Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

crazystupidtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 215 posts

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#111

Post by jbs789 »

shigawire wrote: post #53

I think I'm asking for the impossible here... But is anyone trying to hedge risk in their personal finances? I'm not a real "investor" (index funds only) but I am feeling more willing to forgo gains to be more risk averse just based on my own neuroses. Maybe I cash out and buy T-bills? Gold? Bullets? What's the non-crazy person equivalent?

It’s probably most important to take a long term view of asset allocations, stick to the plan, and be tax efficient. Once you cover that off, the tactical positions can maybe help a touch.

Diversification is the bedrock of portfolio management, meaning owning a range of assets that collectively perform acceptably under a range of scenarios. But it’s generally not sexy, not something you catch individuals bragging about - avoiding permanent loss of capital.

Think about what risk you’re willing to take, in the context of your job/career prospects, current investments etc.

These are things for you to decide. Wouldn’t trust anyone who says buy x without knowing your individual circumstances.

What I can say is there are consistent patterns for many successful investors, and the media will tend to focus on the outliers / lottery winners, which by definition are difficult to emulate / replicate. Be wary of survivorship bias and the narrative fallacy.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#112

Post by dudeinjapan »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #87
hnburnsy wrote: post #83

Pets.com→Chewy Webvan → Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon Fresh Kozmo.com → Postmates, Uber Eats, Gopuff Boo.com (fashion) → Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, ASOS Broadcast.com → YouTube, Netflix, Twitch The dot-com bubble didn’t prove the internet was a fad — it proved the internet was inevitable, but the valuations assumed adoption would happen in 2 years instead of 15–20. To me it feels like the AI inevitability will be much qui…

> To me it feels like the AI inevitability will be much quicker. AI is accelerating "let them eat cake" at rates never seen before in history, so I imagine the violence will follow soon after

Yeah but AI can also generate a picture of any cake you prompt it.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#113

Post by vorpalhex »

ghm2180 wrote: post #109

I have a noob question. How can developed economies where populations levels have plateaued continue to be expected to post positive GDPs (and therefore add net new goods and services) yoy? Homes as assets should pass on, higher cost services of today would be replaced by lower cost which only temporarily would increase units sold(but should eventually plateau because #units/person is not going to change). No compone…

Your entire premise is simply incorrect, through and through. Discard it entirely and begin again.

You have a hundred people, they have a GDP of N. Tomorrow, their productivity doubles because of a technological innovation. Your GDP is 2N.

Prices matter extensively to the rich and poor. The cost of a given compute capacity has gone from "literally the entire United States can't afford it" to "my lightbulb has this much compute because it's cheaper than choosing a dumber processor".

What happens tomorrow if eg ChatGPT 5.1 performance becomes doable for $500 of tech? $50? Swap this for grain harvesting, waste bin collection, etc if you don't like the LLM case.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#114

Post by ruszki »

hnburnsy wrote: post #83

Pets.com→Chewy Webvan → Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon Fresh Kozmo.com → Postmates, Uber Eats, Gopuff Boo.com (fashion) → Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, ASOS Broadcast.com → YouTube, Netflix, Twitch The dot-com bubble didn’t prove the internet was a fad — it proved the internet was inevitable, but the valuations assumed adoption would happen in 2 years instead of 15–20. To me it feels like the AI inevitability will be much qui…

If technology had been the same for the past 20 years, basically none of these would have existed, or would be even close as large as today. We needed way faster cable and mobile internet, and smartphones. Probably even smaller laptops. It was possible to predict these more or less, however, it was impossible to predict when or whether people start to really utilize the internet. Even now, we needed COVID to have another shift regarding this. The general acceptance of “internet first” kind of worldview maybe would have never happened without forcing us to have.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#115

Post by jbs789 »

ghm2180 wrote: post #109

I have a noob question. How can developed economies where populations levels have plateaued continue to be expected to post positive GDPs (and therefore add net new goods and services) yoy? Homes as assets should pass on, higher cost services of today would be replaced by lower cost which only temporarily would increase units sold(but should eventually plateau because #units/person is not going to change). No compone…

Think of GDP as a country’s output.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#116

Post by furyofantares »

stevage wrote: post #42

Fundamentally they seem different. The web looked like it had the potential to make lots of money but no one knew exactly how. AI literally does people's jobs for them. There's not much imagination required.

