61–70 of 178 posts
I remember when Amazon was going to go broke every year for over a decade. Until they didn't.
That’s because they were reinvesting the profits. I think they had given a profitable quarter just to show that they could do it.
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
I was called quite disruptive in class when I was young. I'm sure my teachers never meant it as a compliment.
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
Isn't that the point here? That everyone thinks massive disruption is happening and everyone is 100xing their productivity, but it's not actually showing up in the numbers anywhere?
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
Lenders are doubting their return. People's benefits have nothing to do with it. The benefits would go in a minute, if doing so yielded a better return.
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
Because what many of us are seeing is meaningless “productivity” improvements.
If at the end of the day you don’t have more users paying for your product or the same users and paying more, then what’s the point of being more productive?
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
Where is this disruption? The longer we go, the more people report that the supposed net-gain of easily 100s of percents is not visible.
I do strongly believe "It's just a tool" - A powerful one, but not one like the invention of the steam machine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But who needs SOTA models, really? It was necessary 10 months ago, but now?
All things equal, let's say your SaaS startup uses GPT 5.0 (release 10 months ago) and my business uses Fable 5. We have the same business goals, same talent level, same strategies. I think the chance of my business winning against yours is higher. I can't prove it. It's just my opinion.
Key reports to understand the root problem (no ROI): - Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too... (Goldman Sachs) - AI’s $600 Billion Question: https://sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/ (Sequoia Capital) - The Simple Macroeconomics of AI: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32487/w324... (MIT / Daron Acemoglu)
How can people in Hacker News still doubt AI's benefit when they are seeing in front of their eyes every technical profession getting disrupted to oblivion in the last year. Just ask basically any software engineer how much their profession has changed over the last 12 months Obviously there is risk, but can't we really extrapolate the AI gains forward and just see how big it's ahead to become?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All things equal, let's say your SaaS startup uses GPT 5.0 (release 10 months ago) and my business uses Fable 5. We have the same business goals, same talent level, same strategies. I think the chance of my business winning against yours is higher. I can't prove it. It's just my opinion.
Ceteris paribus, all other things are never equal.
If we couldn’t isolate a variable we would never be able to argue.
Using a better model is an advantage even if only for the coders. There are a million ways to turn that into profit, both proper and not so proper but that’s the beauty of ceteris paribus: the other factors do not matter now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By that measure it doesn’t sound like that much. You’re talking about about an amount that is a 13% of the total US government spending, of which is 20% of the entire US GDP. I’m not saying it’s insignificant but it’s only a few percent of the US GDP and it represents spending over several years.
I mean that's so far, it continues to grow exponentially larger with each quarter. The debt issuance for the first half looks to be crowding out US treasuries in the bond market - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-23/ai-deb... - that's an extremely large amount of debt. And it's still getting larger and larger each quarter.
And while the quarter by quarter growth may seem astonishing it very different saying “debt levels today are alarming” versus “if this trend continues debt levels will be alarming”