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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#251

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

oudlys wrote: post #72
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is an observational study that was published in March 2026 that followed 4000 teams over 2 years. It shows, in my view, exactly that the productivity gains don't translate into economic value. Here is the report: https://www.faros.ai/blog/ai-acceleration-whiplash-takeaways And my commentary: https://unessays.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap

If it was published in March 2026, even if the data was collected up to the day the study was published, 7/8ths of it would fail my “within the last six months” test. But I am looking forward to the results of future studies on this topic!

Re: AI is slowing down

#252

Post by atleastoptimal »

toasty228 wrote: post #215
atleastoptimal wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the image you provided depicting revenue, or stock value? My point is about revenue.

Revenues don't matter when you sell a dollar for 50ct and half of the deals are circular anyways

So you're claiming that the revenue growth of the S&P 500 over the last few years is largely due to "selling dollars for 50ct" and circular deals?

Re: AI is slowing down

#253

Post by freejazz »

remich wrote: post #205
freejazz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every day people here debate whether or not there are any actual productivity gains from LLM, and it's only in the limited context of software development. While I understand that this place obviously skews heavily towards the software industry, the notion that LLMs are anywhere near as useful in other industries is hubristic (at best).

Perhaps they aren't, but not currently viable !== always unviable.

And?

Re: AI is slowing down

#254

Post by 1attice »

Kiro wrote: post #241
dofm wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's just a Brit, writing in a style we write in. Sweary, comical, red-top. The Register did it for years.

I don't think you know what "gooning" means. It's edgy Gen Z slang and has nothing to do with being British.

Sure, but does that vibe invalidate the argument? What an odd time the middle of an argument is to be clutching pearls and worrying about prose quality.

Style and vibes notwithstanding, is there anything in your view that wrong with the argument itself? Could a better or more polite writer have convinced you with the same shape of logic?

Re: AI is slowing down

#255

Post by frisbee6152 »

lompad wrote: post #143
frisbee6152 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important thing I would point to is Mythos et al and the wave of vulnerabilities that have been discovered in the past couple months. It’s a completely unprecedented event, brought forth almost entirely by improvements in the models themselves. That said. keep in mind, I’m talking about over the past two years. With Claude code and the capabilities gained since December of last year, there have been incredib…

The maintainer of curl - who has access to mythos - disagrees [0]. I think it's dangerous to rely on claims made by people who financially profit from you believing them without checking. [0]: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/05/11/mythos-finds-a-curl-v...

The article says in the second section that the author did not have access to Mythos. I think it’s dangerous to rely on claims made by others without even bothering to read them first, let alone check.

It found hundreds of vulnerabilities in Firefox, according to Mozilla: how does Mozilla benefit? It found a 27 year old vulnerability in OpenBSD. How do they benefit from that? Is that made up? Are the maintainers of those codebases lying for the benefit of Anthropic’s IPO? Is copy fail a fabrication by big AI? The 12 OpenSSL vulnerabilities found in January?

https://venturebeat.com/security/mythos-detection-ceiling-se... https://www.wired.com/story/mozilla-used-anthropics-mythos-t... https://cyberscoop.com/copy-fail-linux-vulnerability-artific... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/ai-found-twel...

Im not sure whose claims you think I’m relying on. I trust Firefox that they’re not overstating the number of CVES they’ve found. Same for OpenSSL. The OpenBSD folks definitely don’t seem like the types. I’ve not known Linux to fabricate CVEs either. I think my sources are fine.

Re: AI is slowing down

#256

Post by pxeger1 »

This rests on a lot of assumptions that the published figures for "planned" datacentres, "committed" AI spend, etc. are irreversible. I suspect that at least some of it is possible to back out of.

Re: AI is slowing down

#257

Post by [deleted] »

root_axis wrote: post #25
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.

Can you point to anything specific from the article that you'd describe as consistently wrong? Not disagreeing with you, but nothing popped out to me after skimming the article.

[deleted]

Re: AI is slowing down

#258

Post by supern0va »

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.

I highly recommend folks read Wired's profile on him: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/

Tim Lee also pointed out that when Ed has posted details on some of his analysis, they have had some....oddities: https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034377838883700953

Re: AI is slowing down

#259

Post by 1attice »

putzdown wrote: post #136

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…

Arguments have smells but rigour demands you investigate further. Zitron's smelly prose is, ironically, just the kind of stylistic distraction that AI can help condition; the further irony is that he will one day seem to have been right, for a year or two.

The money is indeed losing its mind over AI, and Zitron is a stopped clock. A correction is coming but the tool isn't going anywhere.

Re: AI is slowing down

#260

Post by dofm »

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…

He has recently made the very good point that actually, the FAANG companies are struggling to put any ROI numbers on that incredible ground-level utility.

Uber, for example, is so unclear there is any ROI, they are cutting their exposure pretty radically.

He points out that one single Anthropic customer — a payments provider — accidentally had to pay Anthropic $500M for one month of token spend.

That is half what Apple is reportedly paying Google for the supply side of their entire consumer AI strategy.

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