5 ms·

> The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do In my opinion you should interpret the usage of "AI" here to mean "the entire busi

> The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do In my opinion you should interpret the usage of "AI" here to mean "the entire business/management/financial/bubble ecosystem surrounding LLMs". The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized rather than a specific technical assessment (although that often is an issue too)

fasterik 4mo ago
My prediction is that it will go the same way as the dot com bubble. The hypesters and fraudsters will eventually collide with objective reality, but the technology will persist and society at large will benefit from the infrastructure and the increased access to knowledge.
- Shellban 4mo ago
  Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.
  - echelon 4mo ago
    > As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.
    - anon7725 4mo ago
      I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
      - echelon 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        Jtsummers 4mo ago
        > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
        girvo 4mo ago
        This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
        II2II 4mo ago
        > I swear the anti-AI crowd would all be picking to die if you each had a choice between immortality and living to 85. It really depends on the cost of immortality. At the very least, it would have a psychological impact that some people may feel is undesirable. > None of you is writing punch card programs. > None of you are building vaccum tube logic. Perhaps none of us, but some people certainly do. We are intellectual creatures. Some of us do things out of pure curiosity. Can we create multinational corporations out of it? Almost certainly not. Can we create businesses out of it? People do so all of the time. There is a market for produce from small farms, hand crafts, heck, even vintage computing. > None of the things we build today are going to last. Your programs will be meaningless in a hundred years. Probably closer to ten years. Try telling that to people who are trying to retire legacy systems. Sure, most of them have been modernized. Perhaps they have even been modernized to the point where none of the original code exists. Yet the core ideas still exist since it turns out to be incredibly hard to discard things. The old ways of writing software will continue, even if they are nowhere near as popular. Call that irrational if you want. I call it human.
    - bigstrat2003 4mo ago
      Option A is fun, whereas option B is miserable. Option A is also cheaper. It's a pretty clear win for option A here.
    - sdenton4 4mo ago
      Of course, you can use Option B to write the program, and then run it on your own machine...
    - dgellow 4mo ago
      I’m choosing the first option. I’m not sure which one you chose?
    - Hugsbox 4mo ago
      You're making a really strong case for option A, whereas B sounds really depressing
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    That's my fear, and unfortunately I think its likely to happen. I feel like we will settle down a little bit, but into a new higher "normal" baseline that still largely makes it unaffordable for most. There's also still the risk of the creation of a new economic underclass, if both a) hardware remains too expensive for local inference and b) subscription or pay-per-token based inference also remains expensive or increases in price, then individuals will largely be locked out of the benefits that having access to AI could bring, leaving it purely in the hands of larger companies. People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer, for the benefit of their employer.
    - teo_zero 4mo ago
      > People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer Like in the era of mainframes, before the personal computer was a thing. I wonder if universities will play the same role, though.
    - abc123abc123 4mo ago
      This is not correct. Prices will adjuts when the crash comes. At worst, the market and prices will just open peoples eyes up to the reality that 99% of the daily software we use, runs perfectly fine on a 5 years old computer. The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. Remember... we reached the moon with the compute power of a pocket calculator, and there is no eternal law that says that everything has to be written in javascript.
      - k4rnaj1k 4mo ago
        [dead]
      - thewebguyd 4mo ago
        > The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. I don't think anyone thinks that? Unless you are trying to do local inference with bigger models, which isn't everyone's cup of tea but I do think is an important capability. Outside of that use case though, prices are still ridiculous. 32GB of DDR5 will run you close to $500 right now vs. $80 before the AI build out, and 32GB is what I'd consider comfortable so long as everything keeps being electron and web wrappers (assuming Windows & macOS here for the general population, obviously you can get by with less on a Linux desktop for the most part). Personally, I'd love to see more software do more with less, and go back to performant native apps but in reality I just don't see that happening, except maybe over here in Apple/macOS land which has always had a decent culture of native apps. For now, the incentives aren't there (for commercial software). I hope you are right on prices, but I don't share the optimism. We've seen time and time again that once prices go up, they don't always go back down even when the supply crunch is eliminated. Manufacturers realize people adapt to whatever "new normal" prices are at and refuse to lower them. Same thing happened post-COVID supply shocks. Companies have zero incentive to start a price war, even after supply shocks are over. I think we are stuck with ~$500 RAM for a long time.
  - protocolture 4mo ago
    >large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Depends how long the RAM correction takes. It is interesting how RAM prices have stifled the creation of cheap laptops capable of running big models. But at the same time, this seems like a second order effect and not the intention.
    - api 4mo ago
      It’s a demand spike.
- gyomu 4mo ago
  > society at large will benefit from the infrastructure Data centers as infrastructure are very different from DSL rollout though. Much, much more expensive to maintain, with a much much shorter timespan. If the bubble pops and data centers get shut down because there’s no one to pay the bills, there won’t be much left 5-10 years later in terms of infrastructure.
  - m0llusk 4mo ago
    Maybe we could repurpose old processors to power toaster ovens.
    - bigbuppo 4mo ago
      I mean, a 125kW server stuffed into 5U will definitely work nicely for toast.
api 4mo ago
The same thing happened around PCs, gaming, the Internet, the web, and cryptocurrency. It's a hit driven industry that loves hype.
patates 4mo ago
I think then the AI-hype should be disregarded as snake-oil, not the tech itself. I know it sounds pretentious, but I need to say that words do matter.
indymike 4mo ago
> The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
  I think you just simply repeated the mistake that the comment responding to you was pointing out, i.e. conflating “LLM” the technology with “AI” the hysterical product hype bubble phenomenon.

fasterik 4mo ago

My prediction is that it will go the same way as the dot com bubble. The hypesters and fraudsters will eventually collide with objective reality, but the technology will persist and society at large will benefit from the infrastructure and the increased access to knowledge.

