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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#681

Post by czhu12 »

cmiles74 wrote: post #284
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…

I don't read Ed Zitron, aside from when he appears here on Hacker News, and I also find his tone to be over-the-top. I think we might agree on that much. These articles are lengthy but, to my understanding, Ed's idea is... * AI companies have committed to purchasing X amount of compute * Data centers are being constructed to meet this demand, they'll need to charge amount Y * AI companies do not have sufficient reven…

Code generation isn't big enough of a market?

Re: AI is slowing down

#682

Post by opsnooperfax »

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.

Hypothetically speaking, how does one go about being so handsomely rewarded for being wrong about everything? I feel like I am well qualified for this type of job.

Re: AI is slowing down

#683

Post by Havoc »

aronowb14 wrote: post #420
Havoc wrote: post #155

>have to be roughly twice the size they are today, and then double again basically every year until 2029 or 2030. Anthropic is growing way faster than doubling yearly so don't think this is entirely implausible

I asked around my network recently - in the last month or two basically every large company has put in spending limits per engineer. Curious what their S1 will look like when they go public.

In the long run I’d say the real question is how much of the labour market you can displace rather than looking at tool spend

That’s really the only way the math works - outright displacement of labour

Re: AI is slowing down

#684

Post by throwthrowuknow »

mastermage wrote: post #560
throwthrowuknow wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has been pushing the same thing hard without much success. Why do I care if AI is integrated into my OS when I can choose my preferred AI and it can use the OS directly?

I hate that I am defending apple here but Microslop has been pushing a garbage tacked on integration of AI into Windows. By all accounts of the last 20 years of Apple, they are much much better at integrating different services into one fluid system.

I guess, but I haven’t been thrilled by anything apple has released in a long time either. The status quo has just remained unchanged.

Re: AI is slowing down

#685

Post by opsnooperfax »

svantana wrote: post #680
tipiirai wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the source for that "makes seven million dollars a year" claim?

Probably this: [1] 80k * $7/month * 12 months/year = $6.7M/year [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/19/ed-zitron...

I find that completely unbelievable. There’s too much high-quality free information for me to ever consume to even think about paying for it, let alone something of mediocre quality. Are we sure the newsletter subscribership isn’t just a total fabrication? Or that it isn’t just a money laundering scheme?

Re: AI is slowing down

#686

Post by wrsh07 »

sarchertech wrote: post #449
wrsh07 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2026 consumer revenue projections from OpenAI are pitched at $14-15 billion, apparently. If they get that, it's the only year they will get that Would you care to wager on that? Because I would gladly take the other side at even odds. > consumer AI is worth, to Anthropic Anthropic does not really care about consumer AI. I expect consumer is where their least profitably customers are. My primary expectation is that…

> Because I would gladly take the other side at even odds. If you’re only giving even odds you’re not very confident in openAI at all. $15 billion is peanuts.

I don't have to give them better odds then they'll accept

It's a steal at even odds

It's still positive EV at much worse odds but not worth my time

Re: AI is slowing down

#687

Post by sunkeeh »

Ed Zitron with his subpar takes again. You could kill all the major AI labs today, and even just today's open-weight models are enough to absolutely transform society, with video-game GPU stuck together at homes.

Re: AI is slowing down

#688

Post by [deleted] »

no-name-here wrote: post #505
Grombobulous wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He provided a lot of quantitative analysis in this article. Perhaps an example or two you think these numbers are off-base could help bolster this point? I think the most compelling part of the article is that these numbers point to a situation where the level of investment required seems unsustainably high by plain dollars. You don’t really have to agree with the author to see how it plays out. OpenAI and SpaceX and…

Grandparent comment’s primary claim was that Ed has frequently claimed untrue things in the past and so questioned why people would continue going to such a source, but your reply didn't seem to address that at all? Someone else separately linked Ed’s 2024 claims [1] that: A. AI revenue had about already maxed out. B. AI's output accuracy was already about as high as it would ever be C. AI users were already declinin…

[deleted]

Re: AI is slowing down

#689

Post by GolfPopper »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #516
overgard wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except inference has been getting more expensive, not less

Inference has been going down in price on a cost/intelligence basis. If you don't need the smartest model, there are plenty of good Chinese models that are dirt cheap.

Doesn't that sort-of make one of Zitron's core points?

"Chinese models are dirt cheap" isn't going to do anything good for the return the investments in OpenAI and Anthropic demand.

Re: AI is slowing down

#690

Post by 52-6F-62 »

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.

So a writer making money is not okay and means he is incorrect by default, but the CEOs siphoning billions off of circular investment schemes is fine?

Personally, I see both parties making predictions.

Meanwhile, I still must labour. How many more yachts are needed before the earth becomes the utopia they keep selling everyone on? How many more communities must have their rights trampled against their expressed will?

Or do I need to scan my retinas and provide Alt-man a DNA sample for a handful of empty crypto currency first?

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