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The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

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Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#91

Post by danenania »

hotpotat wrote: post #69

Lots of in-depth analysis, but I think the author is very clearly emotionally invested to the point that they are only drawing conclusions that justify and support their emotions. I agree that we’re in a bubble in the sense that a lot of these companies will go bankrupt, but it won’t be Google or Anthropic (unless Google makes a model that’s an order of magnitude better or order of magnitude cheaper with capability p…

OpenAI was arguably an oom ahead at one point, and competitors caught up in about a year. So I’m not sure even an advantage like that is insurmountable. Like we saw with Anthropic, you just need a group of key researchers to leave the incumbent and start their own thing—they’ll then have a pretty good shot at catching up.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#92

Post by cwmma »

michalf6 wrote: post #77
kevindamm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rivers overflowing with legacy hardware and villages incinerating boards for their metals, and the caustic effects on people & their environment that causes, are already happening. The hardware capacity exists only as long as it is operational and within a few generations. Perhaps we should be careful before building Manhattan-sized data centers. Up to a point it is better than having additional compute sitting idle…

Aren't AI GPUs a drop in the bucket compared to consumer electronics? Nvidia sold ~3M blackwells in 2025: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-has-sold-over-three-million-blac... Compare that to laptops which sell in tens of millions per manufacturer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manu... Plus, it's way easier to collect boards for recycling from a centralized data center.

Nvidia had $35.6 billion in data center revenue vs $2.5 billion "Gaming and AI PC" revenue in the 4th quarter of 2024 so data center stuff stuff is like 93% of it

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#93

Post by nerevarthelame »

billy99k wrote: post #46

With current LLMs, my productivity is increased by at least 50%. This will only get better over time as efficiency is gained and hardware gets cheaper.

How are you measuring your productivity? There are studies [0][1] that indicate it's common for people to self-assess that their productivity using LLMs increased by 20-40%, when in fact it decreased based on objective, controlled measures.

[0] https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-research2023-media/pubto...

[1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#94

Post by zild3d »

xela79 wrote: post #41

make a technology very affordable, get people hooked. Then when LLM have basically destroyed the open web, charge more for accessing and searching that wealth of human created knowledge. Profit $$$ Ethical approach? hell no. What do you expect from an unregulated capitalistic system.

> What do you expect from an unregulated capitalistic system.

Competition, fortunately

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#95

Post by alkyon »

frozenseven wrote: post #61

Hey, it's the guy who has been predicting the imminent collapse of AI for three years now! As I understand, he's a former video game journalist and being anti-AI is now his full-time thing . Saying it's all useless, fake, evil, etc. A poor man's Gary Marcus, basically.

So being a former video game journalist, makes all his arguments void.

Thank you for your imput!

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#96

Post by [deleted] »

wulfstan wrote: post #51
frithsun wrote: post #31

I believe this is a "good" bubble in the sense that the 19th century railroad bubble and original dot com bubble both ended up invested in infrastructure that created immense value. That said, all of these LLMs are interchangeable, there are no moats, and the profit will almost entirely be in the "last mile," in local subject matter experts applying this technology to their bespoke business processes.

I keep saying to people - "if you have a good idea that can make use of large amounts of really really cheap GPUs to do something genuinely useful - get ready for a massive glut of spare capacity". I still haven't thought of anything, unfortunately...

[deleted]

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#97

Post by cwmma »

hotpotat wrote: post #69

Lots of in-depth analysis, but I think the author is very clearly emotionally invested to the point that they are only drawing conclusions that justify and support their emotions. I agree that we’re in a bubble in the sense that a lot of these companies will go bankrupt, but it won’t be Google or Anthropic (unless Google makes a model that’s an order of magnitude better or order of magnitude cheaper with capability p…

It is not clear at all if Claude will actually be profitable, are there enough people who will actually pay the subsidized costs especially if they end up being a significant fraction of an additional dev's salary.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#98

Post by cwmma »

elktown wrote: post #40

What's clear is that the hype has reach such a critical mass that people are comfortable enough to publicly and shamelessly extrapolate extraordinary claims based purely on gut feeling. Both here on HN and by complete laymen elsewhere. AI-optimist or not, that's just shocking to me.

A while back I saw a comment here that was basically like, we don't need to worry about copyrights because they won't matter once LLMs are able to create an OS from scratch for the cost of tokens. Which is just a batshit insane not thought through stance to have.

But then I think about the real actual planning decisions that were made based on the claims about driving cars and Hyperloop being available "soon" that made people materially worse off due to differed or canceled public transportation infrastructure.

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#99

Post by snapcaster »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #93
billy99k wrote: post #46

With current LLMs, my productivity is increased by at least 50%. This will only get better over time as efficiency is gained and hardware gets cheaper.

How are you measuring your productivity? There are studies [0][1] that indicate it's common for people to self-assess that their productivity using LLMs increased by 20-40%, when in fact it decreased based on objective, controlled measures. [0] https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-research2023-media/pubto... [1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

who you going to believe? random studies or your own lying eyes?

Re: The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

#100

Post by frozenseven »

alkyon wrote: post #95
frozenseven wrote: post #61

Hey, it's the guy who has been predicting the imminent collapse of AI for three years now! As I understand, he's a former video game journalist and being anti-AI is now his full-time thing . Saying it's all useless, fake, evil, etc. A poor man's Gary Marcus, basically.

So being a former video game journalist, makes all his arguments void. Thank you for your imput!

Pretty much. What else would you expect from a non-technical activist who's railing against science/tech? What you see is what you get.
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