Live data from Hacker News

How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

201–210 of 531 posts

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#201
post #190
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI figured out something on my mind that I didn’t tell it about yesterday (latest Sonnet). My best advice to you is to spend time and allow the AI to blow your mind. Then you’ll get it. Sometimes I sit in wonder at how the fuck it’s able to figure out that much intent without specific instructions. There’s no way anyone programmed it to understand that much. If you’re not blown away by this then I have to assume you…

LLMs cannot think on their own, they’re glorified autocomplete automatons writing things based on past training. If the “AI figured out something on your mind”, it is extremely likely the “thing on your mind” was present in the training corpus, and survivorship bias made you notice.

Tbh if Claude is smarter than average person, and it is, then 50% of the population is not even a glorified auto complete. Imagine that, all not very bright.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#203
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like letting a small child drive a car. Bad example, because FSD cars are here.

Find me an FSD that can drive in non-Californian real world situations. A foot of snow, black ice, a sand drift.

I am not in California, and those are not standard road conditions here.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#204
There’s two different markets.

The research market is made up of firms like OpenAI and Anthropic that are investing billions in research. These investments are just that. Their returns won’t be realized immediately, so it’s hard to predict if it’s truly a bubble.

The product market is made up of all the secondary companies trying to use the results of current research. In my mind these businesses should be the ones held to basic economics of ROI. The amount of VC dollars flooding into these products feels unsustainable.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#205
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…

Bigger companies believe smaller shops can use AI to level the playing field, so they are “transforming their business” and spending their way to get there first.

They don’t know where the threat will come from or which dimension of their business will be attacked, they are just being told by the consulting shops that software development cost will trend to zero and this is an existential risk.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#206
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 scien…

Cheap, _limitless_ energy from fusion could solve almost every geopolitical/environmental issue we face today. Europe is acutely aware of this at the moment and it's why China and America are investing mega bucks. We will eventually run out of finite energy sources. Even if we do capture the max capacity possible from renewables with 100% efficiency, our energy consumption rates increasing at current rates will eventually exceed this max capacity. Those rates are accelerating. We really have no choice.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#207
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just you switching away from Google is already justifying 1T infrastructure spend. How? OpenAI are LOSING money on every query. Beating Google by losing money isn't really beating Google.

How do we know this?

Statistically this is obvious. Most people use the free tier. Their total losses are enormous and their revenue is not great.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#208

>Others insist that it is an obvious economic bubble. The definition is that the assets are valuated above an intrinsic value. The first graph is Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. Lets check their PE ratio. Amazon (AMZN) ~ 33.6 Meta (META) ~ 27.5 Google (GOOGL) ~ 25.7 Microsoft (MSFT) ~ 37.9 Oracle (ORCL) ~ 65 These are highish pe ratios, but certainly very far from bubble numbers. OpenAI and others are al…

> Not to mention, who are you to think the top tech companies arent fully aware of the risks they are taking with AI?

Well 2008 happened too and people weren't too concerned with risk either.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#209

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.

Productive how and for who?

My own use case (financial analysis and data capture by the models). It takes away the grunt work, I can focus on the more pleasant aspects of the job, it also means I can produce better quality reports as I have additional time to look more closely. It also points out things I could have potentially missed.

Free time and boredom spurs creativity, some folks forget this.

I also have more free time, for myself, you're not going to see that on a corporate productivity chart.

Not everything in life is about making more money for some already wealthy shareholders, a point I feel sometimes lost in these discussions, I think some folks need some self-reflection on this point, their jobs don't actually change the world and thinking of the shareholders only gets you so far. (Not pointed at you, just speaking generally).

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#210

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…

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 day…

That's Jevons paradox for you.
Post reply on HN