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It's not good news when this competition comes at cost of a gigantic over inflated bubble, in which all the big players keep on sucking billions from investors

It's not good news when this competition comes at cost of a gigantic over inflated bubble, in which all the big players keep on sucking billions from investors without even having a business model. This hype will burst sooner than later and will trigger yet another global recession. This is untenable.

qgin 2y ago
The premise is that this ultimately replaces all intellectual and physical labor for the rest of time. It’s possible it becomes commoditized as soon as it exists, but in terms of investment dollars it’s either worth as much as you can spend or nothing at all.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > ultimately replaces all intellectual and physical labor for the rest of time Sounds incredibly valuable, but in reality collapses into Butlerian Jihad fairly quickly when you have 90% unemployment. Edit: if the claims are true, then this will be far more destabilizing than social media. What do elections mean when the AI-guided political parties are putting out AI press releases for the AI press summaries, which voters have read out to them through their AI? What happens when >50% of the voters ask the AI who they should vote for? You end up with an AI dictatorship where the levers of discontent are fake.
  - conartist6 2y ago
    Yeah at some point it seems inevitable that if machines do all the work that creates real "value" and people have no comparable value, in a very practical sense we will all be slaves to machines
    - thrance 2y ago
      Like in Dune, we won't be slaves to the machines, but to the people owning the machines.
      - mwigdahl 2y ago
        "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." -- Frank Herbert, _Dune_
        kadushka 2y ago
        Are we free today? For example, I have to work for a living. If I don't, my family and I will be miserable. Let's just hope that future "men with machines" don't decide to kill the rest of us - I'm not sure what use we will be to them.
        fragmede 2y ago
        Your choice is corporations, government, or billionaires. One of those is going to be the "men with machines" that has use for the rest of us.
        qgin 2y ago
        I think this is the key change. We’re already beholden to a “machine” (the economy) that none of us completely understand or control or created explicitly. It has its own goals and tendencies that emerged from the complexity. What AI and robotics does is actually create a machine that has no use for humans at all. Ñ
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Sounds incredibly valuable, but in reality collapses into Butlerian Jihad fairly quickly when you have 90% unemployment. But nobody really knows if that happens or not as a consequence, let alone quickly, because the transition itself only happened at all so far in fiction. Whatever does happen, I think it's going to be a surprise to at a minimum 80% of the population.
Ray20 2y ago
I think business model there pretty simple: to be in the front line when AI will go into the category of landscape-changing trillion dollar technologies. And investors keep pouring their billions exactly for that business model. >This hype will burst sooner than later and will trigger yet another global recession. It seems to small of bubble for global recession. I mean if it is a bubble at all, there is all the reasons to believe that the strategy will work with a significant probability.
- moduspol 2y ago
  IMO that's not really a business model. That's a hope that you can come up with one by being at (or near) the front of the pack if one materializes.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    If that scenario comes to fruition, it's literally the only viable business model. Everyone else gets eaten alive .
    - moduspol 2y ago
      Apparently not. Apparently xAI can catch up in a year. And we already saw what happened with DeepSeek. What does the scenario look like where everyone else gets eaten alive?
      - logicchains 2y ago
        xAI had the help of the world's richest and arguably the world's most powerful man; most other companies don't have that.
    - thegeomaster 2y ago
      Every bubble has a narrative.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    See also: Meta's previous push into VR/AR/Metaverse. They spent a hundred billion to be at the front of the pack when that revolutionary world-changing paradigm-shift took off... which simply didn't happen.
bobxmax 2y ago
ChatGPT is literally generating billions in revenue. Cursor is the fastest growing company of all time. This lame HN trope of LLMs having no business model needs to die.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  Revenue or profit? WeWork at a time also did billions in revenue.
  - phillipcarter 2y ago
    WeWork trapped themselves into a real estate hole, selling services for less than they rented property for. OpenAI is currently in an explicit non-profit seeking mode using a technology that we have demonstrated 10-100x or greater decreases in compute to achieve the same outcomes. This is not a declaration that OpenAI will become wildly profitable. This is just me saying that these aren't comparable companies.
    - linuxftw 2y ago
      WeWork was a scam to enrich the founders of the company. They owned or had interests in many of the properties that WeWork leased from. I'm surprised no one was thrown in prison.
- LorenDB 2y ago
  OpenAI is losing money on their $200/mo (!!) Pro subscription[0]. [0]: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/altman_gpt_profits/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/altman_gpt_profits/
  - sebzim4500 2y ago
    But making money off their subscriptions in general. They lose it all training models and on R&D
    - 2y ago
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
jimbokun 2y ago
The dot com bubble wiped out many billions of dollars in valuation. The dot com bubble also gave us the most valuable companies in history, like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc.
rukuu001 2y ago
It’s a battle royale. Whoever lasts longest gets to profit at leisure
rendang 2y ago
The big companies could crash significantly, but if the technology keeps bringing productivity gains, it will have a big positive impact on GDP over the next decade

qgin 2y ago

The premise is that this ultimately replaces all intellectual and physical labor for the rest of time. It’s possible it becomes commoditized as soon as it exists, but in terms of investment dollars it’s either worth as much as you can spend or nothing at all.

