AI Market Clarity • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Market Clarity

#81

Post by goatlover » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #65

mashygpig wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m looking closely and I’m not seeing IP laws being relevant. Maybe regarding windows 11 keys? Can you elaborate? I think the claim isn’t totally inaccurate. Claiming that companies prioritize making products last just beyond return windows because that maximizes profits is a critique of capitalism IMO. Since capitalism is about profit (capital) being the dominant signal as far as I understand it. In my opinion, a l…

> Since capitalism is about profit (capital) Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. There is nothing about the private ownership of the means of production that inherently leads to the situation described earlier. You could end up in the exact same place if the means of production was community owned. What leads us there is intellectual property laws, which create artificial monopolies. Go…

Problem with that is wealthy capitalists lobby politicians to pass or rescind laws favoring their industries. They also figured out how to manipulate consumer demand on mass scale with modern advertising. Just look at how the fossil fuel industry has behaved despite their own research showing in the 70s that climate change was going to become a serious problem in the next century.

Or they use their influence to pass tax cuts primarily for the super wealthy that increase the wealth gap and erode existing social safety nets as we see with the "Big Beautiful Bill".

It's never just about the classic definition anymore than communism is, because there are always humans looking to look the cheat the system.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#82

Post by mindslight » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #51

AlecSchueler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or has the tide of opinion on HN really shifted against capitalism in the past year?

Nah. "Capitalism" is simply losing its original meaning amid more lower quality comments. If you look closely, the earlier comment is really about the apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!), not capitalism. In the olden days HN users would have taken care to make it clear that they were talking about IP laws, but now "capitalism" has come to be used as some kind of catc…

> apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!)

This is exactly wrong. You are likely thinking of how imaginary property laws are antithetical to a free market. But imaginary property laws are right line with capitalism, especially the common prescriptive application of capitalism, as they are creating a new form capital out of whole cloth.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#83

Post by evantbyrne » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

chancemehmu wrote: post #2

I think the companion market is probably the most overlooked market in AI. Character AI is the most used AI app after ChatGPT worldwide, and generally what all the teens associate AI with. I am seeing companies like Dippy AI (character ai competitor for gen-z) scale from 0->10M+ users rapidly without many people noticing.

So-called "companion" AIs are usually overlooked because they are clearly predatory. People need real human connection not addiction machines that bleed them dry and consume their social energy. Making a buck on someone else's misery is no way to live!

Re: AI Market Clarity

#84

Post by grafmax » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #51

AlecSchueler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or has the tide of opinion on HN really shifted against capitalism in the past year?

Nah. "Capitalism" is simply losing its original meaning amid more lower quality comments. If you look closely, the earlier comment is really about the apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!), not capitalism. In the olden days HN users would have taken care to make it clear that they were talking about IP laws, but now "capitalism" has come to be used as some kind of catc…

It’s a bit of a mirage to appeal to capitalism against IP laws. Markets exacerbate wealth inequality (a well-established phenomenon). And consolidated wealth is consolidated power. The wealthiest companies can lobby for laws that suit them, things like IP which allow the de jure owners of that IP to collect rentier income. Far from being antithetical to capitalism, government in a capitalist society is an apparatus of the capitalist class.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#85

Post by 9rx » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #81

9rx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since capitalism is about profit (capital) Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. There is nothing about the private ownership of the means of production that inherently leads to the situation described earlier. You could end up in the exact same place if the means of production was community owned. What leads us there is intellectual property laws, which create artificial monopolies. Go…

Problem with that is wealthy capitalists lobby politicians to pass or rescind laws favoring their industries. They also figured out how to manipulate consumer demand on mass scale with modern advertising. Just look at how the fossil fuel industry has behaved despite their own research showing in the 70s that climate change was going to become a serious problem in the next century. Or they use their influence to pass…

> Problem with that is wealthy capitalists lobby politicians to pass or rescind laws favoring their industries.

Do you mean interventionists, or, at least, opportunists? Welcoming politicians passing or rescinding laws that favor their industries is not in tune with capitalism, and therefore the people are not reasonably considered capitalists.

The USA is not really a capitalist state, if that is what you have in mind. It integrates some ideas from capitalism, to be fair, but also brings in a wealth of its own ideas. If you are desperate you could call it partially capitalist, I suppose, but even better is to leave capitalism behind and pick a word that encompasses what it really is. But, I know, when one falls in love...

> It's never just about the classic definition anymore than communism is

Communism, in the non-classical sense, has come to mean rule by the Communist Party. If you are implying that capitalism has come to mean rule by the Republican Party (and Democratic Party; there isn't enough difference to need to differentiate), I think that is quite fair. I would agree with you!

Which brings us back to IP laws being the problem. They are a legislative invention, not some kind of capitalistic principle. One that the Republicans and Democrats could fix, but choose not to. No doubt that is what the earlier comment was actually talking about — but poor choice of words given the overloadedness.

