8 ms·

The thing that drives me crazy is that it isn't even clear if AI is providing economic value yet (am I missing something there?). Right now trillions of dollar

by dbcpp 9mo ago

The thing that drives me crazy is that it isn't even clear if AI is providing economic value yet (am I missing something there?). Right now trillions of dollars are being spent on a speculative technology that isn't benefitting anyone right now. The messaging from AI companies is "we're going to cure cancer" and "you're going to live to be 150 years old" (I don't believe these claims!). The messaging should be "everything will be cheaper" (but this hasn't come true yet!).

MetaWhirledPeas 9mo ago
Well it made the Taco Bell drive through better. So there's that.
- zeroonetwothree 9mo ago
  Genuinely curious: how did it do that? (I don’t go to Taco Bell)
  - lutharvaughn 9mo ago
    You talk to an AI that goes incredibly slow and tries to get you to add extras to your order. I would say it has made the experience more annoying for me personally. Not a huge issue in the grand scheme of things but just another small step in the direction of making things worse. Although you could break the whole thing by ordering 18000 waters which is funny. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgyk2p55g8o.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgyk2p55g8o.amp
  - myvoiceismypass 9mo ago
    I think it is a reference to this previous HN posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45162220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45162220 AI Darwin Awards 2025 Nominee: Taco Bell Corporation for deploying voice AI ordering systems at 500+ drive-throughs and discovering that artificial intelligence meets its match at “extra sauce, no cilantro, and make it weird."
ludicrousdispla 9mo ago
Yeah, comparing this with research investments into fusion power, I expect fusion power to yield far more benefit (although I could be wrong), and sooner.
- layer8 9mo ago
  What I’m afraid of is the combination of cheap fusion power and AI. ;)
YC39487493287 9mo ago
You are correct that the AI industry has produced no value for the economy, but the speculation on AI is the only thing keeping the U.S. economy from dropping into an economic cataclysm. The US economy has been dependent on the idea of infinite growth through innovation since 2008, and the tech industry is all out of innovation. So the only thing they can do is keep building datacenters and pray that an AGI somehow wakes up when they hit the magic number of GPUs. Then the elites can finally kill off all the proles like they've been itching to since the Communist Manifesto was first written.
Workaccount2 9mo ago
I used to type out long posts explaining how LLMs have been enormously beneficial (for their price) for myself and my company. Ironically it's the very MIT report that "found AI to be a flop" (remember the "MIT study finds almost every AI initiative fails"), that also found that virtually every single worker is using AI (just not company AI, hence the flop part). At this point, it's only people with an ideological opposition still holding this view. It's like trying to convince gear head grandpa that manual transmissions aren't relevant anymore.
- PunchyHamster 9mo ago
  It's been good at enabling the clueless to get to performance of a junior developer, and saving few % of the time for the mid to senior level developer (at best). Also amazing at automating stuff for scammers... The cost is just not worth the benefit. If it was just an AI company using profits from AI to improve AI that would be another thing but we're in massive speculative bubble that ruined not only computer hardware prices (that affect every tech firm) but power prices (that affect everyone). All coz govt want to hide recession they themselves created because on paper it makes line go up > I used to type out long posts explaining how LLMs have been enormously beneficial (for their price) for myself and my company. Well then congratulations on being in the 5%. That doesn't really change the point.
  - jama211 9mo ago
    I’m a senior developer and it has been hugely helpful for me in both saving time and effort and improving the quality of my output. You’re making a lot of confident statements and not backing them up with anything except your feelings on the matter.
    - realmadludite 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - llmslave2 9mo ago
      Aren't you doing the same? Assuming you haven't actually measured your productivity or quality of work with & without gen AI.
lokar 9mo ago
Not all of AI is consumer LLM chatbots and image generators. AI has a massive positive impact, and has for decades.
- NekkoDroid 9mo ago
  Sure, but that honestly isn't the part which is getting trillions of imaginary dollars are being pumped into. Science AI is in the best of cases is getting the scraps I would say.
- CerryuDu 9mo ago
  > Not all of AI is consumer LLM chatbots And as long as that used to be the case, not many people revolted.
gtowey 9mo ago
> Right now trillions of dollars are being spent on a speculative technology that isn't benefitting anyone right now. It has enormous benefits to the people who control the companies raking in billions in investor funding. And to the early stage investors who see the valuations skyrocket and can sell their stake to the bagholders.
- lacy_tinpot 9mo ago