pjc50 2y ago
> ultimately replaces all intellectual and physical labor for the rest of time Sounds incredibly valuable, but in reality collapses into Butlerian Jihad fairly quickly when you have 90% unemployment. Edit: if the claims are true, then this will be far more destabilizing than social media. What do elections mean when the AI-guided political parties are putting out AI press releases for the AI press summaries, which voters have read out to them through their AI? What happens when >50% of the voters ask the AI who they should vote for? You end up with an AI dictatorship where the levers of discontent are fake.
- conartist6 2y ago
  Yeah at some point it seems inevitable that if machines do all the work that creates real "value" and people have no comparable value, in a very practical sense we will all be slaves to machines
  - thrance 2y ago
    Like in Dune, we won't be slaves to the machines, but to the people owning the machines.
    - mwigdahl 2y ago
      "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." -- Frank Herbert, _Dune_
      - kadushka 2y ago
        Are we free today? For example, I have to work for a living. If I don't, my family and I will be miserable. Let's just hope that future "men with machines" don't decide to kill the rest of us - I'm not sure what use we will be to them.
        fragmede 2y ago
        Your choice is corporations, government, or billionaires. One of those is going to be the "men with machines" that has use for the rest of us.
        qgin 2y ago
        I think this is the key change. We’re already beholden to a “machine” (the economy) that none of us completely understand or control or created explicitly. It has its own goals and tendencies that emerged from the complexity. What AI and robotics does is actually create a machine that has no use for humans at all. Ñ
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Sounds incredibly valuable, but in reality collapses into Butlerian Jihad fairly quickly when you have 90% unemployment. But nobody really knows if that happens or not as a consequence, let alone quickly, because the transition itself only happened at all so far in fiction. Whatever does happen, I think it's going to be a surprise to at a minimum 80% of the population.

Ray20 2y ago

I think business model there pretty simple: to be in the front line when AI will go into the category of landscape-changing trillion dollar technologies. And investors keep pouring their billions exactly for that business model. >This hype will burst sooner than later and will trigger yet another global recession. It seems to small of bubble for global recession. I mean if it is a bubble at all, there is all the reasons to believe that the strategy will work with a significant probability.

moduspol 2y ago
IMO that's not really a business model. That's a hope that you can come up with one by being at (or near) the front of the pack if one materializes.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  If that scenario comes to fruition, it's literally the only viable business model. Everyone else gets eaten alive .
  - moduspol 2y ago
    Apparently not. Apparently xAI can catch up in a year. And we already saw what happened with DeepSeek. What does the scenario look like where everyone else gets eaten alive?
    - logicchains 2y ago
      xAI had the help of the world's richest and arguably the world's most powerful man; most other companies don't have that.
  - thegeomaster 2y ago
    Every bubble has a narrative.
- jsheard 2y ago
  See also: Meta's previous push into VR/AR/Metaverse. They spent a hundred billion to be at the front of the pack when that revolutionary world-changing paradigm-shift took off... which simply didn't happen.

bobxmax 2y ago

ChatGPT is literally generating billions in revenue. Cursor is the fastest growing company of all time. This lame HN trope of LLMs having no business model needs to die.

Hamuko 2y ago
Revenue or profit? WeWork at a time also did billions in revenue.
- phillipcarter 2y ago
  WeWork trapped themselves into a real estate hole, selling services for less than they rented property for. OpenAI is currently in an explicit non-profit seeking mode using a technology that we have demonstrated 10-100x or greater decreases in compute to achieve the same outcomes. This is not a declaration that OpenAI will become wildly profitable. This is just me saying that these aren't comparable companies.
  - linuxftw 2y ago
    WeWork was a scam to enrich the founders of the company. They owned or had interests in many of the properties that WeWork leased from. I'm surprised no one was thrown in prison.
LorenDB 2y ago
OpenAI is losing money on their $200/mo (!!) Pro subscription[0]. [0]: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/altman_gpt_profits/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/altman_gpt_profits/
- sebzim4500 2y ago
  But making money off their subscriptions in general. They lose it all training models and on R&D
  - 2y ago

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

jimbokun 2y ago

The dot com bubble wiped out many billions of dollars in valuation. The dot com bubble also gave us the most valuable companies in history, like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

rukuu001 2y ago

It’s a battle royale. Whoever lasts longest gets to profit at leisure

rendang 2y ago

The big companies could crash significantly, but if the technology keeps bringing productivity gains, it will have a big positive impact on GDP over the next decade