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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#781

Post by deno »

Spixel_ wrote: post #635
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…

The studies you are talking about are probably outdated, it's difficult to deny the actual productivity boost of coding agents. I'm not talking about the quantity of code produced, but about actual user needs that are now resolved that would not have been before. The main productivity gain will not come from existing software engineer, but from people that couldn't code at all before but are now able to do things by…

It still takes the same mindset and skills to use AI productively and effectively as regular programming. The productivity boost only applies if you know what you’re doing and can actually steer the agent carefully.

Vibecoding hits a glass ceiling very quickly and this will not be solved incrementally. Besides, if the agent could work autonomously to that degree then it would no longer need any prompting at all and we’re living in a very different world. On the other hand that would make the debt actually meaningless, so I guess that is 'a' solution.

Re: AI is slowing down

#782

Post by LogicFailsMe »

vatsachak wrote: post #773
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love nonsense like this. If using a larger model to plan a chain of thought task for a smaller model works, what makes you think Anthropic can't do the same thing and offer it as one of their effort level settings? It reminds me of all those fallen AI ASIC startups insisting they can crush Nvidia until they found out the hard way that the rules of the game are dynamic. The real challenge IMO is whether enterprise w…

What stops Anthropic of American energy and infrastructure costs. And those AI ASIC companies just got bought by OpenAI and you guessed it... NVIDIA

Tell that to Esperanto, Graphcore, Untether, Mythic, Wave Computing, Cornami, Copia Automation, Kneron, Lightmatter, the list goes on...

But you run with this Anthropic will die because it will run out of electrons narrative. At least it's creative.

Re: AI is slowing down

#783

Post by oblio »

simianwords wrote: post #707
oblio wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm simply saying this: there are third party hosters of Open Weight models like deepseek and they have been doing this for a while. > Obviously they are not subsidised, do you disagree? If you agree, they have a way to price it at a point that people wanna pay for it and also they aren't losing money. > So there's nothing inherent about inference that makes it too costly or whatever. Do we have audited GAAP financ…

Good questions. The post you are replying to is also based on vibes. So how about we make a bet and come back after IPO filings? But isn't it okay to suggest that random 3rd party hosting companies are ... not losing money? Why?

I'll bet 50€ that big AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) have bad regarding their core financials. Excluding one time deals such as renting hardware, external cash infusions, the core AI model business (training models and selling inference) is unprofitable and will be be at the expected scales (50 billion € or more) for the next 5 years at least.

I bet that within 5 years they will be sold for scrap to bigger companies and will become divisions inside them.

Re: AI is slowing down

#785

Post by bossyTeacher »

brap wrote: post #329

It always seemed very natural to me that AI will move “down the stack”, where Open AI and Anthropic don’t really have a foot in the door. Who makes consumer devices? Google Who makes operating systems? Google Who makes browsers? Google Who makes the world’s most popular websites? Google By the time 90% of average internet users get to chatgpt.com or whatever, they already went through several Google chokepoints, each…

> You would honestly have to be insane to bet against G.

Unless you are confident that Google will be antitrust forced to weakening their hold in some of those markets. A crack is all you need for the water to rush in and widen the crack.

Re: AI is slowing down

#786

Post by rdslw »

opsnooperfax wrote: post #682
avarun wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are three things to make money:

- tell lies to ones who want to hear lies -> riches

- tell truth to ones who want to hear truth -> modesty

- tell truth to ones who want to hear lies -> bankruptcy

p.s. read it on a blog name I dont remember :(

Re: AI is slowing down

#787

Post by anthuswilliams »

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.

Enterprise agreements are billed at the API rate (albeit sometimes with committed spend discounts). There is no equivalent of the Max subscription in this context.

Re: AI is slowing down

#788

Post by bawolff »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #779
bawolff wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s the line that separates grift from speculative investment? Are they actively lying to people in concrete ways? Not just, we think this is going to be big, when that is questionable, but do they say AI can do X right now, when objectively it cannot even remotely do X under any circumstance? Lying is what makes the difference. > well, maybe there isn’t a word that elegantly describes that situation, but “grift…

To your first point about lying, surely that’s not the bar you’d like to set? Misleading investors is pretty much the greatest talent of all of history’s greatest capitalists - were they all grifters? Is it the extent of the lying that matters? Because pure honesty is nowhere to be found in SV. > I think the word you are looking for is capitalism. “It” may be a consequence of some countries’ and cultures’ attempt at…

> To your first point about lying, surely that’s not the bar you’d like to set?

Its literally the dictionary definition.

> Misleading investors is pretty much the greatest talent of all of history’s greatest capitalists - were they all grifters? Is it the extent of the lying that matters?

Some are. Plenty are in the grey.

But there is a big difference between objectively lying like in theranos, and hyping things up questionably. There is a reason why Theranos people are in jail, while many a hype man walk free.

> anyone’s working definition of capitalism.

How about the dictionary definition of capitalism. Private individuals owning and controlling the means of production and subjecting to their whims is as fundamental to capitalisim as you can get.

Maybe there is an exception for monopolies, but i dont think any of the AI companies are monopolies.

> held by few individuals who are not as well-informed and smart as they think they are

I mean, seems to be working out pretty well for them. Can't argue with success.

> The system is supposed to work in the way that we design it to work

Key word being "we". As in society. Not you personally.

> There’s a culture of grift and exploitation running rampant in the US at the moment, and this sort of apologia only serves to exacerbate.

People making heated diatribes instead of cold logical arguments serve to exacerbate it.

Re: AI is slowing down

#789

Post by FromTheFirstIn »

anthonypasq wrote: post #758
hungryhobbit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think whether "LLMs are actually changing the State of the Art" or not matters for anything he wrote. If the AI companies need $X billion in revenue to stay afloat, it doesn't matter if 0.5% or 5% or 50% of that revenue is from transforming the State of the Art. It's 100% irrelevant: what matters is that, transformation or no, these companies won't have the income to pay their bills. And if they can't pay the…

maybe its insane to think this, but if all AI providers turned off free plans tomorrow i think they would easily have enough people willing to pay $20 a month for it to sustain all their spending. everyone is still fighting for market share so they are giving stuff away, but that doesnt mean people wouldnt be willing to pay for it if it wasnt free.

This proposition boils down to a belief that there are 3 billion people who are interested in AI for free but aren’t currently paying $20, but who would pay $20 if that was the price. The global median income is around $12k, so this would mean that there’s roughly be a global budget of 0.5% of everyone’s annual income going to chatbots. If you’re off by half, the price doubles for each person. I think you’d make a lot of money betting against the existence of 3 billion ghost customers

Re: AI is slowing down

#790

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

bawolff wrote: post #788
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your first point about lying, surely that’s not the bar you’d like to set? Misleading investors is pretty much the greatest talent of all of history’s greatest capitalists - were they all grifters? Is it the extent of the lying that matters? Because pure honesty is nowhere to be found in SV. > I think the word you are looking for is capitalism. “It” may be a consequence of some countries’ and cultures’ attempt at…

> To your first point about lying, surely that’s not the bar you’d like to set? Its literally the dictionary definition. > Misleading investors is pretty much the greatest talent of all of history’s greatest capitalists - were they all grifters? Is it the extent of the lying that matters? Some are. Plenty are in the grey. But there is a big difference between objectively lying like in theranos, and hyping things up q…

> People making heated diatribes instead of cold logical arguments serve to exacerbate it.

Your arguments aren’t nearly as logical as you think they are, they merely tell the rest of us the blind spots your world view is plagued by.

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