AI is slowing down • Hacker News Board

Re: AI is slowing down

#131

Post by moritzwarhier » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

toasty228 wrote: post #118

dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

> undeniable, massive productivity gains. Take any stock index, remove AI stocks, what do you see? That's right! Nothing... So where is all the productivity going? Where is the value? Where are the massive unemployment stats or the millions of new startups making big $$$?

Writing about AI, destroying the planet for data centers, there's a lot of money to be made.

That being said, AI seems kind of miraculous sometimes.

Similar to cars. So enticing that we make everything else in the world worse in order to maximize the profit, make it indispensable, subsidize it, and make the dependency on it irreversible.

And it's not even something to blame individual people for.

Driving away from all the other cars to spend a weekend feels like freedom.

Using AI to answer a question feels like a "bicycle for the mind".

But in fact it's more like a car. It requires massive resources and creates perverse incentives, and the result is ineffective and corrupt.

Both cars and AI are amazing technology and extremely useful, but using them is not an individual responsibility. It requires societal subsidy.

Re: AI is slowing down

#132

Post by simonw » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

Ed's argument for why "AI is slowing down" rests on company spending caps, in particular the Uber $1,500/engineer/tool cap.

I interpret the exact same evidence in the opposite direction. A year ago the idea that a company would spend $1,500/month/employee on AI tooling felt absurd, what could people possible want to do with AI that would cost that much?

Then coding agents (and, increasingly, general purpose agents) happened and suddenly companies are having to set limits because otherwise the demand from their employees is too high.

The TAM of these AI companies just leapt up to $1,500/knowledge-worker/month, how is that "slowing down"?

Re: AI is slowing down

#133

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

"Last week I went on Bloomberg and discussed the state of the AI bubble with a clarity that rattled even the sweatiest boosters, mostly because I spoke with clarity about an investment frenzy whipped up through hype, deceit and mythology."

Bloomberg is interested in what he has to say

But not HN commenters

Re: AI is slowing down

#134

Post by dminik » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #53

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, supposed productivity gains are dubious. I personally experience at best no productivity gains when using LLMs to write code, and sometimes it's an active drain on my productivity. There was that one study a year or so ago showing similar results. People are trying to say the productivity gains are there and undeniable, but that is not true. It is very much a subject of controversy whether AI helps productivity…

I can see an argument that the productivity gains are illusory / don’t translate to economic productivity. I’m not denying the possibility. However, most of the engineers I respect have gone from being skeptics a year ago to convinced today. I don’t personally know any true holdouts any more. If there are studies that disprove productivity gains more than six months ago, I’m happy to believe that it was true of the A…

Its funny, I've noticed the same thing, but did not come to the same conclusion.

I currently don't have work access to Claude Code, but most of my teammates do. Watching from the outside, the cycle seems to look like this:

1. Experience some success, which hooks you into relying on AI.

2. The AI keeps failing at some task, but you don't want to stop. Keep trying over and over again.

3. Run out of tokens and take a break.

Now, sometimes 1 doesn't happen. Sometimes 2 doesn't happen. 3 is a certainty though.

Now, if you told me that the productivity gain from 1 is enough to offset the loss from 2 and 3, I could believe you. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

Re: AI is slowing down

#135

Post by amatheus » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

oudlys wrote: post #13

dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

Productivity is not value. It's quite possible for you to experience productivity improvements, and actual value to not be created. That is what I think the most robust data is showing. https://unessays.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap

From an economic perspective productivity is defined as the creation of value isn't it? Then if you "improve productivity" and does not create value in the end you're no improving productivity at all.

Re: AI is slowing down

#136

Post by putzdown » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

One of the "smells" that gives away a quacky ranter is they speak in impassioned, "Why doesn't everyone understand this?" tones, but in fact their argument just doesn't flow. If Zitron's argument were as solid as he keeps saying it is, you would read it and understand it and see that it is solid. He would begin somewhere–statistics on AI demand, say–and then walk the calculations carefully over to the next step–maybe revenue needed for profitability by AI companies–and you could follow the argument. But no. He jumps. He leaps. He circles back. If the situation were really "Gosh why can't you see it?!"-clear, his explanation of the situation would be clear. It isn't, because it isn't.

Re: AI is slowing down

#137

Post by ainch » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

As WIRED reported[0], despite constantly writing about how an AI collapse is just about to come, Zitron privately does PR for AI firms on the side. The man is an obvious hack, and it's disappointing that he has become one of the mainstream faces of AI skepticism.

[0]: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/

Re: AI is slowing down

#138

Post by gdcbe » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #132

Ed's argument for why "AI is slowing down" rests on company spending caps, in particular the Uber $1,500/engineer/tool cap. I interpret the exact same evidence in the opposite direction. A year ago the idea that a company would spend $1,500/month/employee on AI tooling felt absurd, what could people possible want to do with AI that would cost that much? Then coding agents (and, increasingly, general purpose agents) h…

Maybe in USA in big tech where companies give absurd wages to engineers anyway in some states, that might be acceptable. But to make their ROI they need that (and more) to be spend world wide... no way that is gonna be a budget that is gonna fly in the long term...

Companies love to cut costs, and just like they axe employee numbers at will, they will just as well make that kind of budget quickly dissapear the moment they realize they can go a different path for same or better value... Or simply because share holder short-term value demands it...

Re: AI is slowing down

#139

Post by abaymado » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #120

zachthewf wrote: post #15

Before you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong takes for 2+ years (e.g. https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ from March 2024) arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.

Not sure where I heard this, but I'm reminded of a story about someone predicting the dotcom crash early, circa 1998. For 2 years they were demonstrably crazy, and missed out on massive stock market gains. Then they were right. (And yes, tech slowly bounced back after that.) Predicting the timing of such a thing is notoriously difficult. I don't think being wrong about timing 2 years ago means there won't be a correc…

Not related to AI but, I recently rewatched "The Big Short" and your comment reminded me of it. I can't testify the accuracy of the movie, but for over year, Michael Burry was viewed as in the same manner for shorting the market, while the economy was was in a hype cycle.

Re: AI is slowing down

#140

Post by qaq » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:47 PM UTC

Anthropic has made $330 billion in compute and chip commitments between Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, another $30 billion with CoreWeave and another $15 billion with SpaceX. To pay for this compute, Anthropic must meet its projected revenue of $174 billion a year by 2029. Anthropic has raised $95 billion across rounds in February, April (from Google and Amazon), and May. These funds will be insufficient to cover Anthropic’s costs, as will Anthropic’s cash flow, meaning that it will have to raise at least another $200 billion in the next year.

How people take this seriously? Anthropic is at 45B ARR S-1 shows inference margin climbed to 70% (obviously could drop) So where that 200B number is coming from ?