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Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

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Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#11

Post by JumpCrisscross »

madaxe_again wrote: post #6
atleastoptimal wrote: post #3

> in part because of the huckster-like triangulations of scumbags like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei I would happily read an AI-critical blogpost if it weren't clearly motivated by a strange, specific hatred of the prominent AI figureheads. At this point I automatically dismiss writing like this, the motivated reasoning is palpable. Their distaste for the character and general vibes of the AI industry trap them in blat…

The preceding clause is just as bad: >> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. Anyway. The belief that the author isn’t talking out of their ass is an insidious lie spread by dark forces. QED.

> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case

It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#12

Post by Cthulhu_ »

> [...] serving me ads for Replit — one of the many vibe-coding startups that have emerged in the past couple of years,

Replit (formerly repl.it) has been around for a decade as an online IDE / runtime, productized from work from 2009 for editing environments on udemy and co.

But like many companies they pivoted their marketing schtick to AI because that's where the money is. Cursor and Zed are editors, but because they capitalize on the AI hype and investor money they're "worth" tens of billions.

I mean Zed is cool and all because they dared to start a new editor from scratch with performance in mind but that in itself isn't tens of billions.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#13

Post by wiseowise »

sobiolite wrote: post #2

The analogy to MLM doesn’t work. In a pyramid scheme, early investors are guaranteed money, whereas late investors are guaranteed losses. With a vibe-coding platform, everyone has the same (extremely low) odds of building a hit app, so is at least more equitable in that sense.

Let’s make it clear right away: none of them are building a “hit app”. Maybe one in a million does, but it’s the same as winning a lottery. TikTok grifters will just siphon commission for the video and move on. It’s a clear MLM, you can see it with peptides too.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#14

Post by bawolff »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
sobiolite wrote: post #2

The analogy to MLM doesn’t work. In a pyramid scheme, early investors are guaranteed money, whereas late investors are guaranteed losses. With a vibe-coding platform, everyone has the same (extremely low) odds of building a hit app, so is at least more equitable in that sense.

> everyone has the same (extremely low) odds In the author’s example, Replit has a very high chance of making a profit on those folks’ desperation. It’s not exactly an MLM. But the predatory mechanism is close. Loan sharking might be a more exact analog for the financial bit, but the social-media marketing strikes closer to MLMs.

I think the standard analogy would be selling shovels to the gold miners.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#15

Post by fc417fc802 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
madaxe_again wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preceding clause is just as bad: >> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. Anyway. The belief that the author isn’t talking out of their ass is an insidious lie spread by dark forces. QED.

> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.

We're what, 2 years in? Or 6 months since the coding models became reasonably proficient. No one knows what AI will look like 6 months from now let alone 5 years so the present jobs data can't tell you anything other than that nothing catastrophic has happened yet.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#16

Post by wiseowise »

madaxe_again wrote: post #6
atleastoptimal wrote: post #3

> in part because of the huckster-like triangulations of scumbags like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei I would happily read an AI-critical blogpost if it weren't clearly motivated by a strange, specific hatred of the prominent AI figureheads. At this point I automatically dismiss writing like this, the motivated reasoning is palpable. Their distaste for the character and general vibes of the AI industry trap them in blat…

The preceding clause is just as bad: >> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie that’s been accepted by the masses I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration. Anyway. The belief that the author isn’t talking out of their ass is an insidious lie spread by dark forces. QED.

> I see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case, just an emphatic declaration.

We’ve heard Claude is good enough now that you no longer need SE and founders will just do their coding for a year already. It hasn’t happened. And guess who develops CC and other Anthropic/OpenAI products?

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#17

Post by satvikpendem »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
sobiolite wrote: post #2

The analogy to MLM doesn’t work. In a pyramid scheme, early investors are guaranteed money, whereas late investors are guaranteed losses. With a vibe-coding platform, everyone has the same (extremely low) odds of building a hit app, so is at least more equitable in that sense.

> everyone has the same (extremely low) odds In the author’s example, Replit has a very high chance of making a profit on those folks’ desperation. It’s not exactly an MLM. But the predatory mechanism is close. Loan sharking might be a more exact analog for the financial bit, but the social-media marketing strikes closer to MLMs.

It's similar to dating app companies selling to young desperate men, although these companies have much more insidious tactics (sending you a match right when they predict you might give up on the app) than e.g. Replit who have still not fully figured out how to hook users just enough to continue to get them to pay (not sure, though, how they can give you a hit app right before you give up on them).

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#18

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> see no argument whatsoever in the piece as to why this is the case It hasn’t happened. We have AI rolling out and the jobs data aren’t showing this effect.

We're what, 2 years in? Or 6 months since the coding models became reasonably proficient. No one knows what AI will look like 6 months from now let alone 5 years so the present jobs data can't tell you anything other than that nothing catastrophic has happened yet .

> No one knows what AI will look like 6 months

No, but we know what it’s looked like over the past 6 months. We also have two years of Altman preening about imminent, massive job losses. Per his own timelines, those haven’t manifested.

Predicting indeterminate catastrophe isn’t a prediction, it’s a scam.

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#19

Post by [deleted] »

bawolff wrote: post #14
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone has the same (extremely low) odds In the author’s example, Replit has a very high chance of making a profit on those folks’ desperation. It’s not exactly an MLM. But the predatory mechanism is close. Loan sharking might be a more exact analog for the financial bit, but the social-media marketing strikes closer to MLMs.

I think the standard analogy would be selling shovels to the gold miners.

[deleted]

Re: Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

#20

Post by satvikpendem »

wiseowise wrote: post #13
sobiolite wrote: post #2

The analogy to MLM doesn’t work. In a pyramid scheme, early investors are guaranteed money, whereas late investors are guaranteed losses. With a vibe-coding platform, everyone has the same (extremely low) odds of building a hit app, so is at least more equitable in that sense.

Let’s make it clear right away: none of them are building a “hit app”. Maybe one in a million does, but it’s the same as winning a lottery. TikTok grifters will just siphon commission for the video and move on. It’s a clear MLM, you can see it with peptides too.

Selling to desperation is not the same as an MLM. TikTok grifters don't expect their watchers to then go out and grift on TikTok themselves while giving the original person a cut, there are no levels to this sort of grift, as would be required in a multi level marketing scheme.
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