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After the Bubble

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Re: After the Bubble

#11

Post by kevin061 »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #10
kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

But the days when every HN submission was about some blockchain thing did end -- and hopefully that'll happen for AI too. I'm sick of reading about it at this point, but it sure is most news stories (at the outlet's I'm usually interested in)

I can agree with that, yeah.

Re: After the Bubble

#12

Post by kevin061 »

bgwalter wrote: post #9
kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

Bitcoin has had the fortune of being one of the settlement methods for sanctions evasion. Its price has almost certainly profited from the Ukraine war. Renewed interest by the Trump clan with Lutnick's Cantor & Fitzgerald handling Tether collateral in Nayib Bukele's paradise wasn't easy to predict either. Neither was the recent selloff. It would be hilarious if it was for a slush fund for Venezuelan rebels or army ge…

I am aware of using crypto for money laundering, sanctions evasions and even buying drugs online. I wonder what would have happened without Bitcoin. There would never have been a Silk Road, and ransomware would have had to use vouchers and so, right? Everything would be so different.

Re: After the Bubble

#13

Post by kevin061 »

rus20376 wrote: post #3
kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

> AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled intellectual This has been true since, say, 1955. > This is the final capitalism cheat code. A worker who does not sleep or take time off. That’s the hope that is driving the current AI Bubble. It has neither ever been true nor will be true with the current…

I hope you are correct, but I have other opinions.

Re: After the Bubble

#14

Post by kevin061 »

alextingle wrote: post #6
kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

Even if all that were true, where is the path to profitability for OpenAI, and all the rest? If they can't pivot to making a profit, then they are going to pop, and their investors will lose all their money. That's the AI bubble... investors losing all their money. The technology will remain, of course, just like we still have railways, and houses.

That is a valid and interesting discussion point. I do concede that OpenAI will probably not survive in the long term. Google and Microsoft on the other hand have dozens of independent verticals and revenue sources. Google can afford to be a loss leader with Gemini AI, and when every competitor goes out of business, they will jack up prices and enshittify a tool everyone depends on. Like what happened with YouTube once Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and the other sites essentially stopped being relevant.

But, and this is key, AI is not going away for as long as the potential to replace human labour remains there.

Re: After the Bubble

#15

Post by johannes1234321 »

dehrmann wrote: post #5

> When the early-electrification bubble built, we were left with the grid. And when the dot-com bubble burst, we were left with a lot of valuable infrastructure whose cost was sunk, in particular dark fibre. The AI bubble? Not so much. Except for the physical buildings, permitting, and power grid build-out.

> Except for the physical buildings, permitting, and power grid build-out.

Those are extremely localized at a bunch of data centers and how much of that will see further use? And how much grid work has really happened (there are a lot of announcement about plans to maybe build nuclear reactor etc., but those projects take a lot of time, if ever done)

nVidia managed to pivot their customer base from crypto mining to AI.

Re: After the Bubble

#16

Post by jmclnx »

>When companies buy expensive stuff, for accounting purposes they pretend they haven’t spent the money; instead they “depreciate” it over a few years

I thought there was a US IRS Law that was changed sometime in the past 10/15 years that made companies depreciate computer hardware in 1 year. Am I misremembering ?

I thought that law was the reason why many companies increased the life time of employee Laptops from 3 to 5 years.

Re: After the Bubble

#17

Post by PrairieFire »

kevin061 wrote: post #12
bgwalter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has had the fortune of being one of the settlement methods for sanctions evasion. Its price has almost certainly profited from the Ukraine war. Renewed interest by the Trump clan with Lutnick's Cantor & Fitzgerald handling Tether collateral in Nayib Bukele's paradise wasn't easy to predict either. Neither was the recent selloff. It would be hilarious if it was for a slush fund for Venezuelan rebels or army ge…

I am aware of using crypto for money laundering, sanctions evasions and even buying drugs online. I wonder what would have happened without Bitcoin. There would never have been a Silk Road, and ransomware would have had to use vouchers and so, right? Everything would be so different.

crime finds a way. any means of semi anonymous and/or non recourse value storage and exchange will suit. iTunes/play store/steam prepaid cards and accounts, money orders, western union, etc.

Agree with you it would be different, crypto is global, most of the accessible alternative methods are localized to varying degrees.

Re: After the Bubble

#18

Post by marcusb »

> The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that.

I think the first part of this is probably true, but I don’t think everyone knows it. A lot of people are acting like they don’t know it.

It feels like a bubble to me, but I don’t think anyone can say to a certainty that it is, or that it will pop.

Re: After the Bubble

#19

Post by John23832 »

I think the interesting thing to think about its that we _already_ fired people in the name of AI (because AI was supposed to be this huge efficiency gain).

When the bubble pops, do you fire _even more_ people? What does that look like given the decimation in the job market already?

Re: After the Bubble

#20

Post by Ekaros »

I have been thinking. The reality is that in general employees are not paid for value/revenue/profit they generate. That sets the floor. But they are paid what market sets as rate for their demand. See people putting together high cost electronics. Clearly lot of value there with margins what they are, but not lot of pay.

Wouldn't AI largely be race to bottom? As such even if expensive employees get replaced, the cost of replacing them might not be that big. It might only barely cover the costs of interference for example. So might it be that profits will actually be lot lower than costs of employees that are being replaced?

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