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After the AI Crash

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Re: After the AI Crash

#71

Post by user43928 »

zero_shift wrote: post #22
mosura wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the strong arguments in favor of AI accelerationism is net pain reduction by making the transition period as short as possible. Ideas like “pacing” or a crash and reboot will prolong the inevitable.

That is an absurd position to take. Nobody benefits by having less time to adapt to changes in their employability I am not calling you out personally here, but this comment bears many hallmarks of the "accelerationist disease": thinking in abstract models rather than in concrete terms; optimising for the fangs of capital rather than human beings, imaginary infinite bets that lead participants to nonsensical conclusi…

Concretely:

If AI replaces all labor in two years, unemployment insurance and savings can comfortably carry me over the transitional period to universal income or obsolescence of money.

Should AI stagnate at the point where 70% of software engineering jobs are gone, I am going to have a problem.

Concretely, I imagine that I would need to learn other knowledge work. If AI can also perform it, I would have to go into blue collar work.

Re: After the AI Crash

#72

Post by vrganj »

cmiles8 wrote: post #35

It’s not a question of if but when at this point. To parallel to The Big Short this is the point in the movie where folks realize it’s mathematically impossible for things to not implode and so players are quietly positioning themselves for that eventuality before things are allowed to blow. It’s been a dramatic shift these last six months but everywhere I look now folks are quietly preparing their battle armor to su…

How would one position oneself as an individual investor if one believed this thesis?

Re: After the AI Crash

#73

Post by NiloCK »

> Circular Revenues: A small handful of tech firms, chip manufacturers, and AI companies are propping each other up by investing and buying from each other.

> Increasing Corporate Skepticism: The news is full of stories of corporations that are throttling the employee use of AI since the costs to use the software are a lot higher than expected.

Real AI spend is out of control, with the news is full of stories about corporations trying to keep a lid on it, but also real AI spending is low and concentrated to a few firms.

I don't know. This doesn't feel very coherent to me, but rather like a collection of assertions that are adopted because they individually say something bearish about the industry.

Certainly some investments will have been overreaches, but I find it pretty unlikely that any of the compute build-out to date is going to be left sitting idle one or two or five years from now.

Re: After the AI Crash

#74

Post by LogicFailsMe »

toasty228 wrote: post #33
Kuyawa wrote: post #14

AI investment will crash but AI itself (the technology) will continue thriving, learning, improving and there is absolutely no way to stop it. The only reading on the crystal ball is if US companies fail, China will take the lead by leaps and bounds, so the only solution is to keep pushing the cart until the wheels come off or we all cross the finish line, together.

> absolutely no way to stop it. Unless if they take down the flat rate subs and you have to pay api prices, usage will drop a lot. Right now I freelance using gpt, if I had to pay api prices I'd probably lose 50% of the income, if not more, with the ~40% tax on top I might as well spend my time doing something else

That would just create incentive to build better consumer HW for larger open weight models. And that would make me very happy. But I think the poster in another thread who stated there's a netflix subscription phenomena going on with the fixed rate pricing was onto something. My agents run 24/7 until I hit all my limits. I suspect my results are not typical. And as of yesterday I have issues with both major CEOs yet I thank them both for subsidizing my tokenmaxxing.

Re: After the AI Crash

#75

Post by drudolph914 »

Kuyawa wrote: post #14

AI investment will crash but AI itself (the technology) will continue thriving, learning, improving and there is absolutely no way to stop it. The only reading on the crystal ball is if US companies fail, China will take the lead by leaps and bounds, so the only solution is to keep pushing the cart until the wheels come off or we all cross the finish line, together.

it's a bit unfair to say this is the only thing that can happen. we can just as easily assume in like over a few years, US leadership identifies that AI is an arms race, and continuing down this path leads is going to lead to a zero-sum-game. and so instead of just mindlessly pushing the cart forever, we see government intervention

Re: After the AI Crash

#76

Post by skybrian »

Maybe it would be good if more electricity generation became available for other purposes like heat pumps and electric cars? Although, perhaps it doesn’t help as much if it’s in the wrong place.

Also, cheaper RAM would be nice.

Re: After the AI Crash

#78

Post by ray_v »

dspillett wrote: post #25
_override wrote: post #8

When it comes to the AI crash honestly my biggest concern is what is going to happen to the job market during and the years following the crash. Not sure how things are in the rest of the world, but as someone in their early 30s working in the IT industry in Sweden I’ve never seen the market this competitive before, even for mid level and senior roles, and it worries me what the future of employment is going to look…

> what the future of employment is going to look like As an already slightly outdated senior dev in the UK rapidly approaching 50 and not wanting to touch generative AI / agentic dev… … I'm increasingly looking forward to waiting tables, being a hospital porter, or anything else away from tech! I'm thinking that if I get out soon, I might beat most of the rush and be safely employed before many of the rest of you are…

It's interesting that you're looking to exit the industry as a SR dev - from my casual observations it seems like mostly it's the JR devs and younger folks that have been mostly rejecting agentic dev.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a specific objections to using the technology? I totally understand the burnout however (I'm rapidly approaching 50 myself).

Re: After the AI Crash

#79

Post by Schlagbohrer »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #28
_override wrote: post #8

When it comes to the AI crash honestly my biggest concern is what is going to happen to the job market during and the years following the crash. Not sure how things are in the rest of the world, but as someone in their early 30s working in the IT industry in Sweden I’ve never seen the market this competitive before, even for mid level and senior roles, and it worries me what the future of employment is going to look…

I think there's a few things going on and I also believe that in many (if not most, and dare I say ALL) cases AI as an excuse for lay offs is simply a scapegoat. If AI is so great, why aren't you re-training those who are ineffective at using it, and then cutting those who still don't make the cut? If it's this amazing thing for your company, wouldn't it drive revenue up drastically? I wish the SEC would start auditi…

This is a good example. If AI increases productivity so much, then having more employees would be beneficial, because each can produce even more output. So the firm would only be limited by the imagination of their product managers and marketing team finding new things to produce with this vast capability.

And yet...

Re: After the AI Crash

#80

Post by lstodd »

dspillett wrote: post #25
_override wrote: post #8

When it comes to the AI crash honestly my biggest concern is what is going to happen to the job market during and the years following the crash. Not sure how things are in the rest of the world, but as someone in their early 30s working in the IT industry in Sweden I’ve never seen the market this competitive before, even for mid level and senior roles, and it worries me what the future of employment is going to look…

> what the future of employment is going to look like As an already slightly outdated senior dev in the UK rapidly approaching 50 and not wanting to touch generative AI / agentic dev… … I'm increasingly looking forward to waiting tables, being a hospital porter, or anything else away from tech! I'm thinking that if I get out soon, I might beat most of the rush and be safely employed before many of the rest of you are…

get into telecom is my advice. despite it being the birthplace of monstrosities like 3gpp, there is a suprising amount of sane people. and no amount of ai crash and burn will decrease the need for communications.
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