71–80 of 202 posts
So debt financing (Oracle) vs fund-it-more-on-your-own (other big tech?) vs fund-it-with-equity (startups?)... I guess that makes some kind of sense? Oracle raises 4x the debt of e.g. Google?
When you say debt financing (Oracle) does that mean Oracle is actually financing the loans to these other companies? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding.
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The most sobering statistic I've seen is that the entire combined amount of consumer spending on AI products is currently less than the revenue of Genshin Impact.
Well, Genshin Impact is at the forefront of predatory B2C business practice. It is a gacha game, engineered to extract as much money from its prey as possible. On the other end, most AI company can afford to be generous with their user/consumer right now because they are being bankrolled by magic money. The real test will be when they have to start the enshitification. Will the product still be enough to convince con…
I’m bullish on AI as tech but folks are starting to sniff out that the financials of everything going on at the moment aren’t sustainable for much longer. I hope we have more of a “reality correction” than full blown bubble bursting, but the data is increasingly looking like we’re about to have a massive implosion that wipes out a generation of startups and sets the VC ecosystem back a decade.
So debt financing (Oracle) vs fund-it-more-on-your-own (other big tech?) vs fund-it-with-equity (startups?)... I guess that makes some kind of sense? Oracle raises 4x the debt of e.g. Google?
Many of the ‘AI data centers’ are being financed with debt; some are being done as joint ventures with companies like Blue Owl Capital (whose stock is also taking a beating).
I’m bullish on AI as tech but folks are starting to sniff out that the financials of everything going on at the moment aren’t sustainable for much longer. I hope we have more of a “reality correction” than full blown bubble bursting, but the data is increasingly looking like we’re about to have a massive implosion that wipes out a generation of startups and sets the VC ecosystem back a decade.
> I’m bullish on AI as tech I'm not bullish in the stock market sense. Which isn't the same as saying LLMs and related technology aren't useful... they are. But as you mentioned the financials don't make sense today, and even worse than that, I'm not sure how they could get the financials to make sense because no player in the space on the software side has a real moat to speak of, and I don't believe its possible to…
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It's hard for me to imagine paying real money for something that gives me a maybe-hallucinated answer that I need to check every single time. A flaky test is worse than a failing test.
_sigh_ Yes LLMs hallucinate, no it's no longer 2022 and ChatGPT (gpt-3.5) is the pinnacle of LLM tech. Modern LLMs in an agentic loop can self correct, you still need to be on guard but if used correctly (yes, yes, holding it wrong etc. etc.) can do many, many tasks that do not suffer from "need to check every single time".
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It's hard for me to imagine paying real money for something that gives me a maybe-hallucinated answer that I need to check every single time. A flaky test is worse than a failing test.
_sigh_ Yes LLMs hallucinate, no it's no longer 2022 and ChatGPT (gpt-3.5) is the pinnacle of LLM tech. Modern LLMs in an agentic loop can self correct, you still need to be on guard but if used correctly (yes, yes, holding it wrong etc. etc.) can do many, many tasks that do not suffer from "need to check every single time".
If the problem as stated is "Performing an LLM query at newly inflated cost $X is an iffy value proposition because I'm not sure if it will give me a correct answer" then I don't see how "use a tool that keeps generating queries until it gets it right" (which seems like it is basically what you are advocating for) is the solution.
I mean, yeah, the result will be more correct answers than if you just made one-off queries to the LLM, but the costs spiral out of control even faster because the agent is going to be generating more costly queries to reach that answer.
I can’t wait for the apocalyptic razing that’s coming.
Previously: Oracle's credit default swaps surge as Barclays downgrades its debt rating https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45910711
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I think we know how it plays out. In a couple of years, someone is going to have to swoop in and save CoreWeave’s customers and consultants will be lined up for that “transformation”.
are you suggesting bailouts for the AI data centers are the new too big to fail