Shellban 4mo ago
Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.
- echelon 4mo ago
  > As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.
  - anon7725 4mo ago
    I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
    - echelon 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Jtsummers 4mo ago
        > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
      - girvo 4mo ago
        This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
      - II2II 4mo ago
        > I swear the anti-AI crowd would all be picking to die if you each had a choice between immortality and living to 85. It really depends on the cost of immortality. At the very least, it would have a psychological impact that some people may feel is undesirable. > None of you is writing punch card programs. > None of you are building vaccum tube logic. Perhaps none of us, but some people certainly do. We are intellectual creatures. Some of us do things out of pure curiosity. Can we create multinational corporations out of it? Almost certainly not. Can we create businesses out of it? People do so all of the time. There is a market for produce from small farms, hand crafts, heck, even vintage computing. > None of the things we build today are going to last. Your programs will be meaningless in a hundred years. Probably closer to ten years. Try telling that to people who are trying to retire legacy systems. Sure, most of them have been modernized. Perhaps they have even been modernized to the point where none of the original code exists. Yet the core ideas still exist since it turns out to be incredibly hard to discard things. The old ways of writing software will continue, even if they are nowhere near as popular. Call that irrational if you want. I call it human.
  - bigstrat2003 4mo ago
    Option A is fun, whereas option B is miserable. Option A is also cheaper. It's a pretty clear win for option A here.
  - sdenton4 4mo ago
    Of course, you can use Option B to write the program, and then run it on your own machine...
  - dgellow 4mo ago
    I’m choosing the first option. I’m not sure which one you chose?
  - Hugsbox 4mo ago
    You're making a really strong case for option A, whereas B sounds really depressing
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  That's my fear, and unfortunately I think its likely to happen. I feel like we will settle down a little bit, but into a new higher "normal" baseline that still largely makes it unaffordable for most. There's also still the risk of the creation of a new economic underclass, if both a) hardware remains too expensive for local inference and b) subscription or pay-per-token based inference also remains expensive or increases in price, then individuals will largely be locked out of the benefits that having access to AI could bring, leaving it purely in the hands of larger companies. People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer, for the benefit of their employer.
  - teo_zero 4mo ago
    > People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer Like in the era of mainframes, before the personal computer was a thing. I wonder if universities will play the same role, though.
  - abc123abc123 4mo ago
    This is not correct. Prices will adjuts when the crash comes. At worst, the market and prices will just open peoples eyes up to the reality that 99% of the daily software we use, runs perfectly fine on a 5 years old computer. The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. Remember... we reached the moon with the compute power of a pocket calculator, and there is no eternal law that says that everything has to be written in javascript.
    - k4rnaj1k 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - thewebguyd 4mo ago
      > The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. I don't think anyone thinks that? Unless you are trying to do local inference with bigger models, which isn't everyone's cup of tea but I do think is an important capability. Outside of that use case though, prices are still ridiculous. 32GB of DDR5 will run you close to $500 right now vs. $80 before the AI build out, and 32GB is what I'd consider comfortable so long as everything keeps being electron and web wrappers (assuming Windows & macOS here for the general population, obviously you can get by with less on a Linux desktop for the most part). Personally, I'd love to see more software do more with less, and go back to performant native apps but in reality I just don't see that happening, except maybe over here in Apple/macOS land which has always had a decent culture of native apps. For now, the incentives aren't there (for commercial software). I hope you are right on prices, but I don't share the optimism. We've seen time and time again that once prices go up, they don't always go back down even when the supply crunch is eliminated. Manufacturers realize people adapt to whatever "new normal" prices are at and refuse to lower them. Same thing happened post-COVID supply shocks. Companies have zero incentive to start a price war, even after supply shocks are over. I think we are stuck with ~$500 RAM for a long time.
- protocolture 4mo ago
  >large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Depends how long the RAM correction takes. It is interesting how RAM prices have stifled the creation of cheap laptops capable of running big models. But at the same time, this seems like a second order effect and not the intention.
  - api 4mo ago
    It’s a demand spike.
gyomu 4mo ago
> society at large will benefit from the infrastructure Data centers as infrastructure are very different from DSL rollout though. Much, much more expensive to maintain, with a much much shorter timespan. If the bubble pops and data centers get shut down because there’s no one to pay the bills, there won’t be much left 5-10 years later in terms of infrastructure.
- m0llusk 4mo ago
  Maybe we could repurpose old processors to power toaster ovens.
  - bigbuppo 4mo ago
    I mean, a 125kW server stuffed into 5U will definitely work nicely for toast.

api 4mo ago

The same thing happened around PCs, gaming, the Internet, the web, and cryptocurrency. It's a hit driven industry that loves hype.

patates 4mo ago

I think then the AI-hype should be disregarded as snake-oil, not the tech itself. I know it sounds pretentious, but I need to say that words do matter.

indymike 4mo ago

> The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.

datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
I think you just simply repeated the mistake that the comment responding to you was pointing out, i.e. conflating “LLM” the technology with “AI” the hysterical product hype bubble phenomenon.