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Enron collapsed due to legitimate fraud. To imply Enron is an apt comparison requires assertion that AI companies are actually cooking the books. Is that what y

Enron collapsed due to legitimate fraud. To imply Enron is an apt comparison requires assertion that AI companies are actually cooking the books. Is that what you are saying?

suggala 4mo ago
Circular dealing or round tripping is a form of cooking books and sometimes results in accounting fraud. Especially when circular revenue is booked without cash flow growth. Do you see cash flow growth on any side of these transactions.
Terr_ 4mo ago
Please address the primary point first: Selling some product does not disprove speculation. In the case of Enron, people were obviously speculating in its stock, and that remains true regardless of why it collapsed later, or even whether it collapsed at all. I say "first" because if you still can't agree that speculation in AI stocks even exists, then it's pointless to discuss what people might be doing to exploit or encourage it.
- atleastoptimal 4mo ago
  Speculation exists for every security. However wrt revenue numbers, Anthropic/OpenAI’s revenues are largely made of companies/individuals purchasing tokens. Enron’s was accounting which stated future potential revenue as current earnings. They are not the same. Enron pulled off a lot of shady schemes to hide their accounting practices. All of the “circular deals” AI labs are doing are publicly known and clear to see, so its not like anyone who knows what a circular deal simply knows something everyone doesn’t. Also to be more specific about our point of disagreement, I think we are referring to speculation in different domains. When I brought it up, I am referring to the fact that any companies whose revenue is driven by a speculative bubble (like what precipitated the 2008 crisis) would be at risk of massive losses "if the music stops". Anthropic/OpenAI aren't flipping assets. It is true that VC funding is based on speculation, but their core business model is producing massive revenue growth on selling tokens.
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    It's an interesting point that the token revenue will presumably survive a crash in stock prices. But (IIUC) much of the new infrastructure is funded using stock is it not? So it seems like token revenue theoretically surviving doesn't address the risk to the rest of the economy here. And if the economy takes a large enough hit then presumably so will token spend because someone has to pay for that after all. Sure their actual immediate revenue is driven by concrete numbers but when the rest of the economy is reorganizing itself based on their projected future revenue is the former observation still relevant?
    - atleastoptimal 4mo ago
      That is true, if all the new data centers don’t produce revenue then there will be a crash. However you’d have to bet that the models won’t stop getting better, or if they still keep getting better, that somehow better models does not translate to increased productivity. Would it be wise to look at how AI has progressed over the last 5 years and make that bet?
      - fc417fc802 4mo ago
        It's possible to question the accuracy of the projections without disputing that the numbers are expected to go up. It's not that the new data centers wouldn't produce any revenue but rather that those numbers are where unfounded speculation could be happening. If and when those numbers fail to materialize (or when investors revise their projections) would presumably be the point at which the music stops. Recall that the exchange earlier called into question the similarity or difference to enron. Sure, the current revenue numbers don't appear to be cooked but if the future revenue numbers are unrealistic and everyone is using those future numbers to make their decisions then isn't the end result roughly analogous? Blatant fraud not withstanding of course. Note that I'm not claiming the above to be the case. Merely illustrating the commonality and acknowledging the possibility.
minraws 4mo ago
The ARR were fine but showing skewed quarterly profitability numbers by slowing down research due to hitting compute capacity suggests otherwise. I am certain Anthropic spent less on building the next model this quarter if they make it to profitability due to the shear fact that they don't have enough compute. Which solves the profitability problem with relative ease momentarily. Also just to confirm, AI subscriptions are definitely being sold at a loss how big I don't know but these models are much harder to run. API is definitely being sold at a decent profit. So if you rate limit users and do usage billing + lower research costs which is a money pit temporarily. (Proof is the fact that we don't have a new pre training run since 4.5 yet, they used to do one every 2 releases) 4.9 will probably be the same. Next model Mythos doesn't seem to have a successor yet and was trained previous quarter most likely, they don't seem to have pre trained another one just improved Mythos if at all. As much as I am into AI these attempts to show that there can be a profitable quarter seem like cooking the books, even if we assume no shady dealings otherwise. Unless one of the Labs can say for certain training is going to stop they can't be profitable and I don't think training can stop because marginal gains is all they have. 8-12 months behind narrative for Chinese labs literally is going to kill the company that stops training first. If we assume only a 3-6 month gap once China has more compute, then well then even if they keep training the lack of ability to arbitarily scale data centers in US, will kill them first. DeepSeek V5 might actually just end the AI race for good. Also given Mythos is atleast a 10x model compared to Opus, then it's pricing is likely going to be 10x as well so well token prices are likely never coming down, especially if these companies want to IPO.
- atleastoptimal 4mo ago
  Why would V5 kill the AI race? Do you believe that there are diminishing returns on model intelligence when applied to real-world tasks? I think there are accelerating returns: i.e. a models are still not good enough to be “drop in” remote workers, but once that threshold is passed, the value of each token of inference has a far higher multiplier. This justifies the buildup. However not everyone agrees that model intelligence will continue scaling thus they assert that eventually the economics will hit a wall. >Also given Mythos is atleast a 10x model compared to Opus, then it's pricing is likely going to be 10x as well so well token prices are likely never coming down, especially if these companies want to IPO. I don't know why people say this when cost per unit of intelligence has been going down continuously over the past few years. When Opus 3 was first released, its API cost was $15.00 per million input tokens and $75.00 per million output tokens. Opus 4.8. which is significantly better, is $5.00 per 1 million input tokens and $25.00 per 1 million output tokens
bigbuppo 4mo ago
Remember when nvidia asked us to stop calling them enron because unlike enron they actually admit to doing all the things enron did so it's not illegal?
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

Enron collapsed due to legitimate fraud. To imply Enron is an apt comparison requires assertion that AI companies are actually cooking the books. Is that what you are saying?

suggala 4mo ago

Circular dealing or round tripping is a form of cooking books and sometimes results in accounting fraud. Especially when circular revenue is booked without cash flow growth. Do you see cash flow growth on any side of these transactions.

