5 ms·
Going to be ugly when the AI bubble busts
by jmclnx 2y ago
Going to be ugly when the AI bubble busts
- kergonath 2y agoIt feels suspiciously like it’s 1999 all over again.
- olderthandang 2y agoNo it doesn't. The economy then was actually good.
- deepfriedchokes 2y agoAnd housing was cheap and plentiful.
- kergonath 2y agoNot really compared to 1974, though. And I am sure in 25 years time we will be complaining about how good we had it in 2024.
- ThunderSizzle 2y agoIf 2024 is the high point for a quarter century, we really are going to rock bottom as a world.
- mbreese 2y agoMore like the AI winter from the late 80s.
- GaggiX 2y agoIf by "AI winter" you mean a period where AI will continue to be used for semantic search, moderation, translation, captioning, TTS, STT, context-aware grammar checking, LLM, and audio/image classification, then yes, it would be an "AI winter" where AI is used everywhere.
- mbreese 2y agoI meant specifically the time in the late 80s when investment in AI collapsed because it was overhyped and caused the downfall of Lisp Machines. The AI field itself kept moving forward, but investment and grant funding was cut to almost nothing for a long time. It took a long time for the field to get to where it is now, but the hype cycle has been going back and forth for decades in AI. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
- GaggiX 2y agoI know well what the 80's AI winter is, the next one will have AI used everywhere if it's going to happen.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI totally agree, but I feel like some comments are making the mistake of stating "this bubble will pop, which means it was all smoke and mirrors to begin with". The dot com bubble popped, but it's not like the Internet technologies that were launched then (and companies like Amazon and Google) weren't hugely impactful on all of society since then. I think the AI bubble will pop, and while I think there is a lot of nonsense hype about AI I still think AI's societal impact will only grow.
- philistine 2y agoNo one who is saying the bubble will pop thinks there is nothing behind it. That’s the definition of a bubble: you always need soap and water to make it, but soap and water are commodities, not this special unicorn that will change the world.
- gitfan86 2y agoBeanie Babies, Tulips, NFTs, Web3 tokens were all obviously not going to change the world. The bubble was pure emotion and greed. All the cash inflows were speculation. Nvidia made 18 billion in profit last quarter, and expects to make 20 next quarter. That isn't speculation.
- noirbot 2y agoI mean, how much money did the NFT companies and Tulip vendors make? Nvidia isn't OpenAI. They're selling products that the bubble is built on, not the bubble itself. How much money is OpenAI or Anthropic making? Because that's what people are thinking is speculative value. My position has always been that Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude are all pretty great at a cost of Free, and grow increasingly questionable past that. My work is already limiting how many ChatGPT users we can afford with their price increases, and I'm pretty sure OpenAI is still not profitable. If ChatGPT is $50/month as a breakeven cost for them, how many people/companies will buy it then? Most jobs I've been at won't pay for JetBrains licenses that cost way less per head. I feel like the best comparison is something like Uber or AirBnB where it's easy to be excited about it when all the services are crazy discounted by free VC money, but when they have to start turning a profit, they're back to actually competing with other tools.
- Bud 2y ago[dead]
- stoperaticless 2y agoI’s going to be nice to get cheap gpu.
- Ekaros 2y agoThey might even put reasonable amount of RAM on reasonably priced models... Why can I not get 16GB on some 700€ gaming cpu... I can get CPU+Mobo+32GB ram for around same... I just hope this intentional kneecapping ends so I can get something that can be used for a few years.
- HDThoreaun 2y agoMargins on datacenter GPUs will probably always be better than consumer. As long as thats the case they need to segment to stop datacenters from using consumer products so I've got a feeling that you will never be able to buy a consumer nvidia product with a reasonable amount of RAM. Maybe intel will release one to get some hype for their gpu line?
- loa_in_ 2y agoDoes that mean that datacenter hardware might be a cost wise option for making a home lab PC soon?
- HDThoreaun 2y agoProbably better to just throw your workload on the cloud unless you're using it close to 24/7.
- philistine 2y agoA GPU is an accessory to the real product you’re buying: a driver to interface with your software. Datacenter GPUs have drivers that are woefully inadequate for gaming.
- gopher_space 2y agoI’m just thinking that maybe trading a decent used sedan for a slightly shinier ARPG isn’t the wisest move I could be making.