  Are people still in denial about the daily usage of AI? It's interesting people from the old technological sphere viciously revolt against the emerging new thing. Actually I think this is the clearest indication of a new technology emerging, imo. If people are viciously attacking some new technology you can be guaranteed that this new technology is important because what's actually happening is that the new thing is a direct threat to the people that are against it.
  - gtowey 9mo ago
    People attacked leaded gasoline as a collosal mistake even as the fuel corporations promoted it. "Because people attack it, it therefore means it's good" is a overly reductionist logical fallacy. Sometimes people resist for good reasons.
    - lacy_tinpot 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - grehbies 9mo ago
        >Because leaded gas is the same thing as people using a new technology like AI. It's not the same, but it's not necessarily any good. I've observed the following, after ~2 weeks of free ChatGPT Plus access (as an artist who is trying to give the technology a chance, despite the vociferous (not vicious, geez) objections of many of my peers): It's addictive (possibly on purpose). AI systems frequently return imperfect outputs. Users are trained to repeat until the desired output comes. Obviously, this can be abused by sophisticated-enough systems, pushing outputs that are JUST outside the user's desire so that they have to continue using it. This could conceivably happen independent of obvious incentives like ads or pay credits; even free systems are incentivized to use this dark pattern, as it keeps the user coming back, building a habit that can be monetized later. Which leads into: it's gambling. It's a crapshoot whether the output will be what the user desires. As a result, every prompt is like a slot pull, exacerbated by the wait to generate an answer. (This is also why the generation is shown being typed/developed; the information in those preliminary outputs is not high-enough fidelity or presented in a readable way; instead, they're bits of visual stimuli meant to inure your reward system to the task, similar to how Robinhood's stock prices don't simply change second-to-second, but "roll" to them with a stimulating animation). That's just a small subset of the possible effects on a user over time. Far from freeing users to create, my experience has been one of having to fight ChatGPT and its Images model, as well as the undesirable behaviors it seems to be trying to draw out of me.
pluc 9mo ago
Are you waiting for things to get cheaper? Have you been around the last 20 years or so? Nothing gets cheaper for consumers in a capitalist society. I remember in Canada, in 2001 right when americans were at war with the entire middle east and gas prices for the first time went over a dollar a litre. People kept saying that it was understandable that it affected gas prices because the supply chain got more expensive. It never went below a dollar since. Why would it? You got people to accept a higher price, you're just gonna walk that back when problems go away? Or would you maybe take the difference as profits? Since then it seems the industry has learned to have its supply exclusively in war zones, we're at 1.70$ now. Pipeline blows up in Russia? Hike. China snooping around Taiwan? Hike. US bombing Yemen? Hike. Israel committing genocide? Hike. ISIS? Hike. There is no scenario where prices go down except to quell unrest. AI will not make anything cheaper.
- jama211 9mo ago
  Except petrol is significantly cheaper than it was once you account for inflation.
  - Y-bar 9mo ago
    And once you account for externalities, is it still cheaper?
    - jama211 9mo ago
      On average yes, that’s why it’s a bad example. There are many excellent examples of things that can be used to show the massive cost of living issue, wage stagnation, etc. it’s just petrol isn’t a great one.
  - pluc 9mo ago
    For who?
    - jama211 9mo ago
      Everyone. That’s what “the price is lower” means. Don’t paint me as someone who doesn’t understand wage stagnation or cost of living crisis, I fully understand and am on board with those issues. My point is simply that petrol is a bad example the way OP used it.
qudat 9mo ago
Andrej talked about this in a podcast with dwarkesh: the same is true for the internet. You will not find a massive spike when LLMs were released. It becomes embedded in the economy and you’ll see a gradual rise. Further, the kind of impact that the internet had took decades, the same will be true for LLMs.
- tclancy 9mo ago
  You could argue that if I started marketing dog shit too though. The trick is only applying your argument to the things that will go on to be good. No one’s quite there yet. Probably just around the corner though.
- mvdtnz 9mo ago
  How convenient for people like Andrej. He can make any wild claim he likes about the impact but never has to show it, "trust me bro".
jama211 9mo ago
It’s definitely providing some value but it’s incredibly overvalued. Much like the dot com bust didn’t mean that online websites were bad or useless technology, only that people over invested into a bubble.
dartharva 9mo ago
It's the Red Queen hypothesis in action - AI is a relative and compounding capability with influence across broad sectors; the cost of losing out for the parties involved is severely more than the cost of over-investing. It's collective rational panic.

