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Every article I've seen so far on LLM datacenter investment is either very bullish or very bearish and I haven't seen sober exploration of whether it might be n

Every article I've seen so far on LLM datacenter investment is either very bullish or very bearish and I haven't seen sober exploration of whether it might be neither. What happens to the tech world if it turns out that LLMs really are the 20-billion dollar product category that every industry needs to explore to maintain competitiveness but they will never be the 500-billion dollar product category that changes the world? What if they are stuck at the middle-level of importance forever? Do Microsoft, Meta, etc need a federal bailout if that happens?

bloomingkales 2y ago
They don't know anything dude. You can't read finance articles on AI. They cannot even install ollama locally. This means the only information they can provide is conjecture and rumors on how money is moving, absolutely nothing else. The Deepseek reporting exposed them. Huang expressed the truth. The reasoning feature is a loop, which means more hits to the LLM, which means more compute. So more datacenters.
- OgsyedIE 2y ago
  I totally agree about all of the flaws, but I don't see that as an obstacle to profitability under the typical Schumpeterian conditions of business. After all, look at how much money Myanmar makes from enslaving people to work as unpaid internet catfishers.
- krainboltgreene 2y ago
  This doesn’t make sense as an analysis. Financial journalist didn’t know how factories, steam engines, websites, data centers, or cryptocurrency worked either.
  - onionisafruit 2y ago
    That doesn’t undermine their point.
    - krainboltgreene 2y ago
      It’s foundational to their point.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    Okay, let me increase the resolution. Financial analyst and Gizmodo are not exactly a pair. Quite frankly, Financial analyst and CNBC or Bloomberg are not exactly a couple either. Those things don't go together. As in, which of the following does not belong in the group: 1. Gizmodo 2. CNBC 3. Bloomberg 4. Financial Analyst You might think it's Gizmodo, but it's not. The first three are the same is my point, and there's no way a financial analyst is even there (let alone a technical one that knows about AI). Now what if I told you the thing you thought doesn't belong there (Gizmodo) and the thing I'm telling you doesn't belong there (Financial Analyst) are in the same place? You should be confounded, it's ridiculous (Gizmodo Financial Analyst, huh?). My last sentence is the best joke of the year, trust me on that. They have no credibility across the board (across all three of those things) is sort of the criticism.
    - krainboltgreene 2y ago
      Take your meds.
      - bloomingkales 2y ago
        Found the Gizmodo Financial Analyst.
joe_the_user 2y ago
What happens to the tech world if it turns out that LLMs really are the 20-billion dollar product category that every industry needs to explore to maintain competitiveness but they will never be the 500-billion dollar product category that changes the world? You still have a huge build-up and a bust? Earlier real products, from railroads to the Internet, have followed this pattern. Even more, AI has a plausible-sounding argument for being a 500b product or even $infinity dollars. I don't think it's correct with current tech but it's wrongness rests on subtle things. People who seem at least as smart as Gary Marcus (AI critic) seem honestly convinced this AI generation of is going to create AGI. An investor who doesn't know who's right is going to want to cover their bets.
- poisonborz 2y ago
  You could have made similar arguments for VR/AR, yet here we are.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Every article I've seen so far on LLM datacenter investment is either very bullish or very bearish and I haven't seen sober exploration of whether it might be neither. Because bullish articles are bought by AI companies and/or encouraged by editors because AI is the hot traffic keyword right now, hence tons and tons of articles about utterly banal ML integrations being rebranded as AI so Wall Street will think your fuckin Microwave company is ushering in Skynet. And on the flip side the bearish articles are because we're now almost 2 years into this hype cycle that Silicon Valley is trying so incredibly hard to make us believe is real, and we've had, yes, a few minor interesting things, but the vast majority of every part of it is unwanted integration of chat-bots into products that do not need chat-bots, or the replacement of lower-paid staff with a ChatGPT integration that doesn't work. There is, and I cannot stress this enough, so incredibly little consumer interest in this tech. Nobody. Fucking. Cares. In fact, I read something recently that including AI in product descriptions actually hurts the rate of purchase by people because they're so fucking sick of it. Now mind you, that's not going to kill AI companies, because AI companies are not worth 50 bazillion dollars on the back of chatbots. They are worth all that because of the "usefulness" of varying legitimacy in the defense industry, the insurance industry, border security, all manner of things that will almost without fail make your or other people's lives meaningfully worse, but they'll do it in a cost-effective way that reinforces existing capital and power. That's why it's worth so much money.
- OgsyedIE 2y ago
  The recent advances in image recognition have millions of minor applications to agriculture, manufacturing and logistics, but the net effect is workforce reduction.
- arresin 2y ago
  > Nobody. Fucking. Cares. It’s so weird to talk to my normie family members about it. Things that are really cool to me they are really bored by.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I mean I think LLMs are quite cool, but like, that’s it. They’re cool. My Corvette is also very cool and I love it very much, but it would be silly to say it’s the ideal car for everyone. It’s wildly impractical for carrying any cargo, and while efficient, if you’re driving it and having fun, it isn’t anymore, haha. Genuinely curious though: what is it you find so compelling about them as a product?
nebula8804 2y ago
>Do Microsoft, Meta, etc need a federal bailout if that happens? There is no doubt that they will get one if they need it so why worry about it?
- arresin 2y ago
  Crazier things have happened unfortunately.
bruce511 2y ago
You don't need to worry. MS and Meta both have very healthy revenue streams, and billions of cash lying around. Their current loans are easily covered. As much as the markets love to talk about investment values, and valuations, this really means very little. A lot of the investment is in kind, not cash, and the marginal cost of the kind is often a tiny fraction of the marginal cost. Bailouts to US auto manufacturers occurred because they were both unprofitable and loaded with debt they could not pay for. Ditto the bank bailouts of 2008. MS paid billions for Skype and billions more for Nokia. Nokia (windows phone) died soon, Skype will be turned off this May. Neither caused a stir, when your cash on hand is measured in tend of billions big investments are not risky.

bloomingkales 2y ago

They don't know anything dude. You can't read finance articles on AI. They cannot even install ollama locally. This means the only information they can provide is conjecture and rumors on how money is moving, absolutely nothing else. The Deepseek reporting exposed them. Huang expressed the truth. The reasoning feature is a loop, which means more hits to the LLM, which means more compute. So more datacenters.