- eli_gottlieb 2y agoIt's going to rock for gamers.
- marcosdumay 2y agoI wouldn't bet in bulk computation not being in high demand for the foreseeable future. If the AI bubble bursts, people will use the available GPUs for something else.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago> If the AI bubble bursts, people will use the available GPUs for something else. Yes, of course, but that just means that this bubble would be basically identical to previous capital intensive bubbles. For example, there was a railroad bubble in the 1800s, and a massive telecom bubble in the late 90s. These bubbles popped, resulting in massive corporate bankruptcies and failed companies. But the infrastructure they built (miles and miles of railroad and dark fiber, which has since been lit up) laid the foundation for huge economic development shortly thereafter.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThe relevant part is that no, the steel industry didn't break when the railroad bubble burst. Nvidia is not the train company on that scenario.
- philistine 2y agoThe railroad built during the bubble in the 1800s, like 90% of it is decommissioned. It served no sustainable economic benefit, as most of it was last mile railroad that quickly got consolidated into trunks. If the US had maintained and kept the rail it built, it wouldn’t have the poor infrastructure it has right now.
- bogwog 2y agoI hope the bankruptcies start soon so I can buy me some H200s for cheap on eBay
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoIt's a shame all this compute is being built and none will trickle down. It would be fun to hack on this stuff as a hobbyist once it's sold for peanuts.
- wmf 2y agoI assume used V100/P100s are on eBay. Go buy them and report back.
- Zamicol 2y agoI'm confused by this sentiment I've seen repeated by some. AI/LLMs are radically expanding my abilities, and as I adapt to this new power, I'm using it more frequently in everyday life. Sure, Nvidia stock may be overpriced, but AI is empowering. I can't imagine not continuing to expand its use. As its abilities expand, I'll use it even more. I will have much further use even as a few bugs are fixed and integrations become more frictionless.
- tail_exchange 2y agoProbably because not everybody is feeing this productivity boost. AI made me a bit more productive, yes, but not by that much. Seeing you call it a "new power" is not relatable, so it may reinforce ideas that it is a bubble.
- VirusNewbie 2y agoRight but I feel similarly about excel/sheets and powerpoint. But they make almost every office worker a bit more productive, so it’s a good market.
- tail_exchange 2y agoI think these can both be true. If AI makes people be 3% more productive overall, cumulatively that's a huge improvement, but on an individual level it may feel undeserving of hype.
- m463 2y agoThat seems like saying "web advertising never shows me what I want to buy" Maybe it is not for you. Maybe it is for people asking AI questions about you. (or chemistry or gold prospecting or legal documents or ...) the eric schmidt talk made it seem like better hardware led to better results and there was a race.
- edanm 2y ago> Seeing you call it a "new power" is not relatable, so it may reinforce ideas that it is a bubble. Whereas what it could be reinforcing instead is that some people are better at "using AI" than others. When I was young, I always saw how my parents never really "got" new technology that I was using all the time, like the internet. Many young people think about it and are sure it won't happen to them. I'm sure many on this technophile site think so. And then a new technology like AI comes along, some people find ways to be incredibly productive with it, but a very widespread sentiment is that they're... lying? Mistaken? Not very good at their job so it helps them more? The number of excuses people have for "keep this new technology that I don't know how to use away for me" is pretty crazy. (And I say this as someone who is probably not on the "cutting edge" of AI usage, compared to others I see.)
- IshKebab 2y agoHow is it going to burst exactly? Are ChatGPT and Google Assistant going to suddenly stop working?
- pas 2y agogrowth stops, investments stop, projects and orderds get cancelled, consolidation happens, unused stock shows up on the secondary market which puts a downward pressure on unit prices of nvidia datacenter GPUs
- cdelsolar 2y agoThere’s no such thing as an AI bubble. That’s like saying, going to be ugly when the car bubble bursts, back in the early 1900s.
- saurik 2y agoSo, I feel like your arguments is "AI is useful, like cars, so there won't be a bubble"; but like, I think we must all agree that the Internet is useful, and yet there certainly was the ".com bubble". We've occasionally had real estate bubbles, and I do in fact believe there was a car bubble in the early 1900s during the 20s?
- m463 2y agois it a bubble? or is the singularity? (only half joking)