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The Generative AI Con

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Re: The Generative AI Con

#231

Post by agentultra »

lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

That experience is heavily subsidized and is unprofitable for these companies providing it based on what we know. Even with all of the other developers who are also using the same work flow and espousing how great it is. Even with all of the monthly subscribers at various tiers. It has been unprofitable for several years and continues to be unprofitable and will likely remain unprofitable given current trends.

The author spends a good amount of bytes telling us that they don't want to hear this argument even though they expect it.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#233

Post by bentt »

Look... I am cheap. I get rid of streaming services when my family isn't paying attention to see if they complain.

I keep paying $20/mo to OpenAI even though I think Altman is a frightening snake man.

The utility that ChatGPT and other LLMs provide is undeniable. Their revenue will tell us how much value people get because nobody's going to spend $20/mo (much less $200/mo) without getting something for it.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#234

Post by LPisGood »

adamc wrote: post #212
Aeolun wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not worth billions. It's definitely not worth trillions. That is a problem for the VC’s that bet wrong, not for the world at large. The models exist now and they’ll keep being used, regardless of whether a bunch of rich guys lost a bunch of money.

Their ongoing operation is quite expensive, so even that is not assured.

My ongoing operation is a MacBook pro that costs pennies worth of electricity.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#235

Post by player1234 »

Aunche wrote: post #220

Protein folding is a an application of generative AI that will probably produce trillions of dollars of value in the long term. It was probably impossible for Google to squeeze that sort of money from researchers who use it, but it proves that the technology definitely useful. Another application that is highly underrated is with robots completing complicated tasks.

Can you lend me 100 billion? I can pay you in a year or two or maybe 10 but I will probably have trillions by then.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#236

Post by hoseja »

whatshisface wrote: post #221
hoseja wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it a little differently. What was the direct economic return of the Manhattan Project?

Ideally it was thought to have shortened a very expensive war, and may have prevented the USSR from taking over Europe by leveraging its unquestioned postwar conventional forces advantage.

Well sure but how much cash did the MaPr corp. make selling their new and improved model implosion-type-u-235?

Re: The Generative AI Con

#237

Post by jcgrillo »

Aeolun wrote: post #206
danroblew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about how the economics of the LLM market is making all tech look bad. They need trillions of dollars in returns. VC's won't finance tech startups for decades. I use Cursor sometimes, and VSCode + Continue with llama.cpp, and it's great. That's not worth billions. It's definitely not worth trillions.

> That's not worth billions. It's definitely not worth trillions. That is a problem for the VC’s that bet wrong, not for the world at large. The models exist now and they’ll keep being used, regardless of whether a bunch of rich guys lost a bunch of money.

> they’ll keep being used

How? I get that many devs like using them for writing code. Personally I don't, but maybe someday someone will invent a UX for this that I don't despise, and I could be convinced.

So what? That's a tiny market. Where in the landscape of b2b and b2c software do LLMs actually find market fit? Do you have even one example? All the ideas I've heard so far are either science fiction (just wait any day now we'll be able to...) or just garbage (natural language queries instead of SQL). What is this shit for?

Re: The Generative AI Con

#238

Post by hoseja »

namaria wrote: post #225
hoseja wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it a little differently. What was the direct economic return of the Manhattan Project?

About the GDP of the US and Europe over the past 80 years so a few quadrillion dollars.

That's not direct return of VC-invested cash that people are refusing to see past in here.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#239

Post by square_usual »

agentultra wrote: post #231
lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

That experience is heavily subsidized and is unprofitable for these companies providing it based on what we know. Even with all of the other developers who are also using the same work flow and espousing how great it is. Even with all of the monthly subscribers at various tiers. It has been unprofitable for several years and continues to be unprofitable and will likely remain unprofitable given current trends. The au…

It is unprofitable because they keep spending money developing new AI. Inference for existing AI is not unprofitable.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#240

Post by dr-detroit »

lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

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