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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#261

Post by frisbee6152 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #114
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…

Do you have access to Mythos?

Nope. Just watching the volume and severity of CVEs coming through since it’s been running. It’s been a busy few months.

Re: AI is slowing down

#262

Post by brianwmunz »

The thread keeps smushing two separate questions into one. "Can these companies hit the revenue they need to justify the capex" and "are the tools actually useful day to day" are different arguments, and you can answer yes to the second while still being worried about the first.

Re: AI is slowing down

#263

Post by real_winidi »

The chart seems logical to me. Most problems are solved in the app space. New apps don't have to be the new facebook. They just need to be useful for the right audience (even a small one). It's like you have meat and bread in the supermarket, and add all other stuff you dont really need. Will be bought, but not as much as meat and bread, right?

Re: AI is slowing down

#264

Post by dofm »

spmurrayzzz wrote: post #82
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 also consistently demonstrated, at least to me, that he doesn't really understand how inference works from a technical perspective, which weakens much of his core thesis for why there should be a collapse. I do value having some naysayers in the mix generally, because we do need balanced critique in what is otherwise a very frothy hype cycle. I just don't think he's making sound arguments, and that's even assu…

> That directly undermines his claim that providers always need to chase frontier intelligence in order to maintain current demand, utilization, and pricing curves.

But does it also not mean that they will make less money given that there is already brutal competition for that lower tier from openrouter, Deepseek, Amazon, etc.?

You can't on the one hand say "customers are beginning to understand they can spend less" and on the other hand suggest that this is good for forecasts of revenue.

Re: AI is slowing down

#265

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

root_axis wrote: post #230
zachthewf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the posted article (I don't read this author anymore because I think it's basically anti-AI ideological propaganda). But from the article I linked back in March 2024: "Generative AI models are expensive and compute-intensive without providing obvious, tangible mass-market use cases. Murati and Altman's futures depend heavily on keeping the world believing that development and improvement of their models…

I think the points you raise are reasonable signals to consider, but I don't think they show the author being "consistently wrong". The overall thesis still remains plausible even though we have seen LLMs continue to improve. > - hallucinations are dramatically less of a problem Sure, but it remains a big enough problem that human intervention and review is still necessary for any serious work across all use cases an…

> Sure, but it remains a big enough problem that human intervention and review is still necessary for any serious work across all use cases and industries.

Another important consideration: Hallucinations getting less common/severe but not (as-good-as) solved makes them worse.

LLMs used to very obviously get things wrong. And people wouldn't trust them. Now they're good enough that people blindly trust them.

Now people just directly PR AI output with little to no manual review. We even have clowns calling for the complete abolition of directly human-authored code.

Whatever gains were had in better AI code output over the past two years I lose in having to review much more thoroughly.

Re: AI is slowing down

#266

Post by surgical_fire »

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…

His arguments on the numbers of AI are actually pretty solid.

I am still to see a solid counter to what he brings up there.

Re: AI is slowing down

#267

Post by dofm »

frisbee6152 wrote: post #41
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’s been continuously predicting that the collapse was just around the corner, that progress was slowing, and that there was no market for inference, since 2024. The fact he’s never reflected on the glaring failures in his analysis tells what we need to know about his intellectual integrity. There’s truth in some of his words about financial risk, but if you can’t acknowledge that there’s upside too, you can’t evalu…

Progress is slowing, in an important way.

Have a muck about with what Qwen 3.6 or Gemma 4 can do and you'll see. I mean this as an illustration but Qwen just isn't as far behind as I expected, and compared to the data centre hardware it will run on a potato.

The frontier models are losing their undeniable edge over that which is unmetered.

And even putting aside my optimism for the smaller open weights models, there's a huge amount of scope for the larger, hosted open weights models that are only just behind the cutting edge and which cost, what, 1/25th of the price on opencode go, openrouter etc.

Commodification is coming, and with it slimmer profit margins; it's hard to see them making anywhere near the kind of money they need to in a commodified market.

Re: AI is slowing down

#268

Post by red75prime »

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…

> Predicting the timing of such a thing is notoriously difficult.

So, it stands to reason that it wasn't a prediction, but a lucky guess (unless the alleged predictor has a history of correct predictions).

Re: AI is slowing down

#269

Post by d33d »

oudlys wrote: post #151
d33d wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Code acceleration is great, but.... something precedes that. Vision and strategy re. expansion of offerings and businesses. Once a firm reaches maturity in what it offers and is only touching the edges - this code acceleration is literally useless when you factor in all of the trade-offs. This is a good thing - it means fat and slow incumbents are sitting ducks to be out-witted by creative and imaginative founde…

I think its worse than that. I admit that if a small team or an individual uses an LLM, it's likely they can create value faster. I think as soon as you don't own the responsibility for the defects you generate with an LLM, their use starts to destroy value. Regardless of product maturity. This is what I think the data says. https://unessays.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap

You're not really getting it.

If you are producing something that delivers a far better experience, irrespective of what's under the hood (see Claude Code et al), you will decimate an incumbent who is trying to use LLMs in the context of incrementally improving a mature product.

LLMs are suited for the development of revolutionary innovation, not incremental.

Re: AI is slowing down

#270

Post by Kiro »

1attice wrote: post #254
Kiro wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I responded to a comment about the prose. Why are you not calling out that one instead?
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