by dbcpp 9mo ago

MetaWhirledPeas 9mo ago

Well it made the Taco Bell drive through better. So there's that.

zeroonetwothree 9mo ago
Genuinely curious: how did it do that? (I don’t go to Taco Bell)
- lutharvaughn 9mo ago
  You talk to an AI that goes incredibly slow and tries to get you to add extras to your order. I would say it has made the experience more annoying for me personally. Not a huge issue in the grand scheme of things but just another small step in the direction of making things worse. Although you could break the whole thing by ordering 18000 waters which is funny. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgyk2p55g8o.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgyk2p55g8o.amp
- myvoiceismypass 9mo ago
  I think it is a reference to this previous HN posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45162220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45162220 AI Darwin Awards 2025 Nominee: Taco Bell Corporation for deploying voice AI ordering systems at 500+ drive-throughs and discovering that artificial intelligence meets its match at “extra sauce, no cilantro, and make it weird."

ludicrousdispla 9mo ago

Yeah, comparing this with research investments into fusion power, I expect fusion power to yield far more benefit (although I could be wrong), and sooner.

layer8 9mo ago
What I’m afraid of is the combination of cheap fusion power and AI. ;)

YC39487493287 9mo ago

You are correct that the AI industry has produced no value for the economy, but the speculation on AI is the only thing keeping the U.S. economy from dropping into an economic cataclysm. The US economy has been dependent on the idea of infinite growth through innovation since 2008, and the tech industry is all out of innovation. So the only thing they can do is keep building datacenters and pray that an AGI somehow wakes up when they hit the magic number of GPUs. Then the elites can finally kill off all the proles like they've been itching to since the Communist Manifesto was first written.

Workaccount2 9mo ago

I used to type out long posts explaining how LLMs have been enormously beneficial (for their price) for myself and my company. Ironically it's the very MIT report that "found AI to be a flop" (remember the "MIT study finds almost every AI initiative fails"), that also found that virtually every single worker is using AI (just not company AI, hence the flop part). At this point, it's only people with an ideological opposition still holding this view. It's like trying to convince gear head grandpa that manual transmissions aren't relevant anymore.

PunchyHamster 9mo ago
It's been good at enabling the clueless to get to performance of a junior developer, and saving few % of the time for the mid to senior level developer (at best). Also amazing at automating stuff for scammers... The cost is just not worth the benefit. If it was just an AI company using profits from AI to improve AI that would be another thing but we're in massive speculative bubble that ruined not only computer hardware prices (that affect every tech firm) but power prices (that affect everyone). All coz govt want to hide recession they themselves created because on paper it makes line go up > I used to type out long posts explaining how LLMs have been enormously beneficial (for their price) for myself and my company. Well then congratulations on being in the 5%. That doesn't really change the point.
- jama211 9mo ago
  I’m a senior developer and it has been hugely helpful for me in both saving time and effort and improving the quality of my output. You’re making a lot of confident statements and not backing them up with anything except your feelings on the matter.
  - realmadludite 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - llmslave2 9mo ago
    Aren't you doing the same? Assuming you haven't actually measured your productivity or quality of work with & without gen AI.

lokar 9mo ago

Not all of AI is consumer LLM chatbots and image generators. AI has a massive positive impact, and has for decades.

NekkoDroid 9mo ago
Sure, but that honestly isn't the part which is getting trillions of imaginary dollars are being pumped into. Science AI is in the best of cases is getting the scraps I would say.
CerryuDu 9mo ago
> Not all of AI is consumer LLM chatbots And as long as that used to be the case, not many people revolted.

gtowey 9mo ago

> Right now trillions of dollars are being spent on a speculative technology that isn't benefitting anyone right now. It has enormous benefits to the people who control the companies raking in billions in investor funding. And to the early stage investors who see the valuations skyrocket and can sell their stake to the bagholders.

