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Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

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Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#531

Post by nucleative »

shiandow wrote: post #514
mountainriver wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy to the dot com bubble is leaky at best. AI will hit a point of exponential improvement, we are already in the outer parts of this loop. It will become so valuable so fast we struggle to comprehend it.

While this remains possible my main impression now is that progress seems to be slowing down rather than accelerating.

I'm not so sure about this.

First were the models. Then the APIs. Then the cost efficiencies. Right now the tooling and automated workflows. Next will be a frantic effort to "AI-Everything". A lot of things won't make the cut, but absolutely many tasks, whole jobs, and perhaps entire subsets of industries will flip over.

For example you might say no AI can write a completely tested, secure, fully functional mobile app with one prompt (yet). But look at the advancements in Cline, Claude code, MCPs, code execution environments, and other tooling in just the last 6 months.

The whole monkeys typewriters shakespeare thing starts to become viable.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#532

Post by BurningFrog »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36
blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…

One thing to note about modern social media is that the most negative comment tends to become the most upvoted.

You can see that all across this discussion.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#533

Post by NaomiLehman »

eBombzor wrote: post #267
MountDoom wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entry-level total comp for SWEs in the SF Bay Area is probably $250k. A senior dev at a public tech company can easily clear $400k. Really senior engineers at FAANG routinely clear $1M.

I need to move back to the Bay

it's possible to work remotely, albeit harder to land a job. Still if you makea bit less and live in a LCoL area that's a great deal.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#534

Post by startupsfail »

the_other wrote: post #332
xmprt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're ever been to a third world country then you'd see how this is completely untrue. The dotcom boom has revolutionized the way of life for people in countries like India. Even for the average person in America, the ability to do so many activities online that would have taken hours otherwise (eg. shopping, research, DMV/government activities, etc). The fact that we see negative consequences of this like social…

I think you’re putting too much weight on cost (time, money), and not enough weight on “quality of life”, in your analysis. For sure, we can shop faster, and (attempt) research and admin faster. But… Shopping: used to be fun. You’d go with friends or family, discuss the goods together, gossip, bump into people you knew, stop for a sandwich, maybe mix shopping and a cinema or dinner trip. All the while, you’d be aware…

Yes, this is true. There used to be a lot of local book stores, for example. Amazon optimized that away, while ruining social fabric.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#535

Post by BurningFrog »

intended wrote: post #254
xmprt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're ever been to a third world country then you'd see how this is completely untrue. The dotcom boom has revolutionized the way of life for people in countries like India. Even for the average person in America, the ability to do so many activities online that would have taken hours otherwise (eg. shopping, research, DMV/government activities, etc). The fact that we see negative consequences of this like social…

It seems the crux is that we needed X people to produce goods, and we had Y demand. Now we need X*0.75 people to do meet Y demand. However, those savings are partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. There is only so much marginal propensity to spend that rich people have, so that additional wealth is not resulting in an increase in demand, at least commensurate enough to absorb the 25% who are une…

> Now we need X0.75 people to do meet Y demand.*

This is how GDP/person has increased 30x the last 250 years.

What always happens is that the no longer needed X*0.25 people find new useful things to do and we end up 33% richer.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#536

Post by madaxe_again »

shiandow wrote: post #514
mountainriver wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy to the dot com bubble is leaky at best. AI will hit a point of exponential improvement, we are already in the outer parts of this loop. It will become so valuable so fast we struggle to comprehend it.

While this remains possible my main impression now is that progress seems to be slowing down rather than accelerating.

Not even remotely. In LLM land, the progress seems slow the past few years, but a lot has happened under the hood.

Elsewhere in AI however progress has been enormous, and many projects are only now reaching the point where they are starting to have valuable outputs. Take video gen for instance - it simply did not exist outside of research labs a few years ago, and now it’s getting to the point where it’s actually useful - and that’s just a very visible example, never mind the models being applied to everything from plasma physics to kidney disease.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#537

Post by madaxe_again »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

Video game crash followed by video games taking off and eclipsing most other forms of digital entertainment. Dot com crash followed by the web getting pretty popular and a bit central to business. To all those betting big on AI before the crash: Careful, Icarus.

Many AI startups around LLMs are going to crash and burn.

This is because many people have mistaken LLMs for AI, when they’re just a small subset of the technology - and this has driven myopic focus in a lot of development, and has lead to naive investors placing bets on golden dog turds.

I disagree on AI as a whole, however - as unlike previous technologies this one can self-ratchet and bootstrap. ML designed chips, ML designed models, and around you go until god pops out the exit chute.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#538

Post by brookst »

Retric wrote: post #144
brookst wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of those did the Internet benefit?

Is the average person actually better off after the late 90’s internet is probably a harder question than it might seem. The long tail may be closer to what I want, but the quality is also generally lower. YouTube just doesn’t support a team of talented writers, Amazon is mostly filled with junk, etc. Social media and gig work is a mixed bag. Junk e-mail etc may not be a big deal, but those kinds of downsides do erod…

Expand the thinking to include impact on developing countries, the poor, minority groups who have few people like themselves in their local area, etc.

I’ll grant that for comparatively wealthy, privileged people who were always going to have an easy time (which frankly include me), the internet has been a mixed bag.

But for the kids growing up in comparatively poor countries, who can now access all of the world’s information, entertainment, and economy.. I think it’s a pretty clear win.

I expect AI will be similar: perhaps not a huge boon to the best off, but a substantial improvement for most people in the world. Even if we can sit back and say “oh, but they also get misinformation and lower quality YouTube content”

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#539

Post by madaxe_again »

Archonical wrote: post #458
james_oofou wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take it for finance people being totally clueless, right? Have you talked to these people about AI?

My experience has gone the other way than OOP: Anecdotally, I have had VCs ask me to review AI companies to tell them what they do so they can invest. The VC said VCs don't really understand what they're investing in and just want to get in on anything AI due to FOMO. The company I reviewed didn't seem like a great investment, but I don't even think that matters right now.

In my experience they invariably conflate LLMs with AI and can’t/won’t have the difference explained.

This is the blind spot that will cause many to lose their shirts, and is also why people are wrong about AI being a bubble. LLMs are a bubble within an overall healthy growth market.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#540

Post by brookst »

majormajor wrote: post #219
amscanne wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you being objective or just romanticizing the past? Just to use your example: YouTube is filled with talented writers and storytellers, who would have never been able to share their content in the past. *And* the traditional media complex is richer than ever. I don’t think average quality matters. Just what you want to consume. If anything, I’d be more open to the opposite argument. Media is so much richer and mo…

Does the answer to "is the average person better off" have a lot to do with "how many TV shows are out there"... or does it have to do with: - how often their boss bugs them after hours - how much their boss uses technology to keep an eye on them, their friends, their political views - how often random strangers might get mad at them and SWAT them, make false claims to their employers, etc - how often their neighbors…

How about “how often a sibling dies because the local medical people don’t have access to all of the world’s medical information instantly”.

Most of the world is not rich people getting swatted by teenagers they’re playing call of duty with.

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