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Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

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Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#71

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

epistasis wrote: post #24

> If Anthropic and OpenAI believed customers would actually pay the real cost of AI tokens, they wouldn't have to give away 20 to 40 times the amount of tokens to subscribers. One logical gap in the SemiAnalysis 40x cost of tokens versus subscription: I don't know anybody actually maxing out their account limits. Sure, if you're somehow always running stuff, you can max it out, but subscriptions like this allow peopl…

I'm of the opinion that the market will need to expand, horizontally. That's what's happening, with low-cost LLMs. I already know lots of "regular folks" that are totally hooked on LLMs (mostly ChatGPT, at the "regular mensch" level). They usually use the free tier, but a lot of them are doing the $20/month Pro tier.

If anyone is in my age group, they remember when ATMs were free. It was the "heroin dealer" business model. It worked out well (for the banks). The Chinese did it with manufacturing.

Getting people hooked on subsidized junk, is an age-old (and highly effective) business model.

Think of all the shops that will soon be composed of people that simply can't even get out of bed, if their LLM is not available. If the LLM dealer starts raising the price, there's no choice. I suspect many of the valuations are taking this into account.

> "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."

-William Burroughs

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#72

Post by jsnell »

ofjcihen wrote: post #15
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good sources of well-argued AI skepticism, and then there's Ed Zitron.

At this point I have yet to hear a solid argument against his arguments that use half as much evidence as he does. That isn’t to say that he’s right, that’s just to say that while he gets creative in his phrasing numbers don’t lie and I haven’t seen anyone else present competing numbers that make sense. If anyone has them to the degree with which he provides them then please, by all means, I’m interested.

You're biasing for quantity of argument vs. quality of argument. That's Zitron's MO: writing 10k word rambles that cover 20 topics, ostensibly with tons of links to sourcing, but with most of the sources not actually saying what Zitron implies they do.

Nobody has the patience to read a comprehensive point by point rebuttal to any of it, it's just too tedious.

You say "numbers don't lie". But they do, when the numbers being presented have been adversarially chosen. You just find numbers (no matter how low quality) that fit the chosen narrative, you throw out the numbers (no matter how high quality) that rebut it. If you're trying to predict the future, you can't afford that of bias. If you're an anti-AI grifter, you can't afford to not have that bias, your entire livelihood depends on only showing things that support the narrative.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#74

Post by whateveracct »

simonw wrote: post #14

One big difference I have with Ed Zitron is I look at companies suddenly getting worried that they're spending millions of dollars on tokens and think "wow those AI vendors are going to make SO MUCH MONEY". The best price for a product is what I call the "suck air through your teeth" price. You want your customers to suck air through their teeth... and then pay the full amount anyway. Uber set their per-developer tok…

that $1.5k is ostensibly not coming out of productivity gains from the AI though.

it's coming out of the salary budget from what i've seen. i've seen a company both say "AI max. it's the future! don't be late" and then go on to increase limits to compensation across the board.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#75

Post by KaiserPro »

hparadiz wrote: post #29
ofjcihen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I have yet to hear a solid argument against his arguments that use half as much evidence as he does. That isn’t to say that he’s right, that’s just to say that while he gets creative in his phrasing numbers don’t lie and I haven’t seen anyone else present competing numbers that make sense. If anyone has them to the degree with which he provides them then please, by all means, I’m interested.

[flagged]

> He's a college drop out with no experience in programming or technology.

I mean Zuckerberg is a drop out.

zitron has been around since before flash was dead, more over hes worked in PR so like anyone with heavy involvement with c-suite, sales and journalism, you get a good nose for bullshit.

That said, do I agree with his assertions? no not entirely. But. I suspect its a bit of an audience capture thing. He makes wild statements, then goes on a flight of fancy to back them up. I appreciate that, but it also lets me decide that he's going down a path that I feel is not backed up by his data.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#77

Post by achow »

> ..because the entire AI bubble is a result of everybody running out of hypergrowth ideas, mostly because we're flat out of new interfaces.

Really? I thought the AI bubble happened because something genuinely novel had been invented. People immediately saw practical uses for it, and then it took on a life of its own - funding, superfunding, $trillions becoming part of day to day lingo.. etc.

AI is not in the same class as Vision Pro, which Ed Zitron is comparing it to. I personally found the overall tone to be a bit hyperbolic.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#78

Post by cmiles8 »

Apple looks better and better as every day passes. Other players going deeply into debt to build out massive infrastructure, VCs pumping up the model ecosystem that is now a total commodity.

Apple’s just been sitting there with solid cashflow waiting for all this to implode and then have on-device models with their own chips.

Apple will own the end device while the rest of the world is fighting over a pure commodity. It will burn hard and Apple will laugh all the way to the bank.

Re: Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

#79

Post by Fricken »

awakeasleep wrote: post #12
bananamogul wrote: post #2

I don't know if Ed Zitron is right about allhis analysis, but it's nice to have an alternative, well-argued narrative to the gushing torrent of AI company propaganda.

Read a little more of what he's written before you praise him, so you don't end up looking as dumb as I did. Ed may be right about some of his claims, but he is 100% a crank, and he makes so many incoherent claims I'd say that if he's right, it's in the nature of a broken clock.

[flagged]
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