lacy_tinpot 9mo ago
Are people still in denial about the daily usage of AI? It's interesting people from the old technological sphere viciously revolt against the emerging new thing. Actually I think this is the clearest indication of a new technology emerging, imo. If people are viciously attacking some new technology you can be guaranteed that this new technology is important because what's actually happening is that the new thing is a direct threat to the people that are against it.
- gtowey 9mo ago
  People attacked leaded gasoline as a collosal mistake even as the fuel corporations promoted it. "Because people attack it, it therefore means it's good" is a overly reductionist logical fallacy. Sometimes people resist for good reasons.
  - lacy_tinpot 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - grehbies 9mo ago
      >Because leaded gas is the same thing as people using a new technology like AI. It's not the same, but it's not necessarily any good. I've observed the following, after ~2 weeks of free ChatGPT Plus access (as an artist who is trying to give the technology a chance, despite the vociferous (not vicious, geez) objections of many of my peers): It's addictive (possibly on purpose). AI systems frequently return imperfect outputs. Users are trained to repeat until the desired output comes. Obviously, this can be abused by sophisticated-enough systems, pushing outputs that are JUST outside the user's desire so that they have to continue using it. This could conceivably happen independent of obvious incentives like ads or pay credits; even free systems are incentivized to use this dark pattern, as it keeps the user coming back, building a habit that can be monetized later. Which leads into: it's gambling. It's a crapshoot whether the output will be what the user desires. As a result, every prompt is like a slot pull, exacerbated by the wait to generate an answer. (This is also why the generation is shown being typed/developed; the information in those preliminary outputs is not high-enough fidelity or presented in a readable way; instead, they're bits of visual stimuli meant to inure your reward system to the task, similar to how Robinhood's stock prices don't simply change second-to-second, but "roll" to them with a stimulating animation). That's just a small subset of the possible effects on a user over time. Far from freeing users to create, my experience has been one of having to fight ChatGPT and its Images model, as well as the undesirable behaviors it seems to be trying to draw out of me.

pluc 9mo ago

Are you waiting for things to get cheaper? Have you been around the last 20 years or so? Nothing gets cheaper for consumers in a capitalist society. I remember in Canada, in 2001 right when americans were at war with the entire middle east and gas prices for the first time went over a dollar a litre. People kept saying that it was understandable that it affected gas prices because the supply chain got more expensive. It never went below a dollar since. Why would it? You got people to accept a higher price, you're just gonna walk that back when problems go away? Or would you maybe take the difference as profits? Since then it seems the industry has learned to have its supply exclusively in war zones, we're at 1.70$ now. Pipeline blows up in Russia? Hike. China snooping around Taiwan? Hike. US bombing Yemen? Hike. Israel committing genocide? Hike. ISIS? Hike. There is no scenario where prices go down except to quell unrest. AI will not make anything cheaper.

jama211 9mo ago
Except petrol is significantly cheaper than it was once you account for inflation.
- Y-bar 9mo ago
  And once you account for externalities, is it still cheaper?
  - jama211 9mo ago
    On average yes, that’s why it’s a bad example. There are many excellent examples of things that can be used to show the massive cost of living issue, wage stagnation, etc. it’s just petrol isn’t a great one.
- pluc 9mo ago
  For who?
  - jama211 9mo ago
    Everyone. That’s what “the price is lower” means. Don’t paint me as someone who doesn’t understand wage stagnation or cost of living crisis, I fully understand and am on board with those issues. My point is simply that petrol is a bad example the way OP used it.

qudat 9mo ago

Andrej talked about this in a podcast with dwarkesh: the same is true for the internet. You will not find a massive spike when LLMs were released. It becomes embedded in the economy and you’ll see a gradual rise. Further, the kind of impact that the internet had took decades, the same will be true for LLMs.

tclancy 9mo ago
You could argue that if I started marketing dog shit too though. The trick is only applying your argument to the things that will go on to be good. No one’s quite there yet. Probably just around the corner though.
mvdtnz 9mo ago
How convenient for people like Andrej. He can make any wild claim he likes about the impact but never has to show it, "trust me bro".

jama211 9mo ago

It’s definitely providing some value but it’s incredibly overvalued. Much like the dot com bust didn’t mean that online websites were bad or useless technology, only that people over invested into a bubble.

dartharva 9mo ago

It's the Red Queen hypothesis in action - AI is a relative and compounding capability with influence across broad sectors; the cost of losing out for the parties involved is severely more than the cost of over-investing. It's collective rational panic.