AI is not worth the cost of AI. We know this to a certainty as zero Ai companies are profitable, and the most popular uses of AI are free. The natural laws of commerce would dictate that it should die. Financial scheming will only delay the inevitable.
AI is too expensive
101–110 of 165 posts
Re: AI is too expensive
#102Imagine you were looking at Google, a sustainable and profitable business, and you thought you saw a once in a lifetime opportunity to compete with them and take their position as a leading tech company. How much money would you need to spend to make a credible attempt? Google has had decades to accumulate intellectual and physical capital. Catching up quickly means spending >500 billion. If you can actually dethrone…
In this scenario at minimum three fail and probably all four since Google is also in this fight. Supports the bubble thesis.
Re: AI is too expensive
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile Meta / Mark Zuck is in crisis mode trying to come up with some meaningful way to break into AI, instead of competing in what's currently hot, they'll probably remake Elons weird persona system, which is not exactly the hottest thing on the planet, and billions down the drain that could have gone into building more efficient LLMs instead.
> billions down the drain that could have gone into building more efficient LLMs instead. Or any one of thousands of other ventures which could be more beneficial to humanity, the environment, etc.
Or at least profit margins.
Re: AI is too expensive
#104I really respected Ed Zitron, but I feel like he's very much lost the plot on AI. Scroll back not too far and he was publishing criticisms that no one wants to spend actual money AI. Anthropic has shattered all notions of that since then. Then there was the idea that even if people want it, we have way too much GPU capacity to ever be saturated. Now almost all providers are hitting limits. Now, its the next iteration…
Why did you criticize his past arguments instead of the claims in this article? The one relevant claim you address is basically a shrug on your part. This seems to be purely a character attack of Zitron. I agree that he is very one-sided, but I doubt his hit-rate is much worse than other pundits in the industry.
I think it's very reasonable to look at the track record when posting anti-AI articles looks like the author's part-time (if not full-time) job: https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/edward/
Re: AI is too expensive
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eventually you come to realize the more things change the more they stay the same.
Sorry but no. It's a flawed analogy to suggest that an emerging technology like AI follows the same scaling laws as the taxi industry. AI benefits from active R&D, rapidly improving hardware, compounding software efficiencies, and deflationary cost curves that simply have no equivalent in a labor- and vehicle-dependent service...
Yeah. And we were going to use blockchains & ledgers to store & process every single skerrick of data possible… oh wait…
Re: AI is too expensive
#106It not impossible that hyperscale AI turns out to be a very expensive proof of concept for when hardware is fast and cheap enough decades from now, like those first video games played on mainframes and minicomputers.
Re: AI is too expensive
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Places that have dollars and not euros. North America, usually, has phone bills that high. If you don't shop around and bring your own device, at least.
It is extremely easy to get unlimited mobile internet in the US for $30/mo.
Correct, but people still largely don't use those plans. They walk into service provider store, get a "free" iphone, and then pay $70/mo until their next "free" phone in 2yrs.
Re: AI is too expensive
#108First, the cloud providers would invest into anything that will increase their revenues. It's not really about AI. For Microsoft. Azure and Cpilot arr the revenue channels. They are just investing on these channels.
What if the things, on which they are investing, go bust? Well, they do calculate their risk when they invest on startups.
The overall picture? Not everyone's calculations will yield good predictions. Some of these cloud sharks go bust when, for example. OpenAI folds. The game is, winner gets it all. We are heading into monopolies in every layer.
Re: AI is too expensive
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. He plainly has an axe to grind. I'm as AI-skeptical as the next guy, but I can't handle Ed Zitron. Doesn't seem like a good faith actor.
I said this in the last Ed Zitron article too, but it's more than just having an axe or grind or acting in bad faith (though those are both true as well). He's a completely standard example of audience capture: there's huge demand right now for "AI is a scam" takes, fulfilling that demand is how he makes his living, and he can't abandon it without losing his audience no matter what the facts on the ground do. All he…
I don't understand his audience still being in denial about what is coming. There may not be a job apocalypse but there is a decent chance tough times are ahead. Eventually, his audience may turn into outright Luddites. If that happens I sort of hope they don't stop at data centers/AI and go for the whole project of the Internet.
Re: AI is too expensive
#110The AI related companies seem to be doing ok. Google profits $132bn Microsoft $102bn. Anthropic losing about $10bn but on revenue of $30bn up from $14bn a year or so ago. I don't think it's all going bust too quickly.
Google, Microsoft, etc will be fine. But their stock market valuation may drop substantially.