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Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

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Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the companies making a profit on every prompt I give it (factoring in the cost of upgrading GPUs every year or two)?

According to OpenAI, yes. They're "very profitable" on inference. It is the training and capex (driven by competition) that is driving loss.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/ offers a different point of view on OAI's profitability on inference.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#412
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and others will be bought for cents on the dollar. OpenAI is existential threat to all big tech including Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple. Hence, they're all spending lavishly right now to not get left behind. Meta --> GenAI Content creation can disrupt Instagram. ChatGPT likely has more data on a person than Instagram does by now for ads. 800 million daily active users for ChatGPT already. Google -…

> Apple --> OpenAI can make a device that runs ChatGPT as the OS instead of relying on iOS. Yeah... No they can't. I don't agree with any of your "disruptions," but this one is just comically incorrect. There was a post on HN somewhat recently that was a simulated computer using LLMs, and it was unusable.

I think it should be obvious just from thinking about how much more an OS is beyond the UI for launching programs.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#413

Forget the talk about bubbles and corrections. Can someone explain to me the rationale of investing in a product, marketing it, seeing that it drives consumers away from your product and erodes trust, and then you continue to invest at an accelerating rate? Good business would have driven us very far away from this point years ago. This is very deep in the "because we can" territory. It's not FOMO.

What I think:

- get customers used to using AI by “gently” cough nudging them towards this in all products.

- get experience and data for your LLMs and AI dev teams regarding what works and what doesn’t

- Bet on AI becoming good enough that people will use this as their entry to the Web, Media and software

- become the largest player of these AI apps, so that you can inject ads again

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#414
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what the selling point of AI is for regular people. In the 60s it was possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children. That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. The middle class have financially benefited very little from the past 20+ years of productivity gains. S…

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hung…

Birth rates correlate negatively with education of women. I read somewhere that this is one of the most robust findings in all of social science (and when I asked Gemini just now whether there was such a correlation, it said the same).

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#415
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically I think there are two outcomes: AGI succeeds and there are mass layoffs, money is concentrated further in the hands of those who own compute. OR AI bubble pops and there are mass layoffs, with bailouts going to the largest players to prevent a larger collapse, which drives inflation and further marginalizes asset-less people. I honestly don't see a third option unless there is government intervention, w…

Does the USA even have enough money to rescue the tech giants at this point? We could be talking multiple trillion dollars at worst. And the AI only companies like OpenAI and Anthropic would be the most vulnerable in comparison to say Google or Microsoft, because they have no fallback and no sustainability without investor money. And Nvidia would be left in a weird place where the vast majority of their profits are c…

There is talk about bailout, but is it first possible. Second how long will it post pone issue. Massive increase in government debt used in bailout likely leads to more inflation, which leads to higher interest rates, making that debt much more expensive. And at some point credibility of that debt and dollar in general will be gone.

Ofc, this does lead to ever increasing paper valuations. So maybe that is the win they are after.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#416
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

It's a simple catch-22 - women don't want to leave the workforce because one salary cannot support a family - yet women remaining in the workforce, since single-salary is infeasible, thusly doubling supply of workers, lowering salaries, which itself makes it infeasible to single-income a family Not to pick on women, as a feminist if you ask me, all modern men should have to be houseboys to serve their feminine master…

Well that's the point, men are refusing to suffer.

There is little incentive to walking in a contract, where you are working all the time, no appreciation, love, gratitude or even a thank you. All the time being made to feel like you are not measuring up. And they'd rather be with somebody else apart from you. That done, you also come back from work and do all the chores you would if you remained single.

And if a few years later the other party decided to break the contract, now they take your home, get monthly pensions(with raises), and get to start the process all over again with somebody else at your expense.

Plus these days kids don't stay back with aging parents to care for them, so having kids appears pointless as well.

By and large, let alone an incentive, marriage and children seem to a massive negative for men. Hence I wouldn't be surprised low marriage and birth rates all over the world.

Why would you want to do all this? When you can work, keep the money, and spend it for your pleasure by staying single?

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#417
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hung…

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

Ordinary men have wifes and two children in all those countries. You are also projecting American lifestyle "buying house without family help is necessary" on countries "hungary" where this was not an expectation for a really really long time. Like, generations.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#418
It feels like AI investment and product focus is now a religion or cult. You have to be so fully invested, blind from any data, and throwing billions of dollars at it, otherwise you’re not “in”.

Meanwhile, no one in my sphere of tech and non tech people is wanting “more AI” and sees the pros/cons of chatgpt, using it as kinda fancy google search..

Where’s the “killer app” that’ll generate literally trillions in revenue to offset the costs? How do the economics work, especially when GPUs are depreciating?

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hung…

A generous welfare state (like the Nordics or Switzerland) does not necessarily mean that the middle class is well off with lots of resources for kids. Usually it's the middle class (+upper class) that pays for the generous welfare state, but gets almost none of the benefits. You don't get/need the welfare, if you earn enough to be considered middle class.

If by ”Nordics” you mean the rich oil kingdom of Norway, sure. Everyone else has been cutting back on welfare for the last 20 years.
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