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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

#271

Post by tempodox »

cmiles8 wrote: post #146

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.

The duration of this bubble so far goes to show how incredibly rich the investors are, burning trillions of dollars over the years in a wild speculation that they will be able to get everyone else out of work and then having the power to decide who will be allowed to live and who will have to die in the fight over the last breadcrumbs. In the end they will be the ones who can afford to buy private armies to protect themselves from the hungry masses.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

albatross79 wrote: post #164
brokencode wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have a really bleak view on life to think an adult should never get excited like a child. Adult life doesn’t have to be boring drudgery, you know. I mean, it mostly is, but the rare moments of childlike joy and excitement are some of the best parts. As far as the putting a damper on anything, nope it doesn’t. And it never will. The people excited about AI are excited because of the impacts they see on their…

It's not bleak, just more mature.

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by sph »

palmotea wrote: post #232
georgeecollins wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics " Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.

> "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics " > Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987. Some skeptic was wrong in the past, therefore we should disbelieve every skeptic, forever. That's the argument, right?

“The dot-com boom left all this fibre that powered the next 20 years of Internet growth” is the common example put forward, and I always wonder what amazing societal advancement we got with all those leftover tulip bulbs in the 1600s.

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

#274

Post by tempodox »

vachina wrote: post #80
Gigachad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US economy is remarkably resilient considering its withstood a year of sabotage from the top down.

The top don’t run the show. Tells you how much a value they provide.

The amount of damage that was done in just a year says otherwise.

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

#275

Post by palmotea »

jononor wrote: post #251
great_psy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Regular folks will not pay Anthropic, but NSA, NASA or research labs might. I’m not implying this will be a good time for AI companies. I am saying AI as a technology can provide value without it being controlled by only 3 companies.

In a hypothetical future with 2026 level LLMs on a (high end) consumer laptop, I still think that majority of buyers would prefer to pay 20 USD/month for a service. Just for the convenience and flexibility.

> In a hypothetical future with 2026 level LLMs on a (high end) consumer laptop, I still think that majority of buyers would prefer to pay 20 USD/month for a service. Just for the convenience and flexibility.

$20 a month is a lot of money, I don't think the "convenience and flexibility" you get would actually be worth it, unless you've 1) got money to burn, 2) lack the skills to install software, 3) the open source community totally fails to develop a reasonable installer. The LLM service would probably be akin to a scam preying on ignorance, like those companies that will rent you a water softener for like $100/month.

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

#276

Post by jononor »

palmotea wrote: post #275
jononor wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a hypothetical future with 2026 level LLMs on a (high end) consumer laptop, I still think that majority of buyers would prefer to pay 20 USD/month for a service. Just for the convenience and flexibility.

> In a hypothetical future with 2026 level LLMs on a (high end) consumer laptop, I still think that majority of buyers would prefer to pay 20 USD/month for a service. Just for the convenience and flexibility. $20 a month is a lot of money, I don't think the "convenience and flexibility" you get would actually be worth it, unless you've 1) got money to burn, 2) lack the skills to install software, 3) the open source c…

It is a lot compared to what? I believe that a LLM capable laptop will cost considerably more than something that is good-enough for non-LLM productivity tasks. At least within the next 5 years. Say that it would cost 600 USD more, that would buy 30 months of subscription. It is this kind of scenario I think many people will favor the subscription.

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

#277

Post by georgeecollins »

palmotea wrote: post #232
georgeecollins wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics " Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.

> "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics " > Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987. Some skeptic was wrong in the past, therefore we should disbelieve every skeptic, forever. That's the argument, right?

No, sorry I should have elaborated because while this is a really familiar case to people who study economics it may not be familiar to everyone. People spent a fortune on computers, and increasing amounts. To the point of the quote it wasn't clear that it was improving productivity. It took time and a lot of investment for the transformation of work to happen.

A similar historical thing is when factories went from steam engines to electricity. Steam factories had one big engine connected mechanically to many tools and conveniences in the factory. So they replace the one big steam engine with an electric motor. Really not much better. It took time for them to realize they wire the factory and have each device have its own electric motor. That was more efficient and more flexible. Technology that changes how you work takes a long time to adopt.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

rfv6723 wrote: post #88
ozim wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI companies don’t have 20 years, they have max 5 years where they have to turn to profit. They don’t have time to wait for all the companies to pick up use of AI tooling in their own pace. So they lie and try to manufacture demand. Well demand is there but they have to manufacture FOMO so that demand materializes now and not in 20 or 10 years.

This outlook is as short-sighted as the 2000 fiber optic bust. Critics then thought overcapacity meant the end, yet that infrastructure eventually created the modern internet. Capital does not walk away from a fundamental shift just because of one market correction. While specific companies may fail, the long-term value of the technology ensures that investment will continue far beyond a five-year window.

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by judahmeek »

BobbyJo wrote: post #212
bigbadfeline wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthropic CEO has stated they have high margins on inference, so training is the big cost center. I'm pretty sure that in corpo-speak "inference" excludes the cost of datacenter construction, GPUs and other hardware, manual data cleaning, R&D, administration, etc - basically everything except the power bill for inference. I have absolutely no problem with companies that run inference only - plenty of them offer ope…

They've raise 70-ish billion (which they have not spent all of) and have a run rate of 14 billion/y as of now. All said and done those are great economics so far, even accounting for those extra expenses.

Your argument requires the run rate to reduce over time until OpenAI reaches profitability. However, even OpenAI has publicized that they expect their expenses to exponentially increase for their models to remain competitive.

So they are not profitable now & they have no idea of when they ever will be.

Worse, Gemini has guaranteed funding for continued training whenever the AI hype bubble pops.

Anthropic & OpenAI's only saving grace is that Google is generally terrible at product.

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

#280

Post by kermatt »

When talking about the economy, how much of these numbers consider secondary effects of AI?

For example when there are large scale layoffs attributed to AI (which in some cases may be a smokescreen to reduce headcount), the people that are affected reduce their spending to compensate.

Less spending means less revenue for other companies, resulting in more layoffs, something of a feedback loop?Therefore perceived productivity gains maybe a net negative in the macro economic sense.

I am no economist so I don't know if any of that makes sense, but it's something I regularly wonder about.

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