Which, again, stems from low quality content. In the olden days of HN, commenters were much more careful (pedantic, even) with what they had to say. Now commenters are just posting comments of little value and preying on emotions by using words that they know tug on heartstrings.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#86

Post by 9rx » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 10:14 PM UTC

grafmax wrote: post #84

9rx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. "Capitalism" is simply losing its original meaning amid more lower quality comments. If you look closely, the earlier comment is really about the apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!), not capitalism. In the olden days HN users would have taken care to make it clear that they were talking about IP laws, but now "capitalism" has come to be used as some kind of catc…

It’s a bit of a mirage to appeal to capitalism against IP laws. Markets exacerbate wealth inequality (a well-established phenomenon). And consolidated wealth is consolidated power. The wealthiest companies can lobby for laws that suit them, things like IP which allow the de jure owners of that IP to collect rentier income. Far from being antithetical to capitalism, government in a capitalist society is an apparatus o…

> Markets exacerbate wealth inequality

IP laws puts things into overdrive. It makes it impossible to compete. If you had a normally functioning environment, any time someone tried to capture excessive wealth, someone would just straight up copy them and that would be the end of it.

But since the law prevents copying others, contrary to the idea of capitalism, certain people are able to build moats. That's how you get the Bill Gates and Elon Musk's of the world. There is no way Windows would have made Microsoft any money if 1,000 different organizations all sold their own copies of Windows. But as the law gilded Gates to act exclusively...

Land eventually suffers a similar problem, to be fair. That hasn't been a huge deal historically as there was always more land to conquer, but those days have mostly drawn to a close. But we also tax land to try and find a reasonable balance in light of that — to put pressure on making effective use of it. IP, on the other hand, is generally not taxed at all.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#87

Post by 9rx » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #82

9rx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. "Capitalism" is simply losing its original meaning amid more lower quality comments. If you look closely, the earlier comment is really about the apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!), not capitalism. In the olden days HN users would have taken care to make it clear that they were talking about IP laws, but now "capitalism" has come to be used as some kind of catc…

> apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!) This is exactly wrong. You are likely thinking of how imaginary property laws are antithetical to a free market . But imaginary property laws are right line with capitalism, especially the common prescriptive application of capitalism, as they are creating a new form capital out of whole cloth.

> as they are creating a new form capital out of whole cloth.

Not really. Capitalism was born from the need to manage real scarcity. Artificial scarcity does not fit into that model whatsoever. Trying to treat it as capital is how you get all these bizarre (and, to many, horrible) outcomes.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#88

Post by UltraLutra » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 11:13 PM UTC

bmau5 wrote: post #3

Customer Service keeps being touted as a success story of LLMs, but as a business owner and user I'd be very curious to see if it actually improves any UX CS metrics (NPS, CSAT) - as my experiences with AI chatbots are almost always negative. It can certainly frustrate visitors into using email or abandoning their efforts altogether, but at least for my business we've found current platforms aren't able to navigate t…

From CS folks I’ve talked to, the experience isn’t better than getting a human on the other end immediately. It’s better than not being able to reach a human (e.g. outside support hours). Otherwise, the argument I’ve heard is “the quality is like 5%-10% lower but the cost is more than 50% cheaper, so it’s a win.”

Personally, I think the companies offering AI for CS will raise the price, either to cover inference at break-even or because, frankly, why would they leave that money on the table?

Re: AI Market Clarity

#89

Post by mindslight » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #87

mindslight wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> apparent failing of intellectual property laws (which are antithetical to capitalism!) This is exactly wrong. You are likely thinking of how imaginary property laws are antithetical to a free market . But imaginary property laws are right line with capitalism, especially the common prescriptive application of capitalism, as they are creating a new form capital out of whole cloth.

> as they are creating a new form capital out of whole cloth. Not really. Capitalism was born from the need to manage real scarcity. Artificial scarcity does not fit into that model whatsoever. Trying to treat it as capital is how you get all these bizarre (and, to many, horrible) outcomes.

> Trying to treat it as capital is how you get all these bizarre (and, to many, horrible) outcomes.

Yes, it seems like you're trying to deny that this is exactly what capitalism has become. It started off as a descriptive model for real scarcity. Then once that stopped being exciting, capital owners and their intellectual supplicants came up with rationalizations to create new forms of capital to be owned and controlled. For every person trying to no true Scotsman like you're doing, there's another arguing how imaginary property, or water rights, or Chicago parking meters, or hyperfinancialization in general makes sense under a whole host of assumptions like the efficient market fallacy. The side of entrenching interests inevitably wins, and we get the perverse outcomes everybody hates from late stage capitalism. The only sensible thing to do is regroup at a different metric/term besides capitalism.

Re: AI Market Clarity

#90

Post by eddythompson80 » Tue, Jul 22, 2025, 11:27 PM UTC

throwawayoldie wrote: post #42

AlecSchueler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or has the tide of opinion on HN really shifted against capitalism in the past year?

The average HN reader is growing older, and wiser.

More likely just a reddit refugee problem. The "stupid capitalism" narrative is from reddit and is very /r/im14andthisisdeep