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The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

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Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#161

Post by frozenseven »

ch_fr wrote: post #158
frozenseven wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. What else would you expect from a non-technical activist who's railing against science/tech? What you see is what you get.

I hope Ed Zitron will keep saying that the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit for as long as the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit. I find that fact alone a bit alarming. You don't need to be a technical expert to understand that it's worrying how the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time, to lean on a tech where the biggest provi…

>biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit

Companies that are exploding in popularity and expanding as fast as possible are not expected to make a profit. This is not unusual in the slightest.

>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time

No, people use AI because they want to use AI. New users arrive on their own. If you take a closer look at what the legacy media is actually saying, they tend to have a negative slant against AI. Yet people still show up. And will continue to show up.

>Sam Altman, let him spew out utter gibberish, and not even question him on it

If Altman is pissing you and Ed off, he's doing at least something right. That said, I follow AI news every single day and I barely even glance at what Altman is saying. Here lies one of the biggest follies of the anti-AI crowd. Zitron et al. think that they can make AI go away by canceling Altman.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#162

Post by bjornnn »

frithsun wrote: post #31

I believe this is a "good" bubble in the sense that the 19th century railroad bubble and original dot com bubble both ended up invested in infrastructure that created immense value. That said, all of these LLMs are interchangeable, there are no moats, and the profit will almost entirely be in the "last mile," in local subject matter experts applying this technology to their bespoke business processes.

America's railroad boom isn't a great example, it got us the worst rail infrastructure in the world, built by private monopolies solely for maximum short-term profit, i.e. moving freight and not passengers, and now American industry is largely gone and we're stuck with rail infrastructure that is useless to almost everyone and it costs far more to maintain it than it's even worth.

America's internet infrastructure, like the railroads, was also left in the hands of private monopolies and it is also a piece of shit compared to other countries. It's slow and everyone pays far too much for it and many are still excluded from it because it's not profitable enough to run fiber to their area.

The AI bubble won't leave behind any new infrastructure when it bursts. Just millions of burned out GPUs that get sent to an e-waste processing plant where they are ground up into sand, trillions of dollars wasted, many terawatt hours of energy wasted, many billions of liters of freshwater wasted, and the internet being buried under an avalanche of pseudorandomly-generated garbage.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#163

Post by Seb-C »

tim333 wrote: post #156
wulfstan wrote: post #57

In July 2023, I wrote this to a friend: "...being entirely blunt, I am an AI skeptic. I think AI and LLM are somewhat interesting but a bit like self-driving cars 5 years ago - at the peak of a VC-driven hype cycle and heading for a spectacular deflation. My main interest in technology is making innovation useful to people and as it stands I just can't conceive of a use of this which is beneficial beyond a marginal i…

>can't conceive of a use of this which is beneficial beyond a marginal improvement in content consumption AlphaFold is having a big influence in medical research. There's more to AI than chatbots. It's quite interesting the work they are doing there now - article on it https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/alpha-fold-3-drug-discover... I've got a personal interest because my sister has ALS and I think an in silico breakt…

I don't think that anyone is dismissing machine learning itself. This bubble is more about generative AI, and especially language models.

Machine learning has been there for quite a while and is a useful tool. But it's only a tool among many other ones, like programming languages and libraries. It's not a product. At most it can be the engine of a specific feature.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#164

Post by Wiretrip »

frozenseven wrote: post #161
ch_fr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Ed Zitron will keep saying that the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit for as long as the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit. I find that fact alone a bit alarming. You don't need to be a technical expert to understand that it's worrying how the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time, to lean on a tech where the biggest provi…

>biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit Companies that are exploding in popularity and expanding as fast as possible are not expected to make a profit. This is not unusual in the slightest. >the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time No, people use AI because they want to use AI. New users arrive on their own. If you take a closer look at what the legacy media…

Yes but the main thrust of his criticism is the fragility of the whole 'AI' stack, where every part of the stack is unprofitable, unstable and inter-reliant - if any one of those parts goes tits up - everybody else goes with them.

Also, a lot of AI 'users' arrive, search for an actual use case, find none, and then move on.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#165

Post by Wiretrip »

ch_fr wrote: post #158
frozenseven wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. What else would you expect from a non-technical activist who's railing against science/tech? What you see is what you get.

