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Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

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Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#241

Post by bdangubic »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91
bdangubic wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is not much of a timeline and not much of a prediction. first you need to define what “crash” means in real terms. over the course of 4 years there will be market correction (especially after a bull run like we are on) so just saying “ai bubble, crash bla bla” is too lazy (although there are probably 10k+ such “predictions” on HN in the last say a year)

If you're looking for a short term prediction, I expect with, let's say 80% confidence, that the OpenAI IPO later this year will be quietly cancelled or face a WeWork moment and be loudly cancelled. Too much of what we think we know about the economics of modern AI is built on trust in people who aren't trustworthy, and the presumption that VCs would check the financials carefully when we know they strap on blinders…

OpenAI (which is not a publicly traded company) will cause a market crash if they do not IPO or have lackluster IPO?

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#242

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

bdangubic wrote: post #241
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for a short term prediction, I expect with, let's say 80% confidence, that the OpenAI IPO later this year will be quietly cancelled or face a WeWork moment and be loudly cancelled. Too much of what we think we know about the economics of modern AI is built on trust in people who aren't trustworthy, and the presumption that VCs would check the financials carefully when we know they strap on blinders…

OpenAI (which is not a publicly traded company) will cause a market crash if they do not IPO or have lackluster IPO?

Only in the same sense that Lehman collapsing caused the 2008 crash. Nothing is monocausal, and crashes rarely happen all at once, but I expect it to be a big “uh oh” moment for investors.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#243

Post by acdha »

monero-xmr wrote: post #191
acdha wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s because it’s ignoring the impact of concentration and the range of affected jobs. When, say, people switched from animals as the primary source of motive power for shipping, relatively few people immediately lost their livelihood because the things now using engines still employed tons of people (a delivery guy had to learn to drive but the rest of the job was similar) and a bunch of new jobs were create…

Perhaps white collar employees have felt jobs not conducted in an office are beneath them. Because a wide range of physical jobs pay a lot more than office work already

Not many pay “a lot more”—your plumber is not taking home what she charges you—and that often comes with unpleasant working conditions, overtime, or extended time away from home. That’s like talking about tech salaries as if most people are L7 staff engineers at big tech companies.

Most people are not making that much in blue collar work, but even if they were, it’s also not like freshly-laid off people can just switch overnight. Lots of that work isn’t great for middle aged people, etc. and anyone retraining is going to need support for training, certifications, etc. but that’s happening when they have the financial obligations of a successful mid-career person.

For example, say Google actually developed AGI and canned everyone. What happens to the market in Mountain View when everyone is trying to enter construction work or become auto mechanics at the same time that those industries are hammered by a lack of customers, and the real-estate market suddenly has entire blocks for sale?

That last part might seem extreme but I saw it in San Diego in the 90s: the defense contractors laid tons of people off after the Cold War collapse, and that meant that entire neighborhoods went from having streets of engineers who worked at the same places all scrambling at the same time. Fortunately, that wasn’t permanent or every sector of the economy (and some of them were able to repurpose things like carbon fiber aerospace techniques into golf clubs and bicycle frames) but there were literally people with engineering Ph.Ds competing for $15/hour QA jobs just to have health insurance.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#244

Post by jollyllama »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #2

We will continue to be told this is because AI is driving efficiency instead of that it's driving CapEx and investors won't tolerate FCF collapsing.

Except we're not, in this case. Oracle is not hiding the fact that the cuts are due to rising costs and expenses, rather than actualized efficiency gains. This is in contrast to everyone else, ex. Dorsey's block, who are putting a brave face on cuts, saying it's simply due to efficiency gains from AI. The question is: why are their statements being taken at face value?

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#245

Post by bdangubic »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #242
bdangubic wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI (which is not a publicly traded company) will cause a market crash if they do not IPO or have lackluster IPO?

Only in the same sense that Lehman collapsing caused the 2008 crash. Nothing is monocausal, and crashes rarely happen all at once, but I expect it to be a big “uh oh” moment for investors.

Lehman was a huge part of US economy at the time it collapsed, OpenAI is a private company...

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#246

Post by monero-xmr »

acdha wrote: post #243
monero-xmr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps white collar employees have felt jobs not conducted in an office are beneath them. Because a wide range of physical jobs pay a lot more than office work already

Not many pay “a lot more”—your plumber is not taking home what she charges you—and that often comes with unpleasant working conditions, overtime, or extended time away from home. That’s like talking about tech salaries as if most people are L7 staff engineers at big tech companies. Most people are not making that much in blue collar work, but even if they were, it’s also not like freshly-laid off people can just swit…

[dead]

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#247

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

cmxch wrote: post #238
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By mean lifetime I mean “failure”. They won’t be any good

As long as they can be made to work in a consumer or homelab setting, they are still useful.

By “fail” I mean stop working

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#248

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

bdangubic wrote: post #245
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the same sense that Lehman collapsing caused the 2008 crash. Nothing is monocausal, and crashes rarely happen all at once, but I expect it to be a big “uh oh” moment for investors.

Lehman was a huge part of US economy at the time it collapsed, OpenAI is a private company...

Lehman’s market cap was an order of magnitude smaller than the current OpenAI valuation, I think even in inflation-adjusted terms. The intuition that a private company is small and can’t pose systemic risks just isn’t true anymore.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#249

Post by convolvatron »

nradov wrote: post #179
convolvatron wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

turn it around. how is it possible that we interfere with a population, already inflamed with hatred because of past interference, and expect them to become moderate apolitical consumers. we kill more fathers, there will be more angry sons. that's been going on for more than 50 years. so no, it doesn't seem like there is any good outcome to be had by invading yet another country in the area and setting up another wea…

There's no end game. In foreign policy circles they refer to this as "mowing the grass". Whenever an adversary starts to become a credible threat then bomb them enough to knock them down a few notches and delay the problem. From a purely amoral geopolitical perspective this can be effective, although at tremendous human cost.

personally I think this is 'fair'. wave your stick around and threaten people and the community takes away your stick. But I don't really trust this administration to follow the wisdom of the elder Bush. it seems a situation primed to follow the course of the mideast wars of the last couple decades, where the US stayed purely for the reason of not wanting to own up to the obvious and attempt to force some kind of submission. I guess we can check in a couple weeks to see which way the wind the blowing.
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