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A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

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Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#61

Post by libraryofbabel »

cj wrote: post #45
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 en…

I think this is a really insightful point. Even if we are in a bubble now, in the sense that current LLM technology (impressive though it is) does not quite live up to the huge valuations of AI companies, there is a plausible future in which we get enough technological progress in the next few years that the bubble never really pops and we are able to morph into a new AI-driven economy without a crash. There are probably good historical examples of this happening with other technologies, although it’s hard to identify them because in retrospect it looks like the optimists invested rationally, even though their bets maybe weren’t all that justified at the time.

I personally think a crash is more likely than not, but I think we should not assume that history will follow a particular pattern like the dot com bust. There are a variety of ways this can go and anyone who tells you they know how it’s all going to shake out is either guessing or trying to sell you something.

It is for sure an interesting time to be in the industry. We’ll be able to tell the next generation a lot of stories.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#62

Post by PessimalDecimal »

asdev wrote: post #7

The biggest issue with AI isn't AI itself, but the fact that it seemingly "saved" an overinflated economy. Economy needs a deep reset with high rates for longer and the AI narrative is just kicking the can down the road

This seems like the point of the hype and why it has so much traction.

I suspect this hype cycle won't end until a new one forms, whether technology or some catastrophic event (disease, war) changes focus and allows the same delaying tactics.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#63

Post by stego-tech »

rightbyte wrote: post #50
stego-tech wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At this point, my perspective is that the bubble talk has effectively boiled viewpoints into booster or doomer camps based solely on one’s buy-in of the argument these companies have created actual intelligence that can wholesale replace humans. There doesn’t seem to be much room for nuance at the moment, as the proverbial battle lines have been drawn by the loudest voices on either side.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#64

Post by 0xcafefood »

bwfan123 wrote: post #47
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…

This is a really interesting point. Managers are the _only_ people I've heard say things like "it's only a matter of time till all coding interviews are just 'write a prompt to...'" or "soon all coding will just be LLMs writing machine code directly."

It's struck me as odd that managers of software engineers would seek to negate the field of software development almost completely. But maybe you're onto something.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#65

Post by zmmmmm »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #61
cj wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

I think this is a really insightful point. Even if we are in a bubble now, in the sense that current LLM technology (impressive though it is) does not quite live up to the huge valuations of AI companies, there is a plausible future in which we get enough technological progress in the next few years that the bubble never really pops and we are able to morph into a new AI-driven economy without a crash. There are prob…

It's a good analysis.

For me the big concern is really the level of detachment from reality that I'm seeing around time scales. People in the startup world seem to utterly fail to appreciate the complexity of changing business processes - for any type of change, let alone for an immature tech where there are still fundamental unsolved problems. The only way for the value of AI to be realised is for large scape business adoption to happen, and that is simply not achievable in the 2 years of runway most of these companies seem to be on.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#66

Post by ej88 »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #31
claw-el wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, would someone not having a stake in LLM business have an incentive to disparage LLMs?

Lol that makes zero sense - not having a stake in something is literally the definition of not having an incentive.

Not having a stake in something currently rocketing up in value is certainly a cause for FOMO and / or incentive to disparage it.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#67

Post by UncleOxidant »

layer8 wrote: post #30
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.…

But it's not true that everyone thinks we are in an AI bubble.

Most people don't think they're in a bubble until it starts to pop.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#68

Post by UncleOxidant »

lgleason wrote: post #51

Have we made some significant advancements similar to what happened with the Internet back in the 90's with HTML? Yes. But, this is a bubble we are currently in just like the .com bubble with lots of irrational exuberance. That said, that job market is not as crazy as it was during .com, in fact right now most technologists are finding it more difficult to find work at the moment. Most of this AI hype started when th…

> Usually these bubbles pop after the employment market goes crazy. The employment starts to go nuts

Meta has been offering 7 figure salaries for AI talent. This is a very different bubble from the .com bubble. The hiring frenzy in this limited to a very small group of people with unique skills/experience that few people posses. While at the same time thousands of other people are being let go in order to pay those big salaries to a few people (and in order to buy more GPUs). The C-suite has become obsessed with the idea that they're going to need much fewer engineers and they're hiring/firing like it.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#69

Post by lavarnann »

cj wrote: post #45
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 en…

> The crypto bubble seems like it has just slowly stopped growing and slowly stopped getting larger

Bitcoin is now worth 2.3 trillion dollars. The price graph looks like a hockey stick. For tokens in a self contained ledger system.

You may be conflating hype and bubble.

Re: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the AI Bubble

#70

Post by lavarnann »

bwfan123 wrote: post #36
lnkl wrote: post #4

>Article praising LLMs. >Look inside. >Written by someone having a stake in LLM business. Every time.

right yea, Whens the last time you saw management tell you which compiler or toolchain you need to use to build your code ? But now we have CEOs and management dictating how coding should be done. In the article the author admits: "I started coding again last year. But I hadn't written production code since 2012" and then goes on to say: "While established developers debate whether AI will replace them, these kids ar…

Every praise of LLM is invariably preceded by some form of "I don't really understand their output but it looks great". That right there is the strongest signal I've caught so far that the whole thing is just a funny money pyramid.

In Sirens of Titan Vonnegut tells a story where governments decided to boost the space industry to drive aggregate demand.

This is exactly what is happening. When you realize that the whole thing is predicated on building and selling more $100,000 GPUs (and the solution to every problem therein is to use even more GPUs), everything really comes into focus.

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