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Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

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Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#101

Post by pedalpete »

harmmonica wrote: post #92

Do I have this right that there have been no or at least very few pure AI IPO's during this cycle (I can't actually think of a single one)? So it's dissimilar to dotcom in that regard because during that time countless dotcoms went public with sky-high valuations and then failed. A bunch of reputable companies also went or were already public during that time and those saw huge valuation drops so that's more analogou…

This time is always different, until it isn't.

However, it is different from the internet bubble partially for the reason you describe.

There have been a few IPOs, but they perhaps happened earlier in the cycle, or companies are pivoting into AI. I'm thinking companies like Palantir, which was always AI, or Salesforce which is making a big AI pivot.

Most of the funding is not coming from public sectors. There is so much private capital available that it isn't necessary. I believe the bubble is in VC, which some would think is find because it protects public markets from the crash, but I'm not sure that is correct.

When the VC money stops flowing into AI, I think it will send a shockwave through the public markets. The huge valuations of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, etc will be repriced, which will probably force a re-pricing of public darlings like Palantir, Microsoft, NVIDIA.

If VC funds aren't buying NVIDIA chips and building data centers, everyone will feel the need to re-price.

It's emotional, not logical.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#102

Post by NedF »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

Video game crash followed by video games taking off and eclipsing most other forms of digital entertainment. Dot com crash followed by the web getting pretty popular and a bit central to business. To all those betting big on AI before the crash: Careful, Icarus.

> Careful, Icarus.

What does that even mean?

pets.com was a fat loser only telling telling people that were going to fly.

Amazon was Icarus, they did something.

Vs weak commentators going on about the wax melting from their parents root cellar while Icarus was soaring.

Most of Y Combinator are not using AI they just say that and you're worried about the people who do things?

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#103

Post by triceratops »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #51
hx8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the infrastructure made during the Dotcom boom was shortly discarded. How many dial-up modems were sold in the 90s? The current AI bubble is leading to trained models that won't be feasible to retrain for a decade or longer after the bubble bursts.

The wealth the Dotcom boom left behind wasn't in dial up modems or internet over the telephone, it was in the huge amounts of high speed fiber optic networks that were laid down. I think a lot of that infrastructure is still in use today, fiber optic cables can last 30 years or more.

> fiber optic cables can last 30 years or more

The trenches for the cables even longer than that.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#105

Post by o11c »

bilsbie wrote: post #63
zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…

We don’t have moores law anymore. Why are the chips obseleting so quickly?

They kind of aren't. If you actually look at "how many dollars am I spending per month on electricity", there's a good chance it's not worth upgrading even if your computer is 10 years old.

Of course this does make some moderate assumptions that it was a solid build in the first place, not a flimsy laptop, not artificially made obsolete/slow, etc. Even then, "install an SSD" and "install more RAM" is most of everything.

Of course, if you are a developer you should avoid doing these things so you won't get encouraged to write crappy programs.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#106

Post by [deleted] »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #51
hx8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the infrastructure made during the Dotcom boom was shortly discarded. How many dial-up modems were sold in the 90s? The current AI bubble is leading to trained models that won't be feasible to retrain for a decade or longer after the bubble bursts.

The wealth the Dotcom boom left behind wasn't in dial up modems or internet over the telephone, it was in the huge amounts of high speed fiber optic networks that were laid down. I think a lot of that infrastructure is still in use today, fiber optic cables can last 30 years or more.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#107

Post by outside1234 »

lumost wrote: post #9
Insanity wrote: post #3

I think most level-headed people can see this is a giant bubble which will eventually burst like the dot-com crash. And AI is technology that's hard to understand to non-technical (and even some technical) investors. But of course, every company needs to slap AI on their product now just to be seen as a viable product. Personally, I look forward to seeing the bubble burst and being left with a more rational view of A…

OpenAI has a reasonable path to reduce their costs by 10-100x over the next 5 years if they stop improving the models. That would make them an extremely profitable company with their only real risk being “local ai”. However customers have wanted their data in the cloud for years, local inference would likely just mean 0 cost tokens for OpenAI. The challenge is the rest of the industry funding dead companies with bill…

The problem is that their competitor is Google and they are much better at most of the things that OpenAI needs to be good at.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#108

Post by donmcronald »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36
blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…

And a lot of the gains from the Dotcom boom are being paid back in negative value for the average person at this point. We have automated systems that waste our time when we need support, product features that should have a one-time-cost being turned into subscriptions, a complete usurping of the ability to distribute software or build compatible replacements, etc..

The Dotcom boom was probably good for everyone in some way, but it was much, much better for the extremely wealthy people that have gained control of everything.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#109

Post by rhetocj23 »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #44
zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…

Personally I think people should stop trying to reason from the past. As tempting as it is, it leads to false outcomes because you are not thinking about how this particular situation is going to impact society and the economy. Its much harder to reason this way, but isnt that the point? personally I dont want to hear or read analogies based on the past - I want to see and read stuff that comes from original thinking…

With all due respect, Im not here to teach people how to think.

This guy gets it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxLCTA5wQow

Instead of plainly jumping on the bubble bandwagon he actually goes through a thorough analysis.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#110

Post by NicoJuicy »

yeasku wrote: post #93
macNchz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty location specific—in the US 42% of households had home internet in 2000. https://www.statista.com/statistics/189349/us-households-hom...

That web is not a good source.

Yes it is.

Low Global Penetration: Only 361 million people had internet access worldwide in 2000, a small fraction of the global population. Specific Country Examples United States: The US had a significant portion of the world's internet users, making up 31.1% of all global users in 2000. Its penetration rate was 43.1%.

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