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How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

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Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#211

Post by ninetyninenine »

driverdan wrote: post #188

I keep seeing articles like this but does anyone actually think we're not in a bubble? From what I've seen these companies acknowledge it's a bubble and that they're overspending without a way to make the money back. They're doing it because they have the money and feel it's worth the risk in case it pays off. If they don't spend, another company does, and it hits big they will be left behind. This is at least insura…

HN isn't always right. There was massive pushback against self driving and practically everyone was saying it would fail and is a bubble. The level of confidence people had about this opinion was through the roof.

Like people who didn't know anything would say it with such utter confidence it would piss me off a bit. Like how do you know? Well they didn't and they were utterly wrong. Waymo showed it's not a bubble.

AI is an unknown. It has definitely already changed the game. Changed the way we interview and changed the way we code and it's changed a lot more outside of that and I see massive velocity towards more change.

Is it a bubble? Possibly. But the possibly not angle is also just as likely. Either way I guarantee you that 99% of people on HN KNOW for a fact that it's a bubble because they KNOW that all of AI is a stochastic parrot.

I think the realistic answer is we don't actually know if it's a bubble. We don't fully know the limits of LLMs. Maybe it will be a bubble in the sense that AI will become so powerful that a generic AI app can basically kill all these startups surrounding specialized use cases of LLMs. Who knows?

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#212

Post by yomismoaqui »

I'm always commenting the same on these posts.

The web bubble also popped and look how it went for Google, Amazon, Meta and many others.

Remember pets.com that sold pet products on the internet, dumb idea right? Now think where you buy these products in 2025.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#213

Post by reilly3000 »

I don’t like that he cited $12B in consumer spending as the benchmark for demand. Clearly enterprise spending has and will continue to dwarf consumer outlays, to the tune of $100b+ in 2025 on inference alone, and another $150b on AI related services.

I see almost no scenario where the value of this hardware will go away. Even if the demand for inference somehow declines, the applications that can benefit from hardware acceleration are innumerable. Anecdotally my 2022 RTX 4090 is worth ~30% more used then what I paid for it new, but the trend continues into bigger metal.

As “Greater China” has become the supply bottleneck, it is only rational for western companies to horde capacity while they can.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#214

Post by skybrian »

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…

Maybe you just haven’t heard of them? For example, just the other day I heard about a company using an LLM to provide advice to doctors. News to me.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/openevidence-the-fa...

> OpenEvidence is actively used across more than 10,000 hospitals and medical centers nationwide and by more than 40% of physicians in the United States who log in daily to make high-stakes clinical decisions at the point of care. OpenEvidence continues to grow by over 65,000 new verified U.S. clinician registrations each month. […] More than 100 million Americans this year will be treated by a doctor who used OpenEvidence.

More:

https://robertwachter.substack.com/p/medicines-ai-knowledge-...

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#215

Post by ninetyninenine »

therealmarv wrote: post #46

It reminds me what I said to somebody recently: All my friends and family are using the free version of ChatGPT or something similar. They will never pay (although they have enough money to do so). Even in my very narrow subjective circles it does not add up. Who pays for AI and how? And when in the future?

I pay. Like if they're using it to talk then they won't pay.

But I use it for work.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#216

Post by bananapub »

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.

large language models don't "care" about anything, but the humans operating openai definitely care a lot about you making them affiliate marketing money

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#217

Post by bko »

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…

I think text is the ultimate interface. A company can just build and maintain very strong internal APIs and punt on the UX component.

For instance, suppose I'm using figma, I want to just screenshot what I want it to look like and it can get me started. Or if I'm using Notion, I want a better search. Nothing necessarily generative, but something like "what was our corporate address". It also replaces help if well integrated.

The ultimate would be build programmable web apps[0], which you can have gmail and then command an LLM to remove buttons, or add other buttons. Why isn't there a button for 'filter unread' front and center? This is super niche but interesting to someone like me.

That being said, I think most AI offerings on apps now are pretty bad and just get in the way. But I think there is potential as an interface to interact with your app

[0] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/programmable-web-apps

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#218

Post by lofaszvanitt »

rwmj wrote: post #40

Also no one is talking about how exposed we are to Taiwan. Nvidia, AMD, Apple, any company building out GPUs (so Google, Microsoft, Meta etc), even Intel a bit, are all manufacturing everything with one company, and it's largely happening in Taiwan. If China invades Taiwan, why wouldn't TSMC, Nvidia and AMD stock prices go to zero?

That's low prob, because that will almost surely lead to an all out war.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#219

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

> I use a couple different agents to help me code, and ChatGPT has largely replaced Google in my everyday use

That's a handwavy sentence, if I have ever seen one. If it's good enough to help with coding and "replace Google" for you, other people will find similar opportunities in other domains.

And sure: Some are successful. Most will not be. As always.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#220

Post by tbrownaw »

kumarm wrote: post #12
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…

[even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers.] Try building something new in claude code (or codex etc) using a programming language you have not used before. Your opinion might change drastically. Current AI tools may not beat the best programmer, they definitely improves average programmer efficiency.

> Try building something new in claude code (or codex etc) using a programming language you have not used before. Your opinion might change drastically.

So it looks best when the user isn't qualified to judge the quality of the results?

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