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GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

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Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#141

Post by Terr_ »

johnecheck wrote: post #127
Terr_ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A blockchain is merely a distributed ledger with certain properties from cryptography. If we charitably assume "blockchain" has some engineering meaning (and it isn't purely a word for marketing/scamming) then there's some new aspect which sets it apart from the distributed-databases we've been able to make just fine for decades. Uncontrolled participation is that key aspect. Without that linchpin, almost all the o…

You misunderstand. The analogy wouldn't be Napster with networking code disabled. The analogy is Napster on a LAN. Only those on the LAN can access it so it's not open to the world, but nonetheless you've still got a p2p file-sharing client. And yes. I'm using the engineering definition. I don't believe in letting a gaggle of marketers and scammers define my terms. A blockchain is a specific technology. It doesn't me…

On reflection I was incorrect to mention Napster, which (at least in its most-popular incarnation) was still centralized for indexing and searching, with P2P only for bulk file data. Please pretend said "Gnutella" alone.

> The analogy is [the P2P application] on a LAN.

The analogy is the P2P application where regular clients can only discover a Special Master Client that must be running on a fixed IP, which only permits connections if you have credentials for a user-account arranged in advance.

In each case, the system's centerpiece feature is being voided, but that feature is different between them.

1. For "Blockchain", the centerpiece is unrestricted participation. (Other decentralization is an indirect effect.)

2. For P2P file sharing, the centerpiece is how nobody needs to run an expensive/vulnerable central server, but it wasn't a contradiction in terms to have a private peer-network.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#142

Post by inkyoto »

mvdtnz wrote: post #138
inkyoto wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one knew what “blockchain” was, how it worked, or what could be used for. Not the blockchain itself, but the concept of an immutable, append only, tamper-proof ledger underpinning it is a very useful one in many contexts where the question of authenticity of datasets arises – the blockchain has given us a ledger database. The ledger database is more than just a hash as it also provides a cryptographic proof that…

> but the concept of an immutable, append only, tamper-proof ledger underpinning it is a very useful one Which is why blockchains have become such a ubiquitous technology. They're literally everywhere. Can't swing a cat without hitting a blockchain nowadays.

You have responded to the wrong comment. I have presented a case that concerns ledger databases, not the blockchains. If one doesn't understand the difference between the two, it is probably a good idea to refrain from chiming in.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#143

Post by mrsilencedogood »

chaboud wrote: post #70
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #7

I think vibe coding will get good enough that things like vercel's "0 to POC" thing are going to stick around. I think AI-powered IDE features will stick around. One notable head-and-shoulders-above-non-AI-competitor feature I've seen is "very very fuzzy search". I can ask AI "I think there's something in the code that inserts MyMessage into `my.kafka.topic`. But the gosh darn codebase is so convoluted that I literal…

I've been quite happy with thinking of agentic IDE operation as being akin to a highly energetic intern. It's prone to spiraling off into the weeds, makes silly mistakes, occasionally mangles whole repos (commit early, and often), and needs very crisp instruction and guidance. That said, I get my answers back in minutes/hours rather than days/weeks. For the cost, for things that would otherwise be delivered by an int…

"intern or college-hire"

It's well known that these fresh employees are not going to contribute to velocity of a team for at least a year. They're investments. I've seen levelling docs specifically call this out.

"It's prone to spiraling off into the weeds, makes silly mistakes, occasionally mangles whole repos (commit early, and often), and needs very crisp instruction and guidance"

This describes a team of juniors. If it's describing an entire team, then everyone above mid-level needs to be fired.

I will say that I think "the bottom of the market getting eviscerated" is going to apply to software devs too. There is now very little point in hiring someone who already only produces slop as their best output. The main people who need to be afraid of AI in the next 5 years is probably offshore and near-shore people, and perma-juniors who have done the "1 year of experience 10 times" thing.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#144

Post by j45 »

throwawayoldie wrote: post #15
j45 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bubble if the tech or audience wasn't there and capabilities weren't improving weekly. There's definitely people who don't understand the tech talking about applying it increasing the failure rate of software projects.

> It's a bubble if the tech or audience wasn't there and capabilities weren't improving weekly. But...is it and are they? Gen AI boosters tend to make assertions like this as if they're unassailable facts, but never seem interested in backing them up. I guess it's easier than thinking.

As a tech person..

It is, and they are.

