A bubble that knows it's a bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#71

Post by rafaelmn » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:05 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #63

lm28469 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how most people can't even afford a car without taking loans but we're talking about personal robot assistants as if it was right around the corner and the natural evolution of things

With the wealth gap increasing ever further, I think we will see technology in lock step with that divide. I doubt robots will actually end up in every household, but a niche luxury product and utility for businesses makes some sense. Even if you think about it from that perspective, robot makers would still want them to be a universal robot not dozens of unique use case bots. If a business can pay 30k for a general…

>I doubt robots will actually end up in every household, but a niche luxury product and utility for businesses makes some sense.

Sounds like a limited market/growth potential, hard to amortize the huge R&D etc. Could happen but will never justify the current levels of investment required.

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#72

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:07 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #68

dijit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half-life of iron is pretty low too, the advantage of the rail system is what it allowed us to do when it was cheap enough. All the investment in AI should help bring infrastructure up to a higher level, power distribution and cooling for example are at a much higher level than would have otherwise been. Who knows what use that might have if it suddenly becomes incredibly cheap. (this is my silver lining thinking…

The half-life of metallic iron is apparently 2.6 million years, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

Rust.

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#73

Post by nr378 » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:10 AM UTC

layoric wrote: post #32

> Creative destruction is brutal math. The capital? Gone. Completely vaporized. But infrastructure isn’t stock certificates. Those fiber optic cables didn’t vanish when Pets.com did. I read quotes like this and reminded that it is common that people forget money is just a competitive resource we use to outbid each other for _real_ things. Money moves around, it isn't lost or "Completely vaporized", someone receives i…

> money is just a competitive resource we use to outbid each other for _real_ things

That's true, but the thing that's lost is the economic/productive capacity that the money was spent on, that could have been used for other (better) purposes.

For example, if I raise $100mn in a frothy market, and spend it on employing 100 Engineers on $1mn/yr salaries for 1 year before ultimately going bankrupt, it's true that the money doesn't disappear, as it was simply transferred from the VCs to the Engineers, but what's spent/consumed is the Engineers' time. Society can never get those 100 person-years back, and the VCs have to write their capital investment to 0.

The other comments are separately true - money is created by bank borrowing and destroyed by loans being repaid or going bad. Periods of speculation often result in increasing leverage (e.g. borrowing to buy stocks/houses), which does result in the destruction of money when it unwinds (as well as damage to bank's balance sheets, which can become problematic when it happens at a large enough scale - see 2008).

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#74

Post by GeoAtreides » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:20 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #68

dijit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half-life of iron is pretty low too, the advantage of the rail system is what it allowed us to do when it was cheap enough. All the investment in AI should help bring infrastructure up to a higher level, power distribution and cooling for example are at a much higher level than would have otherwise been. Who knows what use that might have if it suddenly becomes incredibly cheap. (this is my silver lining thinking…

The half-life of metallic iron is apparently 2.6 million years, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

Maybe some isotopes of iron have a half-life, stable isotopes don't decay (iron is the element where all decay chains end)

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#75

Post by iammjm » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:21 AM UTC

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #54

flohofwoe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those fiber optic cables didn’t vanish when Pets.com did. OTOH all the VR headsets gathering dust now didn't turn out to be quite as useful as those fiber optic cables. And I'm not sure what will remain after the AI bubble pops except for a massive matrix multiplication overcapacity ;) I also wouldn't call all the money being funneled into a single technology a "Cambrian Explosion", it's the opposite of that, an or…

Paradoxically, I think Cambrian Explosion happened because of innovation of eyes. Maybe the tech that currently was developed for VR headsets could find home in smart glasses (i.e. google glass)

The Cambrian Explosion happened because of the environmental changes, such as the amount of free oxygen available, while innovations such as eyes were the result of the Cambrian Explosion with life becoming more diversified and complex. So I guess its more accurate to think of stuff that empowers AI, such as cheaper and better GPUs and machine learning, as cyanobacteria that produced the oxygen for organisms to feed and grow upon.

