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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#191

Post by Forgeties79 »

elAhmo wrote: post #94
Forgeties79 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is because we aren’t paying the actual cost of these chatbots. If ChatGPT wasn’t essentially free for casual users then we’d definitely see a much smaller/slower adoption rate. I wonder if a single person using them, even paying for tokens, isn’t substantially subsidized. Probably not but I’m speculating. If 3D printers could’ve given usage away for years directly in our homes then I bet we would’ve seen…

Well, we are not paying for Gmail, Youtube, TikTok either, all sorts of other services that are free as well.

You’re right but I’m not sure what you’re driving at

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#192

Post by madaxe_again »

jimbokun wrote: post #152
barrkel wrote: post #37

The lack of robotics mention somewhat undermines this article. I don't think it's intrinsically wrong, we are in a late stage of a transformation. Software is eating the world and AI is (so far) most profitably an automation of software. There is plenty of money to be made along the way. I don't really buy the article's seeming confusion about where the money is going to come from. Anthropic is making billions and si…

> The lack of robotics mention somewhat undermines this article. True but in common parlance "AI" has come to mean LLMs. > Software is eating the world The premise of the article is software ATE the world and there isn't much left to eat that hasn't been eaten.

I chuckled at:

>> At the early stage of a surge, investment tends to be patchy and not fully understood—the sector exists but it is not completely legible yet.

He says this in the context that AI clearly doesn’t fit this pattern, as the investment has been enormous.

I feel like he and everyone else has a scale problem, due to the tendency to equate AI to LLMs - the investment is patchy and not fully understood - I really don’t think we’ve seen anything more than the pretremors at this point - as the scale of the change is just as incomprehensible to the world at large now as it was when the steam engine was just a slightly better way of getting water out of a mine than a donkey.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#193

Post by Forgeties79 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #58
Forgeties79 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is because we aren’t paying the actual cost of these chatbots. If ChatGPT wasn’t essentially free for casual users then we’d definitely see a much smaller/slower adoption rate. I wonder if a single person using them, even paying for tokens, isn’t substantially subsidized. Probably not but I’m speculating. If 3D printers could’ve given usage away for years directly in our homes then I bet we would’ve seen…

Chat bots can run on your local hardware these days, even mobile phone hardware. That's effectively free.

I get this may seem nitpicky but that is by definition not free, and good luck running even the lightest LLM’s on 8gb ram consumer hardware. 16gb is barely sufficient and you probably need a new MacBook to really stretch that.

People aren’t going to wait minutes per response for clearly inferior results compared to what they get for free on ChatGPT in browser in seconds, whether it’s logical or not. Not to mention they can’t ask more than a few questions tops before the whole thing crumbles. Expectations and reality are too far apart here.

Let’s also address another real issue: what are they going to use? LM studio? Is that really a user experience most will tolerate?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#194

Post by queenkjuul »

wanderingstan wrote: post #139
jimbokun wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staggeringly effective compression of LLMs is still under appreciated, I think. 2 years ago you had downloaded onto your laptop an effective and useful summary of all of the information on the Internet, that could be used to generate computer programs in an arbitrarily selected programming language.

Yes! Continuing on thoughts of LLM compression, I'm now convinced and amazed that economics will dictate that all devices contain a copy of all information on the Internet. I wrote a post about it: Your toaster will know mesopotamian history because it’s more expensive not too. https://wanderingstan.com/2026-03-01/your-toaster-will-know-...

Fairly certain the least expensive option will always be a dumb toaster that just plugs into the wall

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#195

Post by wordspotting »

butlike wrote: post #176
awongh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're implying that hand-spun cotton is better, that's an easy question to answer- people used to spend a huge amount of their income on clothing, also spending a huge amount of time washing it. Industrialization made clothing so much cheaper that it's now completely disposable. There's plenty of reasons why that's not a bad thing. One reason people forget that "good quality" shoes existed was that you could only…

It seems to me you're advocating for waste, as I'm not seeing the "plenty of reasons why completely disposable cheap clothing isn't a bad thing" argument. Replacing shoes wasn't necessary because there were cobblers. For clothing; tailors. I'd much prefer to get a set of clothing, then work with it over the course of its lifetime, over sending it to the landfill after one tear.

Many companies are following planned obsolence framework to keep their industry alive. That is the major reason for waste and drop in quality.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#196

Post by simianwords »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #128
anthonypasq wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you under the impression life was better before capitalism?

That's a false-dichotomy. Capitalism was good for artisanal workers before the industrial revolution, and then it became pretty goddamn bad for them. We're worried we're staring down the barrel of that right now - just saying 'well it was even worse before capitalism' does nothing for us.

You are addressing something totally different to the original claim - which tried to say that capitalism is inherently exploitative on labour which is just outdated Marxism

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#197

Post by simianwords »

damnesian wrote: post #26
awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

Hard to understand, when essential human nature is so predictable? Sure, we will do novel things with it. But society in the main will use to it exploit labor. same as it ever was.

“Exploit labour” is just outdated Marxism. No self respecting economist believes this kind of rhetoric anymore but it only exists amongst west coded leftist.

It’s a sort of cynical fatalism to think everything is exploitation — directly coming from Marx.

It’s not exploitation to mutually agree on a deal. Most of population know this except Marxists!

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#198

Post by coldpie »

augustk wrote: post #182
coldpie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do woodworking for a hobby and wanted to find a nice "intro to routers" article. After skimming past the obvious SEO crap on google I clicked the first likely-seeming link and was greeted by an AI slop image of two misshapen routers being operated by three disembodied hands with seventeen fingers each. I immediately threw my laptop out the window, watched it shatter into five hundred pieces, walked across the stree…

Then it turns out that the book was written by an LLM.

I checked! Copyright 2013. Phew.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#199

Post by Maken »

zemo wrote: post #175
addandsubtract wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole concept of selling things in video format seems so alien to me. I didn't believe when someone told me they shop on TikTok now. It already takes me ages to browse through a gallery of items, I couldn't imagine going through items video by video.

that's more or less how I felt about it, but someone I know worked at Whatnot and liked working there so I tried out the app before applying and then applied because the product clicked for me. I wouldn't have joined Whatnot if I didn't like the product. > I couldn't imagine going through items video by video. That's fair, it's just not how people use it and it's not the concept. It's primarily a browse experience, n…

The digital Yellow Pages were replaced by streaming teleshopping.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#200

Post by jimbokun »

queenkjuul wrote: post #194
wanderingstan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Continuing on thoughts of LLM compression, I'm now convinced and amazed that economics will dictate that all devices contain a copy of all information on the Internet. I wrote a post about it: Your toaster will know mesopotamian history because it’s more expensive not too. https://wanderingstan.com/2026-03-01/your-toaster-will-know-...

Fairly certain the least expensive option will always be a dumb toaster that just plugs into the wall

Not if it requires the toaster company to maintain a different SKU without the LLM chip and sells very few units.
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