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AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

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Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#141

Post by sjaiisba »

mirekrusin wrote: post #35

This article seems to have "basically zero" content. Today you have to be blind to not see the change that is coming. World has its own (massive) inertia, burocracy present in businesses accounting for a big part in it. AI itself is moving fast but not at infinite speeds. We start to have good enough tooling but it's not yet available to everyone and it still hangs on too many hacks that will need to crystalize. Peop…

> As people say - something changed around Dec/Jan

Yes, Anthropic decided they wanted to IPO and got the hype machine in full swing.

Don’t get me wrong LLMs are here to stay but how we’re currently using them is likely going to change a lot. Stuff like this:

> in general everybody has to do bottom up cleanup and documentation of all their projects, setup skills and whatnot and that's assuming their corp is ok with it, not blocking it

Is not needed to get a lot out of AI, and is mostly snake oil. Integrating them with actionable feedback is, but that takes a lot of time and rethinking of some existing systems.

I don’t like the Internet analogy cause that’s like producing a new raw material, but AI is gonna be like Excel eventually (one of the most important pieces of software in the world).

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#142

Post by wefzyn »

Andrej Karpathy said that major revolutions like the Internet, smartphones, and AI often don’t show up clearly in GDP statistics, even when they radically change how people work. GDP measures total spending, not productivity or usefulness. These revolutions improved efficiency and quality of life, but GDP mostly continued along its long-term trend.

See his interview in Dwarkesh's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0-0gGdDJyE&t=4983s

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#143

Post by testbjjl »

jsheard wrote: post #74
bdangubic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the investments are being made by massively profitable companies (our biggest and brightest ones, the ones that have been carrying the economy for quite some time now, even before "AI"). even just in recent history we have seen companies making large investments and being very unprofitable until they weren't anymore (e.g. Uber). and it is always the same story, everyone is up in arms "this is not sustainable etc..."…

I'd maybe think twice about assuming Meta knows what they're doing after they just pissed $75 billion up the wall on a Metaverse dream that went nowhere.

Pissed it away, but Zuckerberg is richer than ever and so are his stockholders it seems. I can’t imagine doing it, but also can’t imagine running Meta.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#144

Post by arctic-true »

bdangubic wrote: post #120
arctic-true wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the companies that have already shoveled billions of dollars at this are continuing to do so is equally consistent with AI improvement and adoption stalling as it is with infinite improvement and widespread adoption. Yes, it’s irrational to chase sunk costs - but unlike the VC funds that backed Uber and its competition, may of the players in this game are exposed to public markets, which are not known f…

> If you pull back on your AI investments, the markets will punish you - probably vigorously quite the opposite is happening as evidenced from last earnings reports…

There is definitely growing hesitancy in the market, but pulling back at this juncture could set off a full-on race to the bottom, because it would disprove the original point (“all the smart tech companies are all-in, so there must be profit at the end of the tunnel”). Right now, they can point to the skeptics as bears or doomers or whatever. The first big tech company to drop its capex will pierce the aura of invincibility and make the moderate retreat from the exuberant highs of late 2025 look like a blip on the radar.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#145

Post by numbsafari »

BobbyJo wrote: post #128
afavour wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI in particular doesn't have a high requirement at the consumer side. Everyone already has everything they need to use it. That isn’t actually true though, right now everyone has a hard dependency on a cloud service. That is currently sold to them at deep discount by companies that are losing billions. When the market eventually corrects it’ll be interesting to see how much AI ends up costing. At the very least it…

Is it actually being sold at a steep discount? Anthropic CEO has stated they have high margins on inference, so training is the big cost center.

Does the cumulative earnings from inference on a single model exceed its training costs?

That’s.. kinda the question.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#146

Post by cmiles8 »

The AI bros are saying everyone will be out of work in 5 years.

Economists and businesses are calling BS and saying AI is cool, but basically adding zero measurable value with 95% of AI projects failing.

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, but it seems unlikely this bubble can continue much longer.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#147

Post by mlnj »

wefzyn wrote: post #142

Andrej Karpathy said that major revolutions like the Internet, smartphones, and AI often don’t show up clearly in GDP statistics, even when they radically change how people work. GDP measures total spending, not productivity or usefulness. These revolutions improved efficiency and quality of life, but GDP mostly continued along its long-term trend. See his interview in Dwarkesh's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watc…

Besides, AI has barely started to be productive to Developers. The rest of the workforce are still untouched for the most part. The tools that assist the bulk of knowledge work out there is still in the works.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#148

Post by georgemcbay »

rainsford wrote: post #28
kakapo5672 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and the same with the internet. During the 1990s and 2000s, people kept wondering why the internet wasn't showing up in productivity numbers. Many asked if the internet was therefore just a fad or bubble. Same as some now do with AI. It takes time for technology to show measurable impact in enormous economies. No reason why AI will be any different.

Sure, but you have to consider Carl Sagan's point, "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Some truly useful technologies start out slow and the question is asked if they are fads or bubbles even though they end up having huge im…

> What I'm much less convinced of is that it will prove valuable in a way that's even remotely within the same order of magnitude as the investments being pumped into it.

I think there are two layers of uncertainty here. One is, as you say, if the value is worth the investment. The other and possibly bigger issue is who is going to capture the value and how.

Assuming AI turns out to be wildly valuable, I'm not at all convinced that at the end of this money spending race that the companies pouring many billions of dollars into commercial LLMs are going to end up notably ahead of open models that are running the race on the cheap by drafting behind the "frontier" models.

For now the frontier models can stay ahead by burning heaps of money but if/when progress slows toward a limit whatever lead they have is going to quickly evaporate.

At some point I suspect some ugly legal battles as some attempt to construct some sort of moat that doesn't automatically drain after a few months of slowed progress. Google's recent complaining about people distilling gemini could be an early signal of this.

I have no idea how any of that would shake out legally, but I have a hard time sympathizing with commercial LLM providers (who slurped up most existing human knowledge without permission) if/when they start to get upset about people ripping them off.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#149

Post by ughitsaaron »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

I just want to call out how much I appreciate the comparison of “vibe coding” to the endless scroll.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#150

Post by melagonster »

boxedemp wrote: post #92
mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

I've literally not met one person in tech who thinks LLMs will become sentient or conscious. But I always see people online claiming that there are lots of people who believe that. Where are they? Are we sure that's not a misunderstanding of the terminology? Artificial diamonds, such as cubic zirconia, are not diamonds, and nobody thinks they are. 'Artificial' means it's not the real thing. When will conscious, actua…

>LLMs will become sentient or conscious.

People who declare that AGI is coming.

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