I hope Ed Zitron will keep saying that the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit for as long as the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit. I find that fact alone a bit alarming. You don't need to be a technical expert to understand that it's worrying how the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time, to lean on a tech where the biggest provi…

Not just Altman, but also Amodei, Pichai and Nadella. These guys are desperate now.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#166

Post by ch_fr »

frozenseven wrote: post #161
ch_fr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Ed Zitron will keep saying that the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit for as long as the biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit. I find that fact alone a bit alarming. You don't need to be a technical expert to understand that it's worrying how the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time, to lean on a tech where the biggest provi…

>biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit Companies that are exploding in popularity and expanding as fast as possible are not expected to make a profit. This is not unusual in the slightest. >the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time No, people use AI because they want to use AI. New users arrive on their own. If you take a closer look at what the legacy media…

Dunno if I need to comment on the first point since "will AI be able to Uber itself" is talked to death by zitron, and if we're disagreeing on their ability to turn a profit later on, then talking it out isn't gonna change much.

>>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time

>No

Yes it is. You can't just "no" this. People aren't just "happily using AI and getting bothered by the EVIL AI haters!!!". The push for AI is literally made of threats "You WILL get left behind", "people WILL replace you". Even if it is undeniably disruptive, you can't not call that pressure on a very large scale.

Just because I ask copilot once every few days to write me a piece of boilerplate doesn't invalidate the fact that my workplace has been made to believe prompting is an "essential skill" that must be enforced via mandatory e-learnings.

>think that they can make AI go away by canceling Altman.

I didn't say that and I don't think that. That last paragraph's basically bait.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#167

Post by frozenseven »

ch_fr wrote: post #166
frozenseven wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit Companies that are exploding in popularity and expanding as fast as possible are not expected to make a profit. This is not unusual in the slightest. >the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time No, people use AI because they want to use AI. New users arrive on their own. If you take a closer look at what the legacy media…

Dunno if I need to comment on the first point since "will AI be able to Uber itself" is talked to death by zitron, and if we're disagreeing on their ability to turn a profit later on, then talking it out isn't gonna change much. >>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time >No Yes it is. You can't just "no" this. People aren't just "happily using AI and getting bothered by the EVIL…

>is talked to death by zitron

Yes, Zitron talks all the time. Loudly and insultingly. Here's a suggestion: he should put his money where his mouth is. If he honestly thinks the market for AI is actually 100x smaller than reported and ready to collapse any moment now, he could easily bet against the market. He could earn millions and look like a genius. Make it all public, let his fans join too. You could join. Why not? He supposedly knows the hard truths, he brought the receipts, etc.

But he won't. That's too real. Endlessly prophesying the end of AI is more lucrative.

>You can't just "no" this.

Fundamentally my argument is that the media has little say in this. Take all the new releases this week. Another ~200 million new users will shuffle their way in. Not through fear or fervor, just basic curiosity and a need for getting things done. Models will continue to get better and this trend will continue. It's just how it is.

>I didn't say that and I don't think that. That last paragraph's basically bait.

In any case, I'll leave the Sam Altman discussion to you and Ed.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#168

Post by ch_fr »

frozenseven wrote: post #167
ch_fr wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno if I need to comment on the first point since "will AI be able to Uber itself" is talked to death by zitron, and if we're disagreeing on their ability to turn a profit later on, then talking it out isn't gonna change much. >>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time >No Yes it is. You can't just "no" this. People aren't just "happily using AI and getting bothered by the EVIL…

>is talked to death by zitron Yes, Zitron talks all the time. Loudly and insultingly. Here's a suggestion: he should put his money where his mouth is. If he honestly thinks the market for AI is actually 100x smaller than reported and ready to collapse any moment now, he could easily bet against the market. He could earn millions and look like a genius. Make it all public, let his fans join too. You could join. Why no…

That's a nice suggestion but also an overdone one. I've seen this "epic own" as much as you've probably seen anti-ai "epic owns" (I need to spend less time looking at AI discourse). It's yet another taunt but I'll bite anyways, shorting has no lower bound, it's risky as hell. I don't wanna be a trader.

Back to the media thing. I still don't fully agree that media coverage has absolutely no influence on the success of a technology or that the best solution always wins (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the argument you're making). If my fundamental argument is "it has an impact" and yours is "it doesn't" then we've reached a stalemate and can drop that topic too.

Have a good day, it hasn't been nice talking with you, but it's helped me realize that I should care less when I have no stake in it.

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