For the boosters, notice how few or many come from a tech background and pay attention accordingly

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#145

Post by j45 »

wiml wrote: post #57
throwawayoldie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bubble if the tech or audience wasn't there and capabilities weren't improving weekly. But...is it and are they? Gen AI boosters tend to make assertions like this as if they're unassailable facts, but never seem interested in backing them up. I guess it's easier than thinking.

The whole mindset of LLM boosterism is that thinking is obsolete anyway — all you need is pattern matching on existing data — so it's not surprising that they don't want to indulge in it excessively.

Thinking is absolutely not obsolete with LLMs.

Human thought is the only way any software (including LLMs) operate efficiently.

Same goes for leveraging LLMs.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#146

Post by j45 »

oinfoalgo wrote: post #123
pixl97 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, the .com bomb killed some companies and slowed down spending for a bit. It did not kill the internet, and now companies like Amazon(.com) are absolutely enormous. Some people think the GenAI bomb is going to kill GenAI, I think it's just going to weed out those with too high of expenses and no way to evolve the compute to be cheaper over time.

The forward P/E of the Nasdaq 100 is pretty exemplary of how this is not the same situation at all. https://en.macromicro.me/series/23955/nasdaq-100-pe It is easy to spot the dot com bubble on this chart.

It’s a fair point. At the same time there’s actual software and not vapourware of the dot com boom.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#147

Post by sebastiennight »

jandrese wrote: post #130
sebastiennight wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many "we will have AGI by X/X/201X" predictions have we blown past already? This seems wildly inaccurate. Can you find any single such claim from any credible source? Anybody hyping up an AGI timeframe within the 2010s?

Ok, this one is for the end of 2025 so we could still achieve it, and this is from a guy with an AI company (xAI): https://www.reuters.com/technology/teslas-musk-predicts-ai-w... Another AI company CEO prediction: https://time.com/7205596/sam-altman-superintelligence-agi/

I think you're proving my point here. Nobody credible was promising AGI would be arriving in the 2010s.

2025 is halfway through the 2020's.

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#148

Post by throwawayoldie »

j45 wrote: post #144
throwawayoldie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bubble if the tech or audience wasn't there and capabilities weren't improving weekly. But...is it and are they? Gen AI boosters tend to make assertions like this as if they're unassailable facts, but never seem interested in backing them up. I guess it's easier than thinking.

As a tech person.. It is, and they are. For the boosters, notice how few or many come from a tech background and pay attention accordingly

To paraphrase The Princess Bride, "Won't work, I know too many tech people."

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#149

Post by kurthr »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #139
kurthr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't charge back to your supplier, and expect to get the next allocation of servers.

Not sure why you would think that. Nobody is going to pass up on a hyperscalarer because they had a 15% charge back. Margins are well over 50% and you get paid for every sale while high failure rates are a different departments problem.

I don't know why you think NVIDIA needs any one of the hyperscalers, or would give new scarce supply to a customer trying to retroactively cut into their profits. You should read this.

https://semianalysis.com/2025/08/20/h100-vs-gb200-nvl72-trai...

Re: GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

#150

Post by fancyfredbot »

kurthr wrote: post #149
fancyfredbot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you would think that. Nobody is going to pass up on a hyperscalarer because they had a 15% charge back. Margins are well over 50% and you get paid for every sale while high failure rates are a different departments problem.

I don't know why you think NVIDIA needs any one of the hyperscalers, or would give new scarce supply to a customer trying to retroactively cut into their profits. You should read this. https://semianalysis.com/2025/08/20/h100-vs-gb200-nvl72-trai...

I'd read the semi analysis article and while it's excellent as usual I don't see anything in there which says nobody RMAs defective GPUs. Perhaps there's something behind the pay wall I'd missed?

I'm not at a hyperscalar but I've been involved with deployment of A100 and H100 GPUs and we RMA GPUs which don't work. I don't think it impacted our allocations which have always seemed fine to me, but obviously it's hard to know for sure and perhaps GB200 is different.

You are right that in theory NVDA can sell everything they produce without the hyperscalars, but strategically there are many risks with acting in that way towards deep pocketed clients. They'd have to go to another customer who is likely to be less reliable. They'd put themselves on very shaky ground legally. They'd create a much stronger incentive for a deep pocketed client to become a competitor (CF trainium, TPUs). I'd be surprised if they'd take such risks to avoid what's ultimately a small cost.

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