A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#41

Post by ants_everywhere » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

exasperaited wrote: post #25

chromanoid wrote: post #8

Great article! I share the experience mentioned in the article, LLMs facilitate a head-on interaction with any topic. It is similar to instructional YouTube videos (that imo were already transformative) but with the ability to ask detailed questions. And this is what becomes better with each iteration. When creative communities finally settle down on generative AI there will be not just a plethora of AI slop, but so…

There’s already a new golden age of indie low budget movies. Those guys will not use AI to generate significant parts of their content, because it defeats the point of making an indie movie at all. I never cease to be shocked at how little tech people think of what creative people do and why they do it.

Of course they will.

The world is full of creative people and some of them will make movies with AI. Those are indie film makers.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#42

Post by teeray » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #24

aeon_ai wrote: post #6

The author misses the deeper game: if you genuinely believe AGI is imminent, then current economic metrics become meaningless. Why optimize for revenue when the entire concept of scarcity-based economics dissolves? The $560B for those who believe in AGI isn't about ROI using today's money-in/money-out formula; it's about power positioning for a post-capitalist transition. Every major player knows that whoever control…

The problem with this is that it's entirely evidence free. I could also say, if you truly believe nuclear fusion is imminent we will have infinite free energy and all current economic metrics are meaningless. But there is no nuclear fusion bubble. Why not? Because people don't believe nuclear fusion is imminent. But for some reason they do believe AGI is imminent - despite there being no actual evidence of that. Ther…

> The only distinction here is what people are willing to "believe" based on pure conjecture

It’s a religion. Repent now, the AGI is coming.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#43

Post by ryoshu » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

entropsilk wrote: post #27

zmmmmm wrote: post #16

I think a key point from this article that I agree strongly with is the simple point that it is crucial that everyone recognise we are currently in an AI bubble . I often find people contest this with the non-sequitur of "No, it's not a bubble, there is real value there. We are building things with it". The fact there is real value in the technology does not contradict in any way that we are in a bubble. It may even…

The fact everyone thinks we are in an AI bubble is practically proof we are not in an AI bubble. The crowd is always wrong on these things. Just like everyone "knew" we were going into a deep recession sometime in late 2022, early 2023. The crowd has an incredibly short memory too. What it means is that people are really cautious about AI. That is not a self reinforcing, fear of missing out, explosive process bubble.…

Not really. Worked through the dotcom bubble. It was obvious to some people on the ground doing the work. It was obvious to some execs who took advantage of it. Feels similar. Especially if you are burning through tokens on Gemini CLI and Claude Code where the spend doesn’t match the outcomes.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#44

Post by stego-tech » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #35

entropsilk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact everyone thinks we are in an AI bubble is practically proof we are not in an AI bubble. The crowd is always wrong on these things. Just like everyone "knew" we were going into a deep recession sometime in late 2022, early 2023. The crowd has an incredibly short memory too. What it means is that people are really cautious about AI. That is not a self reinforcing, fear of missing out, explosive process bubble.…

technical ICs actually trialing the AI tools think we’re in a bubble. Executives, boards, directors and managers are still tumbling head over heels down the mountain in a race to shovel more money into the fire, because their engineering orgs are not delivering results and they are desperate to find a solution

This. Highly competent technical ICs in my circles continue to (metaphorically) scream at their Juniors submitting AI slop and being unable to describe what it's doing, why it's doing it that way, or how they could optimize it further, since all management cares about is "that it works".

Current models excel because of the corpus of the open internet they (stole from) built off of. New languages aren't likely to see as consistent results as old ones simply because these pattern matchers are trained on past history and not new information (see Rust vs C). I think the fact nobody's minting billions turning LLMs into trading bots should be pretty telling in that regard, since finance is a blend of relying on old data for models and intuiting new patterns from fresh data - in other words, directly targeting the weak points of LLMs specifically (inability to adapt to real-time data streams over the long haul).

AI's not going away, and I don't think even the doomiest of AI doomers is claiming or hoping for that. Rather, we're at a crossroads like you say: stakeholders want more money and higher returns (which AI promises), while the people doing the actual work are trying to highlight that internal strife and politics are the holdups, not a lack of brute-force AI. Meanwhile both sides are trying to rattle the proverbial prison bars over the threats to employment real AI will pose (and the threats current LLMs pose to society writ large), but the booster side's actions (e.g., donating to far-right candidates that oppose the very social reforms AI CEOs claim are needed) betray their real motives: more money, less workers, more power.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#45

Post by cj » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #16

I think a key point from this article that I agree strongly with is the simple point that it is crucial that everyone recognise we are currently in an AI bubble . I often find people contest this with the non-sequitur of "No, it's not a bubble, there is real value there. We are building things with it". The fact there is real value in the technology does not contradict in any way that we are in a bubble. It may even…

I agree, although bubbles don’t always have to pop in huge ways like it did in the dot com crash.

