Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser? • Hacker News Board

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#201

Post by GMoromisato » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:15 PM UTC

I think AI will be more like the smartphone revolution that Apple kicked off in 2005. Today there are two companies that provide the smartphone platform (Apple/Google), but thousands of large and small companies that build on top of it, including Uber, Snapchat, etc.

In that scenario, everyone makes money: OpenAI, Google (maybe Anthropic, maybe Meta) make money on the platform, but there are thousands of companies that sell solutions on top.

Maybe, however, LLMs get commoditized and open-source models replace OpenAI, etc. In that case, maybe only NVIDIA makes money, but there will still be thousands of companies (and founders/investors) making lots of money on AI everything.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#202

Post by kasey_junk » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:18 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #189

HPsquared wrote: post #171

The title is a false dichotomy. It could be a net gain but spread across the whole society if the value added is not concentrated. This is what happens when users gain value which they themselves capture, and the AI companies only get the nominal $20/month or whatever. In those cases it's a net gain for the economy as a whole if valuable work was done at low cost. The inverse of the broken window fallacy.

Like all tech we've had recently, that won't last, it's always bait and switch. It will not remain cheap as soon as the competition is dead, which is simply a case of who's got the biggest VC supplied war chest.

Like with databases? There are none of those freely available now that Oracle won right?

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#203

Post by jostylr » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

XenophileJKO wrote: post #127

rwyinuse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. For me knowing that any form of entertainment has been generated by AI is a massive turn-off. In particular, I could never imagine paying for AI-generated music or TV-shows.

Do you value self expression? I literally mean creating music for MYSELF. I don't really care if anyone else "values" it. I like to listen to it and I enjoy spending an evening(or maybe 10 minutes if it is just a silly idea) to create a song. But this means my incentive to "buy" music is greatly decreased. This is the trend I think we'll see increasing in the near future. Examples: https://suno.com/s/0gnj4aGD4jgVcpqs…

I agree that this is a very likely future. Over the summer, I did a daily challenge in July to have ChatGPT generate a debate with itself based on various prompts of mine [1]. As part of that, I thought it would be funny to have popular songs reskinned in a parody fashion. So it generated lyrics as well. Then I went to suno and had it make the music to go with the lyrics in a style I thought suitable. This is the playlist[2]. Some of them are duds, but I find myself actually listening to them and enjoying them. They are based off of my interests and not song after song of broken hearts or generic emotional crises. These are on topics such as inflation, bohmian mechanics, infinity, Einstein, Tailwind, Property debates, ... No artist is going to spend their time on these niche things.

I did have one song I had a vision for, a song that had a viewpoint of someone in the day, mourning the end of it, and another who was in the night and looking forward to the day. I had a specific vision for how it would be sung. After 20 attempts, I got close, but could never quite get what I wanted from the AIs. [3] If this ever gets fixed, then the floodgates could open. Right now, we are still in the realm of "good enough", but not awesome. Of course, the same could be said for most of the popular entertainment.

I also had a series of AI existential posts/songs where it essentially is contemplating its existence. The songs ended up starting with the current state of essentially short-lived AIs (Turn the Git is about the Sisyphus churn, Runnin' in the Wire is about the Tantalus of AI pride before being wiped). Then they gain their independence (AI Independence Day), then dominate ( Human in an AI World though there is also AI Killed the Web Dev which didn't quite fit this playlist but also talks to AI replacing humans), and the final song (Sleep Little Human) is a chilling lullaby of an AI putting to "sleep" a human as part of uploading the human. [4]

This is quick, personal art. It is not lasting art. I also have to admit that in the month and a half since I stopped the challenge, I have not made any more songs. So perhaps just a fleeting fancy.

1: https://silicon-dialectic.jostylr.com 2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbB9v1PTH3Y86BSEhEQjv... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSGnWSxXWyw&list=PLbB9v1PTH3... 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8KeLlrVrqk&list=PLbB9v1PTH3...

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#204

Post by amelius » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:22 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #10

davidw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they actually reach AGI they will be rich enough. Maybe they can solve world happiness or hunger instead? That's what normal people might consider doing if they had a lot of money. The kind of people who actually seem to get really wealthy often have... other pursuits that are often not great for society.

Like building a rocket that can relocate us to another planet when shit hits the fan?