For the most part, current AI tools do tasks for people, not their jobs. And for the most part it does rather poor quality, low-depth work (but with superhuman speed and superhuman breadth).

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#117

Post by jaggederest »

ghm2180 wrote: post #109

I have a noob question. How can developed economies where populations levels have plateaued continue to be expected to post positive GDPs (and therefore add net new goods and services) yoy? Homes as assets should pass on, higher cost services of today would be replaced by lower cost which only temporarily would increase units sold(but should eventually plateau because #units/person is not going to change). No compone…

> How can developed economies where populations levels have plateaued continue to be expected to post positive GDPs (and therefore add net new goods and services) yoy?

Think about the unsatisfied needs and desires most people have. In extremely low income areas, it may be a roof over your head or knowing where your next meal comes from. Moving up a tier, it might be the ability to send your children to education or better clothing. In wealthier areas it might be things like a better car or higher quality food even though you're not in danger of going hungry. For the extremely wealthy it might be more leisure time, art, and new experiences.

When GDP increases, broadly, those are the areas you see expand. Looking at life today in a baseline American household, the things which are mass produced are far more available and affordable than they were a century ago - in the 1930s households spent about 10-12% of their income on clothing.

Sadly, the rate of improvement for non-mass-produced items like college tuition, medical care, and especially housing has ballooned compared to median income, so life doesn't feel inexpensive, certainly, but GDP has a lot of room to grow in a lot of areas.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#118

Post by chickensong »

munk-a wrote: post #108
chickensong wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big business and government aren't buying supercomputer clusters and licensing models to run chats.

The really weird thing is that Big Business actually is buying supercomputer clusters to do just that. I can't really talk to the government side but a lot of businesses' early forays into AI was just slapping a chatbot on their product and hoping it'd attract a lot more business. I also think you'd be surprised how integrated really dumb chatbots are into business communication these days. I think most smart people…

> just slapping a chatbot on their product

That's happening of course, but that's not really the whole picture. Any org that already invests in R&D is likely considering or already implementing modern AI tech into their existing infrastructure. A big oil or pharmaceutical or materials company likely doesn't care much about chat bots, or any customer-facing tech for that matter.

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#119

Post by arexxbifs »

vorpalhex wrote: post #113
ghm2180 wrote: post #109

I have a noob question. How can developed economies where populations levels have plateaued continue to be expected to post positive GDPs (and therefore add net new goods and services) yoy? Homes as assets should pass on, higher cost services of today would be replaced by lower cost which only temporarily would increase units sold(but should eventually plateau because #units/person is not going to change). No compone…

Your entire premise is simply incorrect, through and through. Discard it entirely and begin again. You have a hundred people, they have a GDP of N. Tomorrow, their productivity doubles because of a technological innovation. Your GDP is 2N. Prices matter extensively to the rich and poor. The cost of a given compute capacity has gone from "literally the entire United States can't afford it" to "my lightbulb has this mu…

> What happens tomorrow if eg ChatGPT 5.1 performance becomes doable for $500 of tech? $50?

The bubble would burst and the US economy would face a recession?

Re: Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different?

#120

Post by AstroBen »

more_corn wrote: post #14

Ok, so if that prediction is true what actions did you take? Identify the therefore part of the prediction and enumerate the three highest priority steps. Have you determined that the stock market will crash and bought positions accordingly? Have you sold all your nvidia stock? What are the implications in the broader economy and what steps have you taken?

Recognizing a bubble and timing what will happen are two really different things. Will it pop tomorrow or 4 years from now? Will the market go up another 70% before the eventual pop?
Post reply on HN