, about LLMs.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#136
post #123

I feel kind of like a Luddite sometimes but I don't understand why EVERYONE is rushing to use AI? I use a couple different agents to help me code, and ChatGPT has largely replaced Google in my everyday use, but I genuinely don't understand the value proposition of every other companies offerings. I really feel like we're in the same "Get it out first, figure out what it is good for later" bubble we had like 7 years a…

> It's like letting a small child drive a car.

Bad example, because FSD cars are here.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#137
post #104

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?

When you can use AI as though it's an employee, instead of repeatedly 'prompting' it with small problems and tasks.

It will have agency, it will perform the role. A part of that is that it will have to maintain a running context, and learn as it goes, which seem to be the missing pieces in current llms.

I suppose we'll know, when we start rating AI by 'performance review', like employees, instead of the current 'solve problem' scorecards.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#139
post #94
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

How can I possibly assess the results in a programming language I haven’t used before? That’s almost the same as vibe coding.

The same way you assess results in a programming language you have used before. In a more complicated project that might mean test suites. For a simple project (e.g. a Bash script) you might just run it and see if it does what you expect.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#140

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…

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore.

It doesn't say she chooses to use it; it says she can't work without using it. At my workplace, senior leadership has mandated that software engineers use our internal AI chat tooling daily, they monitor the usage statistics, and are updating engineering leveling guides to include sufficient usage of AI being required for promotions. So I can't work without AI anymore, but it doesn't mean I choose to.

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