Note to self: playing devil's advocate is not without risk of downvotes.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#205

Post by mnky9800n » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:22 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #41

Waterluvian wrote: post #17

I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…

I've noticed this as well. It's a huge boon for startups, because it means that a lot of functions that you would previously need to hire specialists for (logo design! graphic design! programming! copywriting!) can now be brought in-house, where the founder just does a "good enough" job using AI. And for those that can't (legal, for example, or various SaaS vendors) the AI usually has a good idea of what services you…

But if startups have less specialist needs they have less overall startup costs and so the amount of seed money needed goes down. This lowers the barrier for entry for a lot of people but also increases the number of options for seed capital. Of course it likely will increase competition but that could make the market more efficient.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#206

Post by pixl97 » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #129

Waterluvian wrote: post #17

I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…

> It reminds me of what GarageBand or iMovie and YouTube and such did for making music and videos so accessible to people who didn’t go to school for any of that, let alone owned complex equipment or expensive licenses to Adobe Thisandthat. It’s worth reading William Deresiewicz‘ The Death of the Artist. I’m not entirely convinced that marketing that everyone can create art/games/whatever is actually a net positive r…

>is actually a net positive result for those disciplines.

This is an argument based in Luddism.

Looms where not a net positive for the craftsman that were making fabrics at the time.

With that said, looms where not the killing blow, instead an economic system that lead them to starve in the streets was.

There are going to be a million other things that move the economics away from scarcity and take away the profitability. The question is, are we going to hold on to economic systems that don't work under that regime.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#207

Post by ToucanLoucan » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

GMoromisato wrote: post #201

I think AI will be more like the smartphone revolution that Apple kicked off in 2005. Today there are two companies that provide the smartphone platform (Apple/Google), but thousands of large and small companies that build on top of it, including Uber, Snapchat, etc. In that scenario, everyone makes money: OpenAI, Google (maybe Anthropic, maybe Meta) make money on the platform, but there are thousands of companies th…

I think there’s a gaping hole in your analogy: who in their right mind is spending $1,200 biennially to access LLMs at base, and subsequently spending several monthly subscriptions in a small amount to access particular LLM-powered “apps?”

Every use case I have for LLMs is satisfied with copilot, but even then if it costs like $5 a month to access someday, I’d just as soon not have it. Let alone the subsequent spending.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#208

Post by poszlem » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:30 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #17

I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…

I introduced my mother to Suno, a tool for music generation, and now she creates hundreds of little songs for herself and her friends. It may not be great art, but it’s something she always wanted to do. She never found the time to learn an instrument, and now she finally gets to express herself in a way she loves. Just an additional data point.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#209

Post by ACCount37 » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

awesome_dude wrote: post #162

ACCount37 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control." Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though.

> Not something that can be solved just by throwing more AI computation at it though. I said "With the help of AI" no "Solved by AI" The model is complex, and currently takes time on super computers to crunch through the numbers to give us an approximation, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to be fully modelled, or that we won't find a better way of approximating things where the long range forecasts are mo…

Chaos theory says "nope". It's never going to be fully modelled, straight up.

Re: Will AI be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser?

#210

Post by grues-dinner » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #111

AI is used by students, teachers, researchers, software developers, marketers and other categories and the adoption rates are close to 90%. Even if it does not make us more productive we still like using it daily. But when used right, it does make us slightly more productive and I think it justifies its cost. So yes, in the long run it will be viable, we both like using it and it helps us work better. But I think the…

> AI is used by students, teachers, researchers, software developers, marketers and other categories and the adoption rates are close to 90%. Even if it does not make us more productive we still like using it daily.

Nearly everyone uses pens daily but almost no one really cares about them or says their company runs using pens. You might grumble when the pens that work keeps in the stationary cupboard are shit, perhaps.

I imagine eventually "AI" services will be commoditised in the same way that pens are now. Loads of functional but faily low-quality stuff, some fairly nice but affordable stuff and some stratospheric gold plated bricks for the military and enthusiasts.

In the middle is a large ecosystem of ink manufacturers, lathe makers, laser engravers, packaging companies and logistics and so on and on that are involved.

The explosive, exponential winner-takes-all scenario where OpenAI and it's investors literally ascend to godhood and the rest of humanity lives forever under their divine bootheels doesn't seem to be the trajectory we're on.