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Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

geohot.github.io

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Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#21

Post by convolvatron »

fn-mote wrote: post #18
singpolyma3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market it would be stop paying drivers so everyone can pay less for taxis. But the market is so unbelievably messed up that this is not what happens in practise.

Disagree. The work on self-driving cars would not be done if there were not a way to profit from it. If it isn’t expected to earn more than it costs, it wouldn’t be done. Now maybe it’s all being done because of expectations of a monopoly (this is a free market consequence, right?), but …

I think you made the assumption that gp is disagreeing with, that reducing costs necessarily reduces prices. (hence the bit about messed up markets)

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#22

Post by philipkglass »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #8
throwway120385 wrote: post #2

It seems like the rent seeking class is just moving to selling you access to LLMs in data centers by the token. In the past, the "rent-seeking class" being described here was at least part of the middle class. Now a few billionaires are going to capture all of the value, but the rent-seeking isn't going away.

Since the article is largely about open weights models, I think the argument is that this is the "last gasp" and soon doing inference at home will be common.

The small models that I can run at home are becoming more capable, and I have replaced some API-based tasks with local inference as they improve, but large open weights models are still a lot stronger. The nice thing with larger open weights models is that competing providers serve them at modest margins and prices. I don't have the hardware to run the largest Qwen models, but I can get API access at low cost. Since there are only modest barriers to new commercial inference providers for these models I'm not worried that API access to them will become drastically more expensive at some future time.

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#24

Post by undeveloper »

HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #10

[flagged]

I'm not sure why you think a portion of the general voting base is "rent seeking", but it's the opinion of one without empathy. pick a better one that's at least not simultaneously stupid.

Anyhow ...

https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/10/28/ameri...

> If Trump wins and Elon has influence, I do think there is a path to fix America longer term. While the general Trump/Elon vibes are good, I do have concerns about Trump’s fiscal record and protectionist tendencies. [...]

> Of course if Kamala wins, I think I’ll be staying in Asia. Managed decline with a side of resentment and looting oligarchs isn’t for me.

(he would get a hong kong citizenship anyhow)

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#25

Post by jitl »

someguydave wrote: post #23

"But like people who are good with computers, the models want a terminal, not some candy ass iPad UI." Giving functionally illiterate people computers with GUIs should be regarded as a mistake.

A society/country that produces functionally illiterate adults should be regarded as a mistake.

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#27

Post by mtlynch »

palmotea wrote: post #15

> The best anyone can hope for is a free market, with everything properly priced. But for decades, the American market has not been free. It’s used purposefully added friction to exploit a time asymmetry between the business and you. And due to things like call centers, this has been very profitable for the businesses. Cable companies and insurance rely on the fact that your time is more valuable than theirs. They ca…

> If a company has the capability to hire literal people to waste your time, they can deploy more AI than you to waste the time of your AI.

I don't totally buy OP's argument, but I think you're dismissing it unfairly.

His point is that in the pre-LLM world, if a company wants to waste your time, they can hire a call center employee overseas for US$4/hr and make you wait for an hour to talk to them for 30 minutes. If you value your time at $80/hr, then the 90-minute call cost you $120, but it only cost the company about $2, thus the asymmetry.

OP's claim is that now, the asymmetry is gone. If both you and the company try to use AI, the company has less leverage to impose costs on you. They can deploy more AI to waste more of your time, but that means the asymmetry now is in the customer's favor because it costs the company more than the customer to get support.

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#28

Post by piker »

qoez wrote: post #5

I'm not sure I buy the "everyone will be AI coding to replace things that cost money with their own apps" idea. I only have so much limited time in my day (and only so many tokens on my claude account per week). It's probably going to make more sense for me to buy a tool that's been given human attention over the span of weeks over something i prompt into existence in a few hours (especially if I need 10 such tools t…

"The economics of opportunity cost are unchanged" a friend told me recently, and I think that's exactly what is driving your intuition here as well.

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#29

Post by sublinear »

PaulHoule wrote: post #16

"But like people who are good with computers, the models want a terminal, not some candy ass iPad UI." Back before the iPhone I used to get into arguments with HCI specialists that phones could be like butlers and should know with all the sensors that they have that you put it in your bag and behaved accordingly. I was told that was impossible then but it seems more possible now. Had the world gone at all that way we…

Where does this hypothetical API live? Within a walled garden? We almost have that already with delivery apps and some credit cards. They're awful precisely because they are rent seeking in the form of convenience fees and artificial scarcity.

What you call multimodal hell is what others call meaningful choice and market competition.

Re: Last gasps of the rent seeking class?

#30

Post by CoolGuySteve »

notfried wrote: post #12

This is a highly sensational take that is basically fan fiction. From "the era of purposefully frustrating humans is over", to "the added bonus of the collapse of the US economy. Frankly, it’s well deserved." and "everyone in the world is rooting for the Chinese models"; nothing of that is grounded in reality. The Chinese models are open source because they are not state of the art. Once they catch-up or lead, they w…

> The Chinese models are open source because they are not state of the art

I think geohot is burying the lead in this text in his post with a lot of speculation.

It's not not that these specific models will become closed it's that the hardware/hosting vendors have an incentive to train models where inference is custom tuned to their chip's dimensions and VRAM.

The Chinese models do a great job of showing what's capable on consumer/prosumer hardware because of export restrictions but anyone entering the hardware space has the same incentives to undercut the frontier labs so they can sell more hardware.

It's also not clear if being at the forefront of inference quality really matters. The open source models appear to be doing a fine enough job of keeping up even if they're a few months behind. So it seems like there's not much of a technology moat for these labs other than the capital costs of training/serving.

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