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Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

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Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#211

Post by Gareth321 »

ItsBob wrote: post #197
Gareth321 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bond sales are pretty normal for companies, AI or not. Leverage is in very low ratios compared to the dotcom era. Much of the dotcom era telecom expansion depended on debt and projected future demand, but the resulting networks were so overbuilt that only about 2% of North American long-distance capacity was being used. Falling prices left numerous operators unable to service their debts. Today’s AI expansion is led…

I don't think Microsoft would fail if it all crashed. Nor would Google or Amazon as they all have alternate revenue streams. It's the pure AI companies like OpenAI that will hit the wall. However, the tech companies are increasing their debt enormously. That's the issue.

OpenAI and Anthropic aren't even listed. Their failures would barely dent the stock market.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#212

Post by DrScientist »

orwin wrote: post #207
DrScientist wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? What am I missing. If you loan me 10 pounds and I simply keep it or spend it but refuse to pay you back - aren't I the winner and you the loser? Claiming that the market is a positive sum system, because I use that 10 pounds to invent something that changes world productivity is missing the fact that there is a constant stream of huge energy inputs from the sun - that's ultimately what allows the local entro…

I borrow you 10 money i use to buy my chair-making tools. I make the chair, sell it 20 money, then pay you 12 money back for the service rendered. Basically money is supposed to be a tool that help us creating capital by exchanging goods.

But aren't you confusing the means of exchange with the creation of value.

The creation of value is me taking energy from the sun and converting that into a chair.

You lending me money is you extracting value from artificially being a middleman.

It would have been more efficient to write an IOU to the tool maker, make the chair and pay back the tool maker directly.

Now sure that IOU isn't that fungible - however that highlights one of the absurdities ( if I understand it correctly ) of the current banking system where private banks are able to in effect issue IOU's on their own basis but put mine and your name on it as a guarantor - resulting in the public having to bail out banks when they over extend.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#213

Post by Sammi »

alwaysanoobie wrote: post #155

Oh man,this makes my stomach churn with anxiety. It's a tough job market out there and it took 4 months to land job offers after being laid off. I have a competitive offer from Oracle OCI with a team adjacent to this initiative and I am seriously considering it. How long do you guys think it will take to blow up (if it does) To the experienced devs out there; would you take a 15% less offer from a medium sized compan…

You need to listen to what Bryan Cantrill said about his experience at Oracle, before you go there.

> What you think of Oracle is even truer than what you think it is: "Shit mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s

> You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#214

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

parineum wrote: post #38
somenameforme wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They" bailed out big banks whose gambling resulted in millions of people losing their homes, and the electoral effect was basically zero. Just invoke 'the other side' come election season and all is forgotten. Third parties fail to the same trick - by 'wasting' your vote on them, you're indirectly voting for 'the other side.' It's one of the many reasons that partisanship is foolish - it essentially leaves governmen…

> "They" bailed out big banks whose gambling resulted in millions of people losing their homes, That gambling actually led to people getting those homes. The people losing them was the correction. > the electoral effect was basically zero. because... > it was both the DNC and GOP that bailed out the banks

> That gambling actually led to people getting those homes. The people losing them was the correction.

Well, yes but there is a distinction between "led to" vs "losing them". The first is indirect, the second is not.

You could expand that as "That gambling by banks offering these risky mortgages to unsuspecting people, actually led to people getting those homes. When the banks who did this did not bear the costs of their actions, and passed them on to their customers, the people losing their homes was the correction."

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#215

Post by glimshe »

roschdal wrote: post #43

Imagine shorting Alphabet stock now , just before the AI bubble bursts, what an opportunity of a lifetime.

Shorting is a very different thing from buying a stock and living through a drawdown. You can bleed money fast and if you don't have options protecting your trade, your loss potential is unlimited. Once you pay for the insurance through options, the profits aren't that attractive unless you can see the future and predict exactly when the stocks will go down.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#216

Post by nradov »

darth_avocado wrote: post #3

Well technically they don’t own the debt, the SPVs that own the data centers do. The giants just have long term commitments, but if shit hits the fan, it’s not the tech giants but the banks that lent the money to the SPVs that are at risk. This usually means all of us are on the hook.

We're not on the hook. The systemically important banks are very well capitalized now and have limited exposure to these debts. Even if there are substantial defaults the big banks will be fine.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#217

Post by anonymousiam »

laughing_man wrote: post #92
King-Aaron wrote: post #13

These debts mean nothing if the US government actually views AI technology as being on par with the Manhattan project. They'll just bail them out or nationalise them.

If they bail them out it should be done like the GM bailout. Shareholders leave with nothing.

And all salaried retirees lost their pensions and medical coverage, while the hourly ones kept everything. Thanks Obama!

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#218

Post by thin_carapace »

Lerc wrote: post #208
thin_carapace wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noted the employment of a language technique that as per the wikipedia article "signs of AI writing" is commonly used by AI, you can attack facts all you like and that will indeed stop me from talking!

I think the distinction is that when an AI generates the phrase it chooses to use the negation and then fills in the terms. If it only has one thing to communicate at that point then it is essentially placing a redundant rephrasing on onr side of the negation. My use of it took the form of A statement on how a guillotine kills people when they are powerless. The negation then, in the first part compares that to the c…

language models are trained to maximise engagement and maximally convey meaning. binary contrast happens to achieve these goals by optimally translating the manifold. if I come across further research it would be interesting to continue our language related discussion.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#219

Post by JeremyNT »

axegon_ wrote: post #97
ItsBob wrote: post #82

It's hard not to be fatalistic about all of this now: In my mind, it's crystal clear that the investments will never be paid back. The revenue streams from all the companies involved don't add up. It must fail at this point. That means losses. Big losses for some. I assume that these off-the-books companies can quite literally be pinched off and the debt becomes the banks' problem, so the primary company, i.e. Meta,…

And every time some points all of this out, they are "denier", "left behind" and all the other everything-ai fanatics can come up with. As for the imminent crash - I'm all for it. There's a whole generation that is incapable of thinking for themselves without an LLM telling them what to do or worse still - do it for them. And for much of the tech world, that is becoming the single point of failure. As for China - I t…

> And every time some points all of this out, they are "denier", "left behind" and all the other everything-ai fanatics can come up with. As for the imminent crash - I'm all for it. There's a whole generation that is incapable of thinking for themselves without an LLM telling them what to do or worse still - do it for them. And for much of the tech world, that is becoming the single point of failure.

I feel like you can still be an AI maximalist while thinking the numbers simply don't add up.

The problem as I see it is that this is a zero sum game. Nobody has a moat. Even if AI eats all white collar work, where's the profit for these entities? They become commodities and they will compete with each other (and open weight models) only on price, not to mention the workers who lose their jobs to this stuff aren't going to be contributing to the economy at all.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#220

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

rmunn wrote: post #53
richardw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US companies need trillions to barely beat Chinese companies spending billions, despite a multi year head start...

That's the difference between innovating and copying/distilling someone else's innovation. https://wccftech.com/chinas-kimi-k3-identifies-itself-as-ant...

That's an ironic comment to make about LLMs that are heavily reliant on copying/distilling everyone's work (or as Damien Walter puts it, our Collective Intelligence).
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