OgsyedIE 2y ago
I totally agree about all of the flaws, but I don't see that as an obstacle to profitability under the typical Schumpeterian conditions of business. After all, look at how much money Myanmar makes from enslaving people to work as unpaid internet catfishers.
krainboltgreene 2y ago
This doesn’t make sense as an analysis. Financial journalist didn’t know how factories, steam engines, websites, data centers, or cryptocurrency worked either.
- onionisafruit 2y ago
  That doesn’t undermine their point.
  - krainboltgreene 2y ago
    It’s foundational to their point.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  Okay, let me increase the resolution. Financial analyst and Gizmodo are not exactly a pair. Quite frankly, Financial analyst and CNBC or Bloomberg are not exactly a couple either. Those things don't go together. As in, which of the following does not belong in the group: 1. Gizmodo 2. CNBC 3. Bloomberg 4. Financial Analyst You might think it's Gizmodo, but it's not. The first three are the same is my point, and there's no way a financial analyst is even there (let alone a technical one that knows about AI). Now what if I told you the thing you thought doesn't belong there (Gizmodo) and the thing I'm telling you doesn't belong there (Financial Analyst) are in the same place? You should be confounded, it's ridiculous (Gizmodo Financial Analyst, huh?). My last sentence is the best joke of the year, trust me on that. They have no credibility across the board (across all three of those things) is sort of the criticism.
  - krainboltgreene 2y ago
    Take your meds.
    - bloomingkales 2y ago
      Found the Gizmodo Financial Analyst.

joe_the_user 2y ago

What happens to the tech world if it turns out that LLMs really are the 20-billion dollar product category that every industry needs to explore to maintain competitiveness but they will never be the 500-billion dollar product category that changes the world? You still have a huge build-up and a bust? Earlier real products, from railroads to the Internet, have followed this pattern. Even more, AI has a plausible-sounding argument for being a 500b product or even $infinity dollars. I don't think it's correct with current tech but it's wrongness rests on subtle things. People who seem at least as smart as Gary Marcus (AI critic) seem honestly convinced this AI generation of is going to create AGI. An investor who doesn't know who's right is going to want to cover their bets.

poisonborz 2y ago
You could have made similar arguments for VR/AR, yet here we are.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Every article I've seen so far on LLM datacenter investment is either very bullish or very bearish and I haven't seen sober exploration of whether it might be neither. Because bullish articles are bought by AI companies and/or encouraged by editors because AI is the hot traffic keyword right now, hence tons and tons of articles about utterly banal ML integrations being rebranded as AI so Wall Street will think your fuckin Microwave company is ushering in Skynet. And on the flip side the bearish articles are because we're now almost 2 years into this hype cycle that Silicon Valley is trying so incredibly hard to make us believe is real, and we've had, yes, a few minor interesting things, but the vast majority of every part of it is unwanted integration of chat-bots into products that do not need chat-bots, or the replacement of lower-paid staff with a ChatGPT integration that doesn't work. There is, and I cannot stress this enough, so incredibly little consumer interest in this tech. Nobody. Fucking. Cares. In fact, I read something recently that including AI in product descriptions actually hurts the rate of purchase by people because they're so fucking sick of it. Now mind you, that's not going to kill AI companies, because AI companies are not worth 50 bazillion dollars on the back of chatbots. They are worth all that because of the "usefulness" of varying legitimacy in the defense industry, the insurance industry, border security, all manner of things that will almost without fail make your or other people's lives meaningfully worse, but they'll do it in a cost-effective way that reinforces existing capital and power. That's why it's worth so much money.

OgsyedIE 2y ago
The recent advances in image recognition have millions of minor applications to agriculture, manufacturing and logistics, but the net effect is workforce reduction.
arresin 2y ago
> Nobody. Fucking. Cares. It’s so weird to talk to my normie family members about it. Things that are really cool to me they are really bored by.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I mean I think LLMs are quite cool, but like, that’s it. They’re cool. My Corvette is also very cool and I love it very much, but it would be silly to say it’s the ideal car for everyone. It’s wildly impractical for carrying any cargo, and while efficient, if you’re driving it and having fun, it isn’t anymore, haha. Genuinely curious though: what is it you find so compelling about them as a product?

nebula8804 2y ago

>Do Microsoft, Meta, etc need a federal bailout if that happens? There is no doubt that they will get one if they need it so why worry about it?

arresin 2y ago
Crazier things have happened unfortunately.

bruce511 2y ago

You don't need to worry. MS and Meta both have very healthy revenue streams, and billions of cash lying around. Their current loans are easily covered. As much as the markets love to talk about investment values, and valuations, this really means very little. A lot of the investment is in kind, not cash, and the marginal cost of the kind is often a tiny fraction of the marginal cost. Bailouts to US auto manufacturers occurred because they were both unprofitable and loaded with debt they could not pay for. Ditto the bank bailouts of 2008. MS paid billions for Skype and billions more for Nokia. Nokia (windows phone) died soon, Skype will be turned off this May. Neither caused a stir, when your cash on hand is measured in tend of billions big investments are not risky.