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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

#101

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dan_gee wrote: post #98
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I'm biased because I don't use AI, but I don't understand why you wouldn't fire these LLM-addicted people and replace them with people who can code or write an email without the use of an AI assistant.

They won't. They'll just pay more for the LLM.

I use LLMs all the time, but I'm also a highly capable and experienced engineer that can definitely work without. I have just found that the LLM is a force multiplier, like I haven't had before.

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

#102

Post by rpdillon »

dan_gee wrote: post #31
Legend2440 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? He's more of a gushing torrent of anti-AI propaganda. He has an agenda too, it's just the opposite one.

A resolute anti-AI perspective is a breath of fresh air compared to the middle-of-the-road "AI made me 10x more productive BUT"-style comments. My professional opinion is that LLM technology doesn't work very well for software development and I'm not interested in hemming and hawing over its supposed benefits any longer.

Talking with a friend of mine who's been in development for some time and I had been talking a little bit about the skill required to wield AI effectively and that people were expecting it to be something that required less skill than it does.

He said his version of this observation is "your agents are only as good as you are." I think he's right, and the key is to practice and build the skill.

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

#104

Post by kingleopold »

sssilver wrote: post #41

I will never understand the decision-making process that led to "Let's build an awesome VR headset that can't do gaming". I would love to replace my monitor with Apple Vision Pro for programming and productivity. I would gladly pay $1000 for that. But at $4000 it really needs to put me in a Microsoft Flight Simulator cockpit.

It's the same decision-making process that tried to do a electric car for years, and canceled it after spending time and money. In that exact timeline, China made great electic cars and new brands, Tesla advanced and Spacex launched dozens or more rockets. Apple is so far from any big new tech, they and market don't even realize it.

Apple had more money and influence than combination of all of them, yet failed with car and VR. Why would anyone think they can't fail much much bigger with AI and LLMs ?

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

#105

Post by dgellow »

ofjcihen wrote: post #43
sphinxterai wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he's not a developer or science guy or smart at all so in his view, AI doesn't work because sometimes it makes mistakes.

To be fair he has a background in technology PR and Marketing (which he’s been very critical of) which I would count as more worthwhile when assessing the actual value of the product. I mean you can say he’s not a “science guy” but he’s undeniably “smart”.

He also proved during his coverage of the crypto bubble that he’s perfectly able to understand technical issues, way better than most commentators

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

#106

Post by throwaway63467 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #78

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.…

Isn’t Apple potentially under a lot of pressure due to the DRAM prices as well as having to compete with AI for fab capacity? Before all the price hikes their products were already priced at the top of the market so I would assume that memory getting more expensive will impact their sales or margin quite a bit as they can’t subsidize hardware like AI companies do (they can of course eat into their own margins a bit which I think they already do). So not sure if what happens right now is great for them, if the memory market collapses it will of course be good.

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

#107

Post by ofjcihen »

jsnell wrote: post #72
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.

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…

So I’ve heard this argument before but I’ve not even seen someone demonstrate HOW the numbers are “adversarial”.

This is the crux of my argument: Zitron provides numbers and he provides a lot of them sourced from reliable and trustworthy sources. He provides counterarguments to numbers-sparse arguments by using even more actual, real numbers with a logical theory formed from them.

This should make it rather easy to dispute his claims, no? So then where are the equally rational disputes?

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

#108

Post by simonw »

jayd16 wrote: post #68
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…

Well hold on. "They" also thought tokenmaxxing was a good idea, until they didn't. Whether companies pay will come down to the bottom line once the hype around the country club dies down a bit and for that it's still TBD on the actual product cost impact.

Yeah, tokenmaxxing was obviously stupid. Setting a limit is what happens when the adults in the room stop being stupid.

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

#109

Post by icedchai »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #18
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.

The entire internet is full of anti-AI discussion and a straight up disbelief in any chance of success. Implying there is a "gushing torrent" of pro AI narrative is bizarrely out of touch. We both know this isn't true.

Both can be true. AI is very, very polarizing. The entire Internet is also filling up with AI generated content, some slop, some okay. There is also a very pro-AI managerial class that wants to replace everyone and everything with a Claude project so they can "just ask Claude!"

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

#110

Post by wvenable »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #61
sssilver wrote: post #41

I will never understand the decision-making process that led to "Let's build an awesome VR headset that can't do gaming". I would love to replace my monitor with Apple Vision Pro for programming and productivity. I would gladly pay $1000 for that. But at $4000 it really needs to put me in a Microsoft Flight Simulator cockpit.

Same decision making process behind making a VR headset out of heavy materials like glass and aluminum

Or making a VR headset that has to be tethered but still put all the compute on your face.
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