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How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

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Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#191

Post by ForHackernews »

robinhoode wrote: post #98
Bigsy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deepmind are working on solving the plasma control issue at the moment, I suspect they're probably using a bit of AI.... and I wouldn't put it past them to crack it.

This is the thing with AI: We can always come up with a new architecture with different inputs & outputs to solve lots of problems that couldn't be solved before. People equating AI with other single-problem-solving technologies are clearly not seeing the bigger picture.

Can we? Why haven't we, then? What are the big problems that were unsolvable before and now we can solve them with AI?

Auto-tagging of photos, generating derivative images and winning at Go, I will give you. There's been some progress on protein folding, I heard?

Where's the 21st century equivalent of the steam locomotive or the sewing machine?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#192

Post by echelon »

mettamage wrote: post #181
xiphias2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just you switching away from Google is already justifying 1T infrastructure spend. Just think about how much more effective advertisements are going to be when LLMs start to tell you what to buy based on which advertiser gave the most money to the company.

> Just think about how much more effective advertisements are going to be when LLMs start to tell you what to buy based on which advertiser gave the most money to the company. Optimistic view: maybe product quality becomes an actually good metric again as the LLM will care about giving good products. Yea, I know, I said it's an optimistic view.

Optimistic view #1: we'll have AI butlers between the pane of glass to filter all ads and negativity.

Optimistic view #2: there is no moat, and AI is "P=NP". Everything can be disrupted.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#193

Post by Atomic_Torrfisk »

uladzislau wrote: post #145

Calling this an “AI bubble” reads like pure sour grapes from folks who missed the adoption curve. Real teams are already banking gains - code velocity up, ticket resolution times down, and marketing lift from AI-assisted creative while capex always precedes revenue in platform shifts (see cloud 2010, smartphones 2007). The “costs don’t match cash flow” trope ignores lagging enterprise procurement cycles and the rapid…

> Calling this an “AI bubble” reads like pure sour grapes from folks who missed the adoption curve.

Ad hominem.

> ignores lagging enterprise procurement cycles

Time is long gone for that, even for most bureaucratic orgs.

> rapid glide path of unit economics as models, inference, and hardware efficiency improve

Conjecture. We don't know if we can scale up effectively. We are hitting limits of technology and energy already

> Habit formation is the moat

Yes and no. GenAI tools are useful if done right, but they have not been what they were made out to be, and they do not seem to be getting better as quickly as I like. The most useful tool so far is copilot auto-complete, but its value is limited for experienced devs. If its price increased 10x tomorow, I would cancel our subscription.

> We’re not watching a bubble pop; we’re watching infrastructure being laid for the next decade of products.

How much money are you risking right now? Or is it different this time?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#194

Post by skybrian »

boxed wrote: post #173
xiphias2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just you switching away from Google is already justifying 1T infrastructure spend. Just think about how much more effective advertisements are going to be when LLMs start to tell you what to buy based on which advertiser gave the most money to the company.

> Just you switching away from Google is already justifying 1T infrastructure spend. How? OpenAI are LOSING money on every query. Beating Google by losing money isn't really beating Google.

How do we know this?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#195

Post by tbrownaw »

mettamage wrote: post #181
xiphias2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just you switching away from Google is already justifying 1T infrastructure spend. Just think about how much more effective advertisements are going to be when LLMs start to tell you what to buy based on which advertiser gave the most money to the company.

> Just think about how much more effective advertisements are going to be when LLMs start to tell you what to buy based on which advertiser gave the most money to the company. Optimistic view: maybe product quality becomes an actually good metric again as the LLM will care about giving good products. Yea, I know, I said it's an optimistic view.

What does it mean for the language model to "care" about something?

How would that matter against the operator selling advertisers the right to instruct it about what the relevant facts are?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#196

Post by UpsideDownRide »

mnky9800n wrote: post #58
hemloc_io wrote: post #7

The most frustrating thing to me about this most recent rash of biz guy doubting the future of AI articles is the required mention that AI, specifically an LLM based approach to AGI, is important even if the numbers don't make sense today. Why is that the case? There's plenty of people in the field who have made convincing arguments that it's a dead end and fundamentally we'll need to do something else to achieve AGI…

i think it is more like maps. before 2004, before google maps, the way we interacted with the spatial distribution of places and things was different. all these ai dev tools like claude code as well as tools for writing, etc. are going to change the way we interact with our computers. but on the other side, the reason everyone is so gung ho on all this is because these models basically allow for the true personalizat…

I think there is a good flipside too. LLMs potentially enable generating custom made tooling tailored just for you. If you can get/provide data it's pretty easy to cook up solutions.

As an example - I'd never bother with mobile app just for myself since it's too annoying to get into for a somewhat small thing. Now I can chug along and have LLM fill in quickly my missing basic in the area.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#197

Post by skybrian »

donatj wrote: post #154
amelius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like letting a small child drive a car. Bad example, because FSD cars are here.

Find me an FSD that can drive in non-Californian real world situations. A foot of snow, black ice, a sand drift.

Not sure it matters. There’s plenty of economic value in selling rides in places with good weather.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#198

Post by bilsbie »

eek2121 wrote: post #175
donatj wrote: post #123

I feel kind of like a Luddite sometimes but I don't understand why EVERYONE is rushing to use AI? I use a couple different agents to help me code, and ChatGPT has largely replaced Google in my everyday use, but I genuinely don't understand the value proposition of every other companies offerings. I really feel like we're in the same "Get it out first, figure out what it is good for later" bubble we had like 7 years a…

In my eyes, it'd be cheaper for a company to simply purchase laptops with decent hardware specs, and run the LLMs locally. I've had decent results from various models I've run via LMStudio, and bonus points: It costs nothing and doesn't even use all that much CPU/GPU power. Just my opinion as a FORMER senior software dev (disabled now).

Can you expand on this?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#200

Post by pruetj »

eek2121 wrote: post #175
donatj wrote: post #123

I feel kind of like a Luddite sometimes but I don't understand why EVERYONE is rushing to use AI? I use a couple different agents to help me code, and ChatGPT has largely replaced Google in my everyday use, but I genuinely don't understand the value proposition of every other companies offerings. I really feel like we're in the same "Get it out first, figure out what it is good for later" bubble we had like 7 years a…

In my eyes, it'd be cheaper for a company to simply purchase laptops with decent hardware specs, and run the LLMs locally. I've had decent results from various models I've run via LMStudio, and bonus points: It costs nothing and doesn't even use all that much CPU/GPU power. Just my opinion as a FORMER senior software dev (disabled now).

> purchase laptops with decent hardware specs

> It costs nothing

Seems like it does cost something?

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