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#76

Post by rwmj » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 10:36 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #10

LarsDu88 wrote: post #4

I had the same thoughts as much as 2 years ago on how this will play out. Unlike with railroads and fiber optic cable however, the core infrastructural asset of GPUs tends to become rapidly obsolete after about 5 years. Commoditization of this scale of compute is definitely going to be a boon for many fields of research. Unfortunately fundamental public research is exactly what is being cut right now in the US. Long…

The half-life of iron is pretty low too, the advantage of the rail system is what it allowed us to do when it was cheap enough. All the investment in AI should help bring infrastructure up to a higher level, power distribution and cooling for example are at a much higher level than would have otherwise been. Who knows what use that might have if it suddenly becomes incredibly cheap. (this is my silver lining thinking…

The lasting infrastructure of railways was the rights of way and the stations, and I think you're hinting that building them in the 1840s allowed us to do that when no one cared very much about NIMBYs or bulldozing through the countryside.

What's the corresponding infrastructure of AI? The major cost - the GPUs - are effectively obsolete after 3-5 years. The physical location of the datacenters, power, cooling and fibre that connects them might be the lasting infrastructure. Is datacenter location important? Are we actually building up new power sources (apart from endless announcements about FANGs opening nuclear power stations, which as far as I'm aware have not happened yet)?

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#77

Post by easywood » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #22

aurareturn wrote: post #19

FYI, Altman also said OpenAI is planning to invest “trillions” into AI in the “near future”. He said this at the same time as saying AI is bubbly. This article is based off of the Altman bubbly comment.

Self-contradictory communication seems to become his style. "AI is an existential risk for humanity, that's why we have to dump all resources we have into building it". "It's critically important that AI as an industry is regulated, but also we'll pull out of the EU if they try to regulate us"

I think you should read it like this:

"AI is an existential risk for humanity ...". ... so you should trust only us to build it

"AI as an industry should be regulated ..." ... to make it harder for newcomers on the market.

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#78

Post by dijit » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 11:12 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #68

dijit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half-life of iron is pretty low too, the advantage of the rail system is what it allowed us to do when it was cheap enough. All the investment in AI should help bring infrastructure up to a higher level, power distribution and cooling for example are at a much higher level than would have otherwise been. Who knows what use that might have if it suddenly becomes incredibly cheap. (this is my silver lining thinking…

The half-life of metallic iron is apparently 2.6 million years, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

Hahahah,

fair point, maybe you could show me a 50 year old rail that is still worthy of being ridden. ;)

Even a 20 year old rail is problematic from what I understand (from a UK perspective).

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#79

Post by aurareturn » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 11:21 AM UTC

Lionga wrote: post #59

aurareturn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Anthropic worth hundreds of billions by now and their revenue is doubling every 6 months?

5.6 billion loss in 2024 on $918 million in revenue. When you are selling a 5 dollars for 1 dollar doubling revenue is easy. It just creates more losses, same with OpenAI

What is their gross margins? Is the loss just because they have to keep competing at an ultra competitive race?

On a software focused forum like HN, I’m surprised people still don’t understand the grow at all cost until you are the top 2 or 3 left model. There has been dozens of examples of tech companies losing money for years just to become highly profitable after.

People are still not getting that big tech is investing like their lives depend on it is because they are. GenAI can render the core businesses of big tech obsolete.

Re: A bubble that knows it's a bubble

#80

Post by Jensson » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 11:24 AM UTC

Fargren wrote: post #69

Freak_NL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For disabled people who can use their arms and propel themselves, a wheelchair is low-maintenance, dependable, repairable, self-powered, and generic enough for there to be a healthy market and not too much vendor lock-in. Wheelchairs are not necessarily low-tech, but they are fully understandable. If the user of a wheelchair is unable to move themself for whatever reason, any able bodied person can step in and push.…

All of those are arguments for why robots should generally have wheels rather than legs, except for when legs are specifically needed.

> except for when legs are specifically needed.

Exactly, we need legs when they are specifically needed, and we already have wheeled robots so building legged robots that can move like a human will cover so many cases we currently cannot cover.

And even more important are arms and hands, and legs is a precursor to that, they are much simpler so its smart to start with legs to then try to make good arms and hands.