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How the AI Bubble Will Pop

derekthompson.org

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Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#291

Post by ivape »

greekrich92 wrote: post #267
ivape wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI figured out something on my mind that I didn’t tell it about yesterday (latest Sonnet). My best advice to you is to spend time and allow the AI to blow your mind. Then you’ll get it. Sometimes I sit in wonder at how the fuck it’s able to figure out that much intent without specific instructions. There’s no way anyone programmed it to understand that much. If you’re not blown away by this then I have to assume you…

Sincerely, consider that you may be at risk of an LLM harming your mental health

I’m not going to sit around and act like this LLM thing is not beyond anything humans could have ever dreamed of. Some of you need to be open to just how seminal moments in your life actually are. This is a once a lifetime thing.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#292

Post by hx8 »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #211
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. A…

> Waymo showed it's not a bubble.

Waymo is showing it might not be a bubble. They are selling rides in five cities. Let's see how they do in 100 cities.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#293

Post by bjacobel »

ivape wrote: post #149
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…

AI figured out something on my mind that I didn’t tell it about yesterday (latest Sonnet). My best advice to you is to spend time and allow the AI to blow your mind. Then you’ll get it. Sometimes I sit in wonder at how the fuck it’s able to figure out that much intent without specific instructions. There’s no way anyone programmed it to understand that much. If you’re not blown away by this then I have to assume you…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/20250...

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#294

Post by zparky »

_heimdall wrote: post #278
jennyholzer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

name the podcasts

This is an odd anecdote to ask "show your work." I don't catalog shows and episodes where any particular topic comes up, and I follow over 100 podcasts so I don't have a specific list you can fact check me on. Personally I could care less if that means you choose not to believe that I hear the Taiwan risk come up often enough.

Charitably, perhaps they're simply asking for podcasts that they would be interested in listening to that cover these topics. Personally, I would like to listen to a podcast that talks about semiconductor development, but I've done approximately zero research to find them so I'm not pressed for an answer :)

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#295

Post by randomNumber7 »

hemloc_io wrote: post #110
kumarm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

Yeah I've used it for personal projects and it's 50/50 for me. Some of the stuff generated I can't believe is actually good to work with long term, and I wonder about the economics of it. It's fun to get something vaguely workable quickly though. Things like deepwiki are useful too for open source work. For me though the core problem I have with AI programming tools is that they're targeting a problem that doesn't re…

> For me though the core problem I have with AI programming tools is that they're targeting a problem that doesn't really exist outside of startups

If you work in science it's great to have s.th. that spits out mediocre code for your experiments.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#296

Post by weregiraffe »

donatj wrote: post #154
amelius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like letting a small child drive a car. Bad example, because FSD cars are here.

Find me an FSD that can drive in non-Californian real world situations. A foot of snow, black ice, a sand drift.

>A foot of snow, black ice, a sand drift.

What else, a meter of lava flow? Forest fire? Tsunami? Tornado? How about pick conditions where humans actually can drive.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#297

Post by CuriouslyC »

pessimizer wrote: post #50
CuriouslyC wrote: post #10

I don't think it'll contract. The people dumping their money into AI think we are at end of days, new order for humanity type point, and they're willing to risk a large part of their fortune to ensure that they remain part of the empowered elite in this new era. It's an all hands on deck thing and only hard diminishing returns that make the AI takeoff story look implausible are going to cause a retrenchment.

You don't think it will contract just because rich people have bet so much on it that they'll be forced to throw good money after bad? That's the only reason?

I don't think it'll contract because I don't think we'll get a signal that takeoff for sure isn't going to happen, it'll just happen much slower than the hypers are trying to sell, so investors will continue to invest because of sunk costs and the big downside risk of being left behind. I'm sure we'll see a major infrastructure deployment slowdown as foundation model improvements slow, but there are a lot of vectors for optimization of these systems outside the foundation model so it'll be more of a paradigm shift in focus.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#298

Post by raincole »

bko wrote: post #217
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 int…

Text is not the ultimate interface. We have the direct proof: every single classroom and almost every single company where programmers play important roles has whiteboards or blackboards to draw diagrams on.

But now LLMs can read images as well, so I'm still incredibly bull on them.

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#299

Post by sseagull »

delichon wrote: post #70
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?

Someone is paying. OpenAI revenue was $4.3 billion in the first half of this year.

OpenAI "spent" more on sales/marketing and equity compensation than that:

"Other significant costs included $2 billion spent on sales and marketing, nearly doubling what OpenAI spent on sales and marketing in all of 2024. Though not a cash expense, OpenAI also spent nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation in the first six months of 2025"

("spent" because the equity is not cash-based)

From https://archive.is/vIrUZ

Re: How the AI Bubble Will Pop

#300

Post by manishsharan »

bakugo wrote: post #90
aurareturn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the business value? Right now it doesn't really exist, adoption is low to nonexistent outside of programming and even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers. I have a friend who works at PwC doing M&A. This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. PwC has an internal AI chat implementation. Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of progr…

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. This isn't a sign that ChatGPT has value as much as it is a sign that this person's work doesn't have value.

Most developers can't do much work without an IDE and Chrome + Google.

Would you say that their work has no value?

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