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Too big to fail, nation state edition? But yeah. I looked at how my pension funds are invested, and it's like 70% in the US. Even more than the sovereign wealt

Too big to fail, nation state edition? But yeah. I looked at how my pension funds are invested, and it's like 70% in the US. Even more than the sovereign wealth fund, which is apparently around 50% (if a quick AI search can be trusted). Thing is, I'm not sure I will like the world where OpenAI and co. are as wildly successful as their valuation suggests either. So maybe I should invest in them, so that if it comes to pass, I at least have money?

dangus 1y ago
I wouldn’t worry about being 70% of the US, especially since you have that 30% not in the US. Many corporations are listed in the US even if they do a lot/most/all of their business overseas. Heck, there are Chinese companies that sell nothing in the USA listed on the US stock exchanges like XPENG.
supermatt 1y ago
> if it comes to pass, I at least have money? I bet 20 GBP that Brexit would happen for that reason. Ended up with around 100 GBP to drown my sorrows :(
ben_w 1y ago
> Thing is, I'm not sure I will like the world where OpenAI and co. are as wildly successful as their valuation suggests either. So maybe I should invest in them, so that if it comes to pass, I at least have money? I think their current valuation isn't suggestive of a world that's going to change very much. If investors were taking seriously the idea that this could be "it" with AI enabling even full automation — not superhuman AI, not even a fast learner, just AI that can fully automate everything we've currently got and not be limited to the subset of desk jobs that LLMs can do OK — it would allow the economy to double in size in whatever wall-clock time period it takes for the AI to gather enough training data by simply observing human workers doing the things the AI has not yet learned to do. If self-driving cars are a good example in this regard, that observation time may quite large: Current AI has not yet mastered full self-driving of cars in general conditions, despite all the cameras on cars gathering data about how all the other (human-driven) cars around them behave in real conditions. To take a somewhat arbitrary cut-off points for the sake of illustration, going from the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge to today in self-driving cars, would suggest a growth of 3.9%/year. Global GDP growth of 3.9%/year would be worth a much higher valuation than the AI companies are getting, and yet still be slow change.
- netdevphoenix 1y ago
  > f investors were taking seriously the idea that this could be "it" with AI enabling even full automation — not superhuman AI, not even a fast learner, just AI that can fully automate everything we've currently got and not be limited to the subset of desk jobs that LLMs can do OK — it would allow the economy to double in size in whatever wall-clock time period it takes for the AI to gather enough training data by simply observing human workers doing the things the AI has not yet learned to do. This assumes that the economy and the governments will happily suffer the electricity and financial demands that Sam and co would give and the world would accept. Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. My take in late 2023 was that GPT-5 would either further push transformers into the "there is still a real chance transformers might be IT" or will become the unquestionable sign that transformers have peaked as a general technology. My take in 2024 was that the AI bubble was going to be noticed. My take in 2025 is that AI companies (other than the big ones like OpenAI) are going to struggle getting funding.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > This assumes that the economy and the governments will happily suffer the electricity and financial demands that Sam and co would give and the world would accept. Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. Most economic growth since electricity became economically relevant assumes that, the only thing that changes are the names of who (supplies and) demands the energy. > Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. Ignore Sam's, assume mine in the hypotheticals of my comment: even something slower than Musk's ongoing failure to make FSD is still a massive increase over the status quo that justifies the price, yet it can do so in a way that's still not going to feel like a radical shift to live through. > My take in 2025 is that AI companies (other than the big ones like OpenAI) are going to struggle getting funding. Mine is that there's definitely a bubble overall, but not necessarily in any single player: who wins the pop and who disappears is unclear, but whoever does survive can easily reduce spending when there's no competition and they're consequently not having to put 1/3rd of their compute budget into the next marginal improvement needed to beat whoever else just beat them.
nradov 1y ago
You can't invest directly in OpenAI because it's privately held. Many investors have been putting their money into OpenAI's suppliers such as Nvidia.
- nothercastle 1y ago
  Clearly you just need to invest in any company open ai might express interest in as they all go up 20% on public announcements

dangus 1y ago

I wouldn’t worry about being 70% of the US, especially since you have that 30% not in the US. Many corporations are listed in the US even if they do a lot/most/all of their business overseas. Heck, there are Chinese companies that sell nothing in the USA listed on the US stock exchanges like XPENG.

supermatt 1y ago

> if it comes to pass, I at least have money? I bet 20 GBP that Brexit would happen for that reason. Ended up with around 100 GBP to drown my sorrows :(

ben_w 1y ago

> Thing is, I'm not sure I will like the world where OpenAI and co. are as wildly successful as their valuation suggests either. So maybe I should invest in them, so that if it comes to pass, I at least have money? I think their current valuation isn't suggestive of a world that's going to change very much. If investors were taking seriously the idea that this could be "it" with AI enabling even full automation — not superhuman AI, not even a fast learner, just AI that can fully automate everything we've currently got and not be limited to the subset of desk jobs that LLMs can do OK — it would allow the economy to double in size in whatever wall-clock time period it takes for the AI to gather enough training data by simply observing human workers doing the things the AI has not yet learned to do. If self-driving cars are a good example in this regard, that observation time may quite large: Current AI has not yet mastered full self-driving of cars in general conditions, despite all the cameras on cars gathering data about how all the other (human-driven) cars around them behave in real conditions. To take a somewhat arbitrary cut-off points for the sake of illustration, going from the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge to today in self-driving cars, would suggest a growth of 3.9%/year. Global GDP growth of 3.9%/year would be worth a much higher valuation than the AI companies are getting, and yet still be slow change.

netdevphoenix 1y ago
> f investors were taking seriously the idea that this could be "it" with AI enabling even full automation — not superhuman AI, not even a fast learner, just AI that can fully automate everything we've currently got and not be limited to the subset of desk jobs that LLMs can do OK — it would allow the economy to double in size in whatever wall-clock time period it takes for the AI to gather enough training data by simply observing human workers doing the things the AI has not yet learned to do. This assumes that the economy and the governments will happily suffer the electricity and financial demands that Sam and co would give and the world would accept. Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. My take in late 2023 was that GPT-5 would either further push transformers into the "there is still a real chance transformers might be IT" or will become the unquestionable sign that transformers have peaked as a general technology. My take in 2024 was that the AI bubble was going to be noticed. My take in 2025 is that AI companies (other than the big ones like OpenAI) are going to struggle getting funding.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > This assumes that the economy and the governments will happily suffer the electricity and financial demands that Sam and co would give and the world would accept. Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. Most economic growth since electricity became economically relevant assumes that, the only thing that changes are the names of who (supplies and) demands the energy. > Even if Sam's words were true, it is still a leap of faith because there is no data backing those words. Ignore Sam's, assume mine in the hypotheticals of my comment: even something slower than Musk's ongoing failure to make FSD is still a massive increase over the status quo that justifies the price, yet it can do so in a way that's still not going to feel like a radical shift to live through. > My take in 2025 is that AI companies (other than the big ones like OpenAI) are going to struggle getting funding. Mine is that there's definitely a bubble overall, but not necessarily in any single player: who wins the pop and who disappears is unclear, but whoever does survive can easily reduce spending when there's no competition and they're consequently not having to put 1/3rd of their compute budget into the next marginal improvement needed to beat whoever else just beat them.

nradov 1y ago

You can't invest directly in OpenAI because it's privately held. Many investors have been putting their money into OpenAI's suppliers such as Nvidia.

nothercastle 1y ago
Clearly you just need to invest in any company open ai might express interest in as they all go up 20% on public announcements