911–920 of 936 posts
These changes in direction (spending billions, freezing hiring) over just a few months show that these people are as clueless as to what's going to happen with AI, as everyone else. They just have the billions and therefore dictate where money goes, but that's it.
you think folks that have experience managing this much money/resources (unlike yourself) are clueless? more likely it's 4D chess.
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Cory Doctorow has a compelling theory that the megatech companies have to appear to be startups, or else their share price reverts to normal multiples. Hence the continuous string of increasingly over-hyped "game-changing technologies" they all (not just Meta) keep rolling out. VR, blockchain and LLMs have their value, but it's a tiny fraction of the insane amounts of money being pumped into these bubbles. There will…
> Cory Doctorow has a compelling theory that the megatech companies have to appear to be startups, or else their share price reverts to normal multiples. Meta's P/E is about the same as S&P 500.
I regard Meta and Google as ad agencies.
(I'm not smart enough to break out Amazon's and Apple's ad biz P/E separately.)
My quick spot check says Meta's P/E is more than "legacy" ad agencies and (much) less than Google's.
Just observations. I have no insights.
My opinion, based solely on vibes, is the online ad biz (Meta and Google) is more fraudulent than not. If true, than both are grossly overvalued, in that castles in the sky sort of way.
Zuckerberg either doesn't have the resolve for changing the business, or just keeps picking the wrong directions (depending on your biases). First Facebook tried to pivot into mobile, pushed really hard for a short time and then flopped. Then Facebook tried really hard to make the Metaverse a thing, and for a while, but eventually Meta stopped finding it interesting and significantly reduced investment. Then AI was t…
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Facebook certainly did not have the resources and experiences to make a mobile OS at that point. Microsoft tried and failed, there was no space for a 3rd mobile OS. > They also tried to make mobile web a thing for a few years past when it was obvious that native apps were the way forward. This was one of the first friction Facebook encountered with Apple. They wanted to make their own store in the Facebook app on iOS…
Microsoft tried and then pulled a google i.e. they randomly gave up on something people were actively using.
Not commenting on if the phones were good / used I never had one :) just trying to remember the state of things back then
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Gods I would love to work more in a policy space, tho my background is entirely technical. A friend of mine has been trying to get into law school for a few years; she's technically competent and plenty intelligent, but it's been hard going for her to get in, plus multiple years of education to even attempt the bar. All of that sounds like far too much sunk-cost to me to dally in and figure out if it's a path I would…
I guess it depends on your circumstances. In Europe, for instance, the cost of a degree is sometimes quite low. My gateway from tech to law was a part-time masters degree in political science, and which cost around 200 euros a semester (in Germany). That degree gave me enough experience to then apply for a PhD in law. Which brings me to the next point. Doing a law degree and passing the bar is perhaps the obvious pat…
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If we suppose that ANNs are more or less accurate models of real neural networks, the reason why they're so inefficient is not algorithmic, but purely architectural. They're just software. We have these huge tables of numbers and we're trying to squeeze them as hard as possible through a relatively small number of multipliers and adders. Meanwhile, a brain can perform a trillion fundamental simultaneously because eve…
> If we suppose that ANNs are more or less accurate models of real neural networks i believe the problem is we don't understand actual neurons let alone actual networks of neurons to even know if any model is accurate or not. The AI folks cleverly named their data structures "neuron" and "neural network" to make it seem like we do.
I don't think any (serious) neural network researchers are trying to trick anybody or claim greater fidelity with the operations of the human brain than are warranted. If anything, Hinton - one of the "godfathers of neural networks" in the popular zeitgeist - has been pretty outspoken about how ANN's have only a most superficial resemblance to real neurons.
Now, the "pop science" commenters, and the "talking heads" and "influencer" types and the marketing people, that's a different story...
I genuinely believe SamA has directed GPT5 to be nerfed to speedrun the bubble. Watch, he’ll let the smoking embers of the AI market cool and then reveal the next big advancement they are sitting on right now.
Anyone got any predictions?
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No. The 'goal' of investing (e.g. regularly buying) means attempting to own as many shares as possible. That is achieved by buying low and selling high. Buyers benefit from lower prices, not higher. So many investors get this concept wrong. I suppose they get excited because what they bought went up in value and they have a sense of being enriched. But, that is backwards. That is what they want 20-40 years from now w…
> I am screaming: crash and burn baby! Crash and burn! Gimme those shares at 50% off yesterday's price. Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price. Also, when the stock market crashes usually bad things accompany it. Like a depressed economy and job losses.
I assume I am investing to build wealth. That means my goal is to never spend down my wealth. When I retire, I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime (assuming for simplicity sake I own a total stock index fund as my sole investment).
So, my goal remains to celebrate buying low since I never intend to sell shares (how this is managed upon retirement is a slightly more complex subject, probably involving 'buckets' of assets to cover withrawals so a 50% crash doesn't change the overall thinking that the price of shares is irrelevant to stock that will never be sold).
edit: speaking theory when I say "when I retire" because I've already been retired for almost a decade. My portfolio continues to grow (highest ever literally at yesterday's close).
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> I am screaming: crash and burn baby! Crash and burn! Gimme those shares at 50% off yesterday's price. Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price. Also, when the stock market crashes usually bad things accompany it. Like a depressed economy and job losses.
>>Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price. I assume I am investing to build wealth. That means my goal is to never spend down my wealth. When I retire, I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will…
Never spend it, but you're ok with it being taken from you? You're a special case retiree if you can watch the market take half of your life savings and cheer it on. Especially with a 4% withdrawal rate, which fails a lot of 30 year backtests.
> I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime.
A lot of successful backtests end with significantly fewer shares, too. There are no guarantees here.
There has to be some floor where you stop cheering on a market crash, because if it drops low enough for long enough then you are screwed and so are your heirs.
Be careful what you wish for.