Terr_ 4mo ago

Please address the primary point first: Selling some product does not disprove speculation. In the case of Enron, people were obviously speculating in its stock, and that remains true regardless of why it collapsed later, or even whether it collapsed at all. I say "first" because if you still can't agree that speculation in AI stocks even exists, then it's pointless to discuss what people might be doing to exploit or encourage it.

atleastoptimal 4mo ago
Speculation exists for every security. However wrt revenue numbers, Anthropic/OpenAI’s revenues are largely made of companies/individuals purchasing tokens. Enron’s was accounting which stated future potential revenue as current earnings. They are not the same. Enron pulled off a lot of shady schemes to hide their accounting practices. All of the “circular deals” AI labs are doing are publicly known and clear to see, so its not like anyone who knows what a circular deal simply knows something everyone doesn’t. Also to be more specific about our point of disagreement, I think we are referring to speculation in different domains. When I brought it up, I am referring to the fact that any companies whose revenue is driven by a speculative bubble (like what precipitated the 2008 crisis) would be at risk of massive losses "if the music stops". Anthropic/OpenAI aren't flipping assets. It is true that VC funding is based on speculation, but their core business model is producing massive revenue growth on selling tokens.
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  It's an interesting point that the token revenue will presumably survive a crash in stock prices. But (IIUC) much of the new infrastructure is funded using stock is it not? So it seems like token revenue theoretically surviving doesn't address the risk to the rest of the economy here. And if the economy takes a large enough hit then presumably so will token spend because someone has to pay for that after all. Sure their actual immediate revenue is driven by concrete numbers but when the rest of the economy is reorganizing itself based on their projected future revenue is the former observation still relevant?
  - atleastoptimal 4mo ago
    That is true, if all the new data centers don’t produce revenue then there will be a crash. However you’d have to bet that the models won’t stop getting better, or if they still keep getting better, that somehow better models does not translate to increased productivity. Would it be wise to look at how AI has progressed over the last 5 years and make that bet?
    - fc417fc802 4mo ago
      It's possible to question the accuracy of the projections without disputing that the numbers are expected to go up. It's not that the new data centers wouldn't produce any revenue but rather that those numbers are where unfounded speculation could be happening. If and when those numbers fail to materialize (or when investors revise their projections) would presumably be the point at which the music stops. Recall that the exchange earlier called into question the similarity or difference to enron. Sure, the current revenue numbers don't appear to be cooked but if the future revenue numbers are unrealistic and everyone is using those future numbers to make their decisions then isn't the end result roughly analogous? Blatant fraud not withstanding of course. Note that I'm not claiming the above to be the case. Merely illustrating the commonality and acknowledging the possibility.

minraws 4mo ago

The ARR were fine but showing skewed quarterly profitability numbers by slowing down research due to hitting compute capacity suggests otherwise. I am certain Anthropic spent less on building the next model this quarter if they make it to profitability due to the shear fact that they don't have enough compute. Which solves the profitability problem with relative ease momentarily. Also just to confirm, AI subscriptions are definitely being sold at a loss how big I don't know but these models are much harder to run. API is definitely being sold at a decent profit. So if you rate limit users and do usage billing + lower research costs which is a money pit temporarily. (Proof is the fact that we don't have a new pre training run since 4.5 yet, they used to do one every 2 releases) 4.9 will probably be the same. Next model Mythos doesn't seem to have a successor yet and was trained previous quarter most likely, they don't seem to have pre trained another one just improved Mythos if at all. As much as I am into AI these attempts to show that there can be a profitable quarter seem like cooking the books, even if we assume no shady dealings otherwise. Unless one of the Labs can say for certain training is going to stop they can't be profitable and I don't think training can stop because marginal gains is all they have. 8-12 months behind narrative for Chinese labs literally is going to kill the company that stops training first. If we assume only a 3-6 month gap once China has more compute, then well then even if they keep training the lack of ability to arbitarily scale data centers in US, will kill them first. DeepSeek V5 might actually just end the AI race for good. Also given Mythos is atleast a 10x model compared to Opus, then it's pricing is likely going to be 10x as well so well token prices are likely never coming down, especially if these companies want to IPO.

atleastoptimal 4mo ago
Why would V5 kill the AI race? Do you believe that there are diminishing returns on model intelligence when applied to real-world tasks? I think there are accelerating returns: i.e. a models are still not good enough to be “drop in” remote workers, but once that threshold is passed, the value of each token of inference has a far higher multiplier. This justifies the buildup. However not everyone agrees that model intelligence will continue scaling thus they assert that eventually the economics will hit a wall. >Also given Mythos is atleast a 10x model compared to Opus, then it's pricing is likely going to be 10x as well so well token prices are likely never coming down, especially if these companies want to IPO. I don't know why people say this when cost per unit of intelligence has been going down continuously over the past few years. When Opus 3 was first released, its API cost was $15.00 per million input tokens and $75.00 per million output tokens. Opus 4.8. which is significantly better, is $5.00 per 1 million input tokens and $25.00 per 1 million output tokens

bigbuppo 4mo ago

Remember when nvidia asked us to stop calling them enron because unlike enron they actually admit to doing all the things enron did so it's not illegal?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]