E.g. crypto displayed many, many characteristics of a bubble for a number of years, but the crypto bubble seems like it has just slowly stopped growing and slowly stopped getting larger, rather than popping in a fantastical way. (Not to say it still can’t, of course)

Then again, this bubble is different in that it has engulfed the entire US economy (including public companies, which is the scary part since the damage potential isn’t limited to private investors). If there’s even a 10% chance of it popping, that’s incredibly frightening.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#46

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:15 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #24

aeon_ai wrote: post #6

The author misses the deeper game: if you genuinely believe AGI is imminent, then current economic metrics become meaningless. Why optimize for revenue when the entire concept of scarcity-based economics dissolves? The $560B for those who believe in AGI isn't about ROI using today's money-in/money-out formula; it's about power positioning for a post-capitalist transition. Every major player knows that whoever control…

The problem with this is that it's entirely evidence free. I could also say, if you truly believe nuclear fusion is imminent we will have infinite free energy and all current economic metrics are meaningless. But there is no nuclear fusion bubble. Why not? Because people don't believe nuclear fusion is imminent. But for some reason they do believe AGI is imminent - despite there being no actual evidence of that. Ther…

"The problem with this is that it's entirely evidence free."

That's more for less true for predicting any new financial trend.

If AI is making devs 20-30% more efficient, then you could invest in tech stocks if you think they can ship as much with lower overhead. The financial metrics look better if that's true.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#47

Post by bwfan123 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:19 PM UTC

handbanana_ wrote: post #9

>While established developers debate whether AI will replace them, these kids are shipping. Developers who learned their craft in the age of pull requests and sprint planning sneer at their security failures, not realizing that 'best practices' are about to flip again. The barbarians aren't at the gate. They're deploying to production. Shipping where? What production? What kids? I've yet to see this. I see the tools…

I think what has happened is the following:

A whole bunch of folks got into management thinking coding is beneath them, they are now wielding the power - let the code-monkeys do the typing. Then, turns out, coders are continuing to call the shots, and the management folks have coder-envy.

Now, with LLMs, coding is again not only within management's reach, but they think it is trivial, and it can be outsourced to the LLM code-monkeys, and management has regained power from the pesky coder-class.

So, you have management of all stripes "shipping" things, and dictating what coders should do - not realizing that they should stay in their lanes, and let coders decide for themselves what works best in their craft.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#48

Post by layer8 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:19 PM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #17

handbanana_ wrote: post #9

>While established developers debate whether AI will replace them, these kids are shipping. Developers who learned their craft in the age of pull requests and sprint planning sneer at their security failures, not realizing that 'best practices' are about to flip again. The barbarians aren't at the gate. They're deploying to production. Shipping where? What production? What kids? I've yet to see this. I see the tools…

What would qualify as proof? If somebody builds a good product and ships it it will just look like a good product. People will call it vibe coded slop when it fails spectacularly.

If there isn't a strong uptick in the general quality and usefulness of software within the next couple of years, then it's not clear what AI coding/design is actually buying us. Other than possibly some cost reduction, but it would be optimistic to assume that the savings go to the users and not to big tech. Regardless, the proof will be in the pudding.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#49

Post by digitcatphd » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:21 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #16

I think a key point from this article that I agree strongly with is the simple point that it is crucial that everyone recognise we are currently in an AI bubble . I often find people contest this with the non-sequitur of "No, it's not a bubble, there is real value there. We are building things with it". The fact there is real value in the technology does not contradict in any way that we are in a bubble. It may even…

Agreed. I think most of the arguments are premised on AI getting infinitely better for some reason, without anyone outlining clear arguments addressing the inherent architectural limitations of today's LLMs. I have been in this space since 2021 and honestly, beside maybe voice and Gemini Deep Research, things aren't much better than GPT-4.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#50

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 11:24 PM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #44

dustingetz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technical ICs actually trialing the AI tools think we’re in a bubble. Executives, boards, directors and managers are still tumbling head over heels down the mountain in a race to shovel more money into the fire, because their engineering orgs are not delivering results and they are desperate to find a solution

This. Highly competent technical ICs in my circles continue to (metaphorically) scream at their Juniors submitting AI slop and being unable to describe what it's doing, why it's doing it that way, or how they could optimize it further, since all management cares about is "that it works". Current models excel because of the corpus of the open internet they (stole from) built off of. New languages aren't likely to see…

> AI's not going away, and I don't think even the doomiest of AI doomers is claiming or hoping for that.

Is this the consensus on nomenclature? I though "AI doomers" was people thinking some dystopia will come out of it due to it. In that case I've read so much text wrong.