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The Doom Justifies the Valuation

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#71

Post by mccoyb »

aabhay wrote: post #60

If you look at Anthropic's blogs about their model timelines, there is roughly a ~3m period between a model being in internal preview until release. That means that inside of Anthropic, the next version beyond Mythos/Fable is already in preview, already being tested internally. Despite what Geohot is describing here about GLM, my understanding is that Anthropic employees have spent a significant amount of time grappl…

If the March leak of Claude Code was Mythos / Fable in preview ... I'm not sure I'm that worried about AI capabilities.

Seriously -- if you dig through that source code, and then listen to the messaging, it seems hard to keep a straight face.

Also, hasn't this company been claiming that almost all their code is written with AI for significantly longer than "post-Mythos internal preview"?

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#72

Post by dodu_ »

scarmig wrote: post #55
dodu_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Their usual stance is something along the lines of their company is creating AI correctly--not that AI will inherently destroy humanity--and that them working there helps that end. It's extremely reasonable to question their approach, but here you've jumped from "NFT crypto bros trying to run a scam" to "monsters excited to annihilate the human race," which is a wild leap, and betrays a point of view that seems more…

[flagged]

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#73

Post by matheusmoreira »

whacked_new wrote: post #70

Somehow the Chinese phrases 内卷 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan and 摆烂 ("let it rot" https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%93%BA%E7%88%9B ) are quite appropriately used, even in stylistic tone. Don't know how much Chinese geohot actually speaks but it's a nice touch.

Thanks for the references.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#74

Post by chongli »

scarmig wrote: post #48
chongli wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some AI is useless The question is not whether AI is useful. It is useful, full stop. The question is whether AI is useful enough to justify valuations that dwarf the GDP of all but the top 20 countries in the world . As it stands right now, it's not even close! The leaked OpenAI financials put these AI companies in the same profitability territory as utilities, with zero justification for these crazy valuations.

Technically, it's the time discounted rate of future profits that determine valuations. If you take it as a given that they will provide exactly as much value as they do today, then, yes, your question has the obvious answer of no. If you think AI will provide greater value in the future, the answer depends on the value you think it will have.

Technically, it's the time discounted rate of future profits that determine valuations

Close, it's the time-discounted expectation of future returns. This seems related to future profits but it need not be. Historically, stocks tend to perform poorly after IPOs. There's no guarantee that (say) Anthropic's stock price would ever recover after a post-IPO drop.

The recent attempts by Anthropic et al. to circumvent the usual rules for inclusion in indices have raised red flags all over the place, with many calling it a naked attempt to raid everyone's pension funds for hundreds of billions in ill-gotten capital.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#75

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #24
ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

Setting up for the eventual bailout. Remember - "we can't let banks fail or it'll be a depression"?

I remember a meme that spread to that effect, but it was similarly divorced from reality. Hundreds of banks failed during the financial crisis, including multiple which were very large. There were a few cases like Wachovia, where an unhealthy bank was required to sell itself in order to avoid a technical failure that would have impacted over 10 million Americans' access to their money. But this was still unpleasant for existing Wachovia shareholders.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#76

Post by chongli »

ajyoon wrote: post #64
chongli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? The whole point of the article is to answer this question, and here's the answer: Because all the AI doom fear-mongering is driving sky-high valuations. The more the public panics, the more investors open their wallets.

Is there any evidence of this? It seems like a thing people say all the time, but completely unsubstantiated.

What else is there? The product as delivered today doesn't come anywhere near a justification for these valuations. All of it is built on an expectation of future capabilities, and that's where the Dario-penned doom papers come in.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#77

Post by mrandish »

ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

> Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't?

It helps to look at the history of the AI Alarmist, EA-adjacent mindset. They believe AI could be Dangerous (right people (spoiler: themselves or politicians who listen to them). The capital D means more than just some economic and employment disruption, they're thinking much bigger, like "existential threat to humanity" big.

The most extreme alarmists are basically LARPing Terminator 2 and want to shut it down before SkyNet takes over but the more moderate alarmists believe AI is too potentially beneficial to walk away from. And they acknowledge other nations and various bad actors won't stop anyway, so they believe it's their sacred duty to move forward quickly albeit very responsibly. Yes, this leads to some conflicted reasoning and priorities, like they need to keep gaining access to gobs of capital to ensure they are the ones to reach AGI first, as that's the only way to ensure "god" is benevolent.

While I'm sure many of the top AI leadership are primarily (or purely) mercenary, I also think some, if not many, other execs and employees sincerely believe (or at least hope) they are "the good guys" playing a crucial role in an era of historical importance. Obviously, this has some heavy vibes as well as a being quite a buff to one's self-importance. They face each new day feeling the weight of bearing such a consequential role in shaping the future of humanity. Us mere mortals can only pray their wisdom and altruistic ethics match their humility.

So... yeah, that's why we see some weirdly whiplash messaging.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#78

Post by jrflowers »

scarmig wrote: post #21
jrflowers wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this website because people will write stuff like “I believe the hype because my brain is big, ‘believing the hype’ is actually very complex and cannot be embraced by lesser intellects”

There are reasonable anti- and pro-AI views. There are also unreasonable ones on both sides, and it's best if they are ignored. However, on a site like HN or Reddit, you're far more likely to hear squawking about "stochastic parrots" or a rant about AI water usage than the mirror on the pro-AI side, making them harder to ignore.

It’s funny that a lot of what gets framed as pro- vs anti- AI arguments would be better described as past/present vs future arguments. If one guy is saying “that’s a stochastic parrot” and the second guy says “it’s going to achieve apotheosis and bring about global communism or feudalism or whatever while maximizing shareholder value” they’re not arguing about technology, they’re arguing about the second guy’s status as a clairvoyant.

You could post “fortune tellers used to be considered fraudsters and charlatans” and reasonably expect a “Get a load of the Luddite over here. Go raise a barn, Josiah!” response on the internet these days despite not mentioning AI or technology at all

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#79

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

britch wrote: post #33
ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

> Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Because it makes their technology seem more important and powerful? Do you usually believe 100% what a company says about itself? > Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits Who cares about profits? None of these companies make money like a business currently. It's all speculative valuation and influenced by the same hy…

When people discuss the negative effects of climate change, do you think that boosts fossil fuel company valuations by making their products seem more important and powerful?

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#80

Post by _aavaa_ »

ajyoon wrote: post #62
_aavaa_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*why would they warn if it they didn’t believe it. 2 words: regulatory capture. Ban Chinese models because they’re “bad”. (can’t have head to head competition). Bad open weight model (can’t let people escape the subscription model).

People have been warning about the dangers of advanced AI since long before open weight competition was a consideration.

Sure, but they’ve either been the kool-aid-drinking p-doomers, or academic discussions about giving them access to weapons.

Now we have real companies whose valuation depends on people using their services.

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