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I guess I wasn't clear enough. Regarding blockchain, I was responding to the point that revenue was proof. A shit-ton of money went into blockchain projects. V

I guess I wasn't clear enough. Regarding blockchain, I was responding to the point that revenue was proof. A shit-ton of money went into blockchain projects. VR has also had significant sales. Both of these are fine analogies to demonstrate that billions of dollars in revenue does not prove a lasting success. I'm not arguing that nobody uses ChatGPT; I believe they do. My point instead is that it's not clear how sustained the usage will be. E.g., a counter-anecdote: I know of a team who hired a dev who was a big ChatGPT fan. They eventually fired him, because his LLM-generated communication was poor and confusing, and his code was the kind of bad pretty typical of generated code. I'm sure he felt like he was getting thousands of dollars of value out of it up until the point he was shown the door. One of the things that makes it especially hard to gauge is the extent to which piles of investor money are driving this. During Bubble 1.0, a lot of infrastructure companies had "real revenue" that turned out to be nth-hand investor money. We know ChatGPT has some real users, but how much of that inference traffic is ineffective or unsustainable startups burning up VC cash? That's a question that I expect will take 18 months or so to answer.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
The blockchain stuff wasn't usage revenue, it was people trying to make a quick buck revenue. VR didn't have significant sales of applications, all the sales were hardware which was shelfware. Billions of dollars of real usage revenue is an entirely different thing. Bubble 1.0 is akin to Nvidia revenue - lots of dollars being spent on training, less on inference. Very unclear how much of it ever sees a return. There is a big difference between Nvidia revenue and ChatGPT revenue as far as the issue you are discussing. Inference revenue = real, training revenue (for infra providers) = very speculative.
- wpietri 2y ago
  Do you have stats on that "real usage revenue"? Because I don't think inference revenue alone qualifies. There are a lot of "AI" applications that are pumping money into the inference providers, but how much is real, sustainable, socially valuable usage is, as I've said a few times not yet determined.
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    The 3.4 billion of revenue is a stat. And it's the most meaningful. If a human voluntarily pays money for something you should assume they find it useful/valuable. It's not strictly true (various addictions etc), but the burden of proof to show otherwise is on you.
    - wpietri 2y ago
      The specific number of $3.4 billion is not a stat. It's what Altmain claims they are "on pace" for. Even taking it as real, you're the one making claims about how much of it is "real usage revenue". The burden of proof for that is on you. But as is typical for people riding a hype wave, you have not only repeatedly failed to do so, but you also apparently fail to understand countervailing concerns. That you are, in a fashion also typical for the true believer, trying to insist it's my job to prove the hype wrong, marks you as entirely unserious about honest inquiry here. Given that, I'm done.
      - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
        The claim that people generally find use in things they spend money on isn't a hyped idea.
        wpietri 2y ago
        Again, your failure to even understand my point, or to even ask questions that might lead you to understanding it, makes me think you are not interested in having a serious discussion, but instead are riding the hype train.
        danielmarkbruce 2y ago
        "Everyone who believes in LLMs are on the hype train, the usage is fake, and it's just like every other hyped thing that didn't work out, prove to me otherwise" is just a weak argument. People understand it, you are one of a large group of people making a similar point. It's anecdata, but it seems every time this argument is made, it's from a person arguing by analogy rather than first principles, and the person don't really understand how LLMs work and haven't made any real effort to use them. You might not be in this bucket but making an analogy to the get rich quick but no real underlying use case blockchain community suggests you are.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago

The blockchain stuff wasn't usage revenue, it was people trying to make a quick buck revenue. VR didn't have significant sales of applications, all the sales were hardware which was shelfware. Billions of dollars of real usage revenue is an entirely different thing. Bubble 1.0 is akin to Nvidia revenue - lots of dollars being spent on training, less on inference. Very unclear how much of it ever sees a return. There is a big difference between Nvidia revenue and ChatGPT revenue as far as the issue you are discussing. Inference revenue = real, training revenue (for infra providers) = very speculative.

wpietri 2y ago
Do you have stats on that "real usage revenue"? Because I don't think inference revenue alone qualifies. There are a lot of "AI" applications that are pumping money into the inference providers, but how much is real, sustainable, socially valuable usage is, as I've said a few times not yet determined.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  The 3.4 billion of revenue is a stat. And it's the most meaningful. If a human voluntarily pays money for something you should assume they find it useful/valuable. It's not strictly true (various addictions etc), but the burden of proof to show otherwise is on you.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    The specific number of $3.4 billion is not a stat. It's what Altmain claims they are "on pace" for. Even taking it as real, you're the one making claims about how much of it is "real usage revenue". The burden of proof for that is on you. But as is typical for people riding a hype wave, you have not only repeatedly failed to do so, but you also apparently fail to understand countervailing concerns. That you are, in a fashion also typical for the true believer, trying to insist it's my job to prove the hype wrong, marks you as entirely unserious about honest inquiry here. Given that, I'm done.
    - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
      The claim that people generally find use in things they spend money on isn't a hyped idea.
      - wpietri 2y ago
        Again, your failure to even understand my point, or to even ask questions that might lead you to understanding it, makes me think you are not interested in having a serious discussion, but instead are riding the hype train.
        danielmarkbruce 2y ago
        "Everyone who believes in LLMs are on the hype train, the usage is fake, and it's just like every other hyped thing that didn't work out, prove to me otherwise" is just a weak argument. People understand it, you are one of a large group of people making a similar point. It's anecdata, but it seems every time this argument is made, it's from a person arguing by analogy rather than first principles, and the person don't really understand how LLMs work and haven't made any real effort to use them. You might not be in this bucket but making an analogy to the get rich quick but no real underlying use case blockchain community suggests you are.