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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#621

Post by mike_hearn »

nostrademons wrote: post #297
mike_hearn wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, you can find HN posts predicting that literally everything will destroy privacy/society/trust/etc. Predicting doom is a popular pasttime. What I remember from that time period is people predicting that we were in a tech bubble driven by social media, that obviously Facebook and LinkedIn were overvalued because social media was a trivial fad, and so on. Example article pulled at random: https://theconversation.com…

They weren't wrong. We were in a tech bubble driven by social media. Digg, StumbleUpon, Kongregate, MySpace, Orkut, Slide, Meebo, Mahalo, Bebo, Justin.TV, etc. aren't exactly around anymore. Facebook and YouTube are the winners. Anyone remember this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I How many of the logos that scroll by there still exist?

The fact that some companies fail isn't evidence there was a bubble. Companies are always failing.

Re: AI is slowing down

#622

Post by madaxe_again »

pjc50 wrote: post #615
madaxe_again wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other question nobody seems to ask - what will $3tn in 2030 be worth? I would bet quite a bit less than it is today.

US inflation is slightly under 4%, so by my maths receiving $3tn in 2030 would be worth about $2.5tn in 2026 dollars.

Currently slightly under 4%. I have a feeling that part of the solution here is going to end up being, what was the euphemism? Quantitative easing - also known as “printing money”. I would not be surprised if we end up seeing near double digit inflation in USD - it has also significantly lost its status as a global reserve currency, which makes this all the more likely.

Tbh I think it’s already happening in real terms, but the CPIs aren’t fully showing it yet.

Re: AI is slowing down

#623

Post by xdertz »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #35

Ed is an interesting character. His financial analysis of the AI industry makes logical sense to me (though I am not knowledgeable enough to actually know if it is correct .) However, he seems to be so angry at AI in general, that he misses the obvious areas where LLMs are actually changing the State of the Art. Coding seems to be one of the core use-cases for LLMs (as Simon Willison pointed out recently) and even if…

I would say his overall negative outlook is a well needed counterbalance to the completely delusional hype one is exposed to on a daily basis. The truth will then probably land somewhere in the middle.

Re: AI is slowing down

#624

Post by gizajob »

piokoch wrote: post #574
jollyllama wrote: post #220

Lots of dismissive comments ITT, very few tackling the substance of the article. > AI Cannot Afford To Slow Down — It Needs $3 Trillion Or More In Revenue By End Of 2030 To Sustain Its Existence Is this true? With the total 2024 wages being 11.7 trillion USD [0], and nonfarm payrolls totaling 158,000 in the same year [1], it's an order of magnitude higher than my back of the napkin guesses I've made that AI needs to…

#3 Trillion, or even more, will be achievable. We are at the very beginning of the monetization of AI. It all started with the free Chat GPT, and a few others. Now the standard is $20 a month if you are not using AI tools too much and you don't need anything fancier. Otherwise you need to pay more, like $200 a month. Unless you are not company and you don't have some "enterprise deal". And you need an enterprise deal…

The only thing you’re neglecting is that personal computers will be able to run “good enough” open source models locally within 3 years. Can already run it today.

Re: AI is slowing down

#625

Post by meta_gunslinger »

baq wrote: post #556
overgard wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see little evidence that people combine all three positions together. You're making a broad generalization based on personal vibes.

I see plenty if I care to look outside my usual echo chamber. There’s lots of ‘it’s just the next token prediction’ (in 2026 still!), but there are more sophisticated arguments like ‘it can’t be creative’, ‘it doesn’t think’, ‘it’s just pattern matching’ etc. They might even be true for today’s models, but linearly extrapolating an exponential trend is a classic mistake.

Confusing a logarithmic trend with an exponential one is also a classic mistake.

Re: AI is slowing down

#626

Post by simonw »

owebmaster wrote: post #602
simonw wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a particularly great answer to that question - I'm not enough of a financial analysis to have confidence in an opinion. I do however think that shouting "look, Uber capped pricing at $1500/engineer/month hence AI is slowing down" is a questionable position to take.

> I don't have a particularly great answer to that question Maybe you could use your $1,500 quota to ask AI for better arguments?

I mean, I did that already for my own curiosity... but I'm not about to share those on a public forum and pretend I have expertise that I don't.

Re: AI is slowing down

#627

Post by tipiirai »

munksbeer wrote: post #614
watwut wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I would not see "making seven million dollars a year by writing" as a reason to dismiss someone. Like, sounds like that such person is doing something other writers just cant.

The reason is obviously that engagement drives his revenue, and correctness or facts have nothing to do with it. Everyone knows that content creators will maximise engagement, and clearly he has found an audience who are seeking out a certain narrative, and will write to that narrative to generate revenue.

"clearly he has found an audience"

What do you mean "clearly"? Do you know his engagement numbers? Or you just find the content engaging?

Re: AI is slowing down

#628

Post by barrell »

Aerolfos wrote: post #597
barrell wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think Ed in intentionally ignorant of the capabilities of LLMs. But I also don't know that I would classify LLMs as 'wildly useful' for coding. Most productivity gains seem to be hallucinated, and while it's too early to make any claims on long term outcomes, there are plenty of studies indicating they might be even more negative. There are definitely use cases for LLMs in coding. And at times , they can be wild…

> I do think Ed in intentionally ignorant of the capabilities of LLMs. I think it's more complicated than that too. He's pretty well versed in the stated capabilities of LLMs. The fact that he isn't a deeply involved technical developer who knows the ins and outs and nuances of using LLM tools is the point , because the stated capabilities of LLMs are that they are trivial to use, extremely powerful, and getting so m…

I don’t get me wrong, I’m on Ed’s side and get where he’s coming from. I just think his arguments are normally taken to the extreme, making them less defensible, when he could make the same arguments from a more moderate stance and ultimately be more convincing.

His arguments, albeit valid, can often sound like reductos ad absurdums the way he presents them.

Re: AI is slowing down

#629

Post by simonw »

crakhamster01 wrote: post #501
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…

I don't really understand how engineers at Uber are hitting $1500/month. Are they forced to pay API costs? My company provides employees with API keys and soft limits, but as soon as you approach ~$400/month they ask that you get a Claude/Codex Max subscription instead. Curious if it's not the same case at Uber.

Yes, companies like Uber are forced to pay API costs now - by OpenAI and Anthropic (and GitHub for copilot): https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/27/product-market-fit/#en...

Re: AI is slowing down

#630

Post by Peaches4Rent »

avarun wrote: post #578
jollyllama wrote: post #220

Lots of dismissive comments ITT, very few tackling the substance of the article. > AI Cannot Afford To Slow Down — It Needs $3 Trillion Or More In Revenue By End Of 2030 To Sustain Its Existence Is this true? With the total 2024 wages being 11.7 trillion USD [0], and nonfarm payrolls totaling 158,000 in the same year [1], it's an order of magnitude higher than my back of the napkin guesses I've made that AI needs to…

There is no substance to the article to tackle. Ed Zitron is a clown that makes seven million dollars a year writing unsubstantiated bullshit on the internet. He has been consistently wrong in every single one of his predictions and will continue predicting the sky is falling, because his content has zero educational value. It is purely a confirmation-bias inducing dopamine hit for the perpetually aggrieved.

Any proof of this?
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