3 ms·

This is the opening move of the end game for the current "AI" wave. Hyperscalers and hardware manufacturers will absorb the overgrowth and hopefully (for them,

This is the opening move of the end game for the current "AI" wave. Hyperscalers and hardware manufacturers will absorb the overgrowth and hopefully (for them, sucks for us) settle at the top of the software value chain. The only way to make all the money poured into compute for the last 4 years pay for itself at any level is selling people and corporations on very inefficient software for the next couple of decades. Not too different from what "the cloud" did to this market from 2015 or so...

doublerabbit 2mo ago
Someone gets it. The start of the end to the AI bubble bursting.
- huurtehoog 2mo ago
  No, see, I'm making the opposite argument. This is not a bubble, this is a deliberate play by capital owners to increase returns on capital to the detriment of labor. Much like "the cloud" before. The increased capital intensity in software was inevitable and it has accelerated since 2022.
  - doublerabbit 2mo ago
    Which is the start of the bubble bursting. VCs invest, no one can compete and those with the moats survive.
galangalalgol 2mo ago
So anytime someone comes out with something efficient it will get bought and bloated?
- seanclayton 2mo ago
  Businesses trust brand names, not efficiency.
- huurtehoog 2mo ago
  Can you think of examples of that not happening? I mean, haven't you just described VC?
  - Y-bar 2mo ago
    And SV in general. Thinking of Skype and Slack as prime examples on top of my head.
- mcmcmc 2mo ago
  In America, yes
ToucanLoucan 2mo ago
> Not too different from what "the cloud" did to this market from 2015 or so... I mean for all the inefficiencies of the cloud, it solved a lot of problems. It also created a new category of problems but rarely does any particular technology arrive as a pure boon without it's own compromises. Despite it's issues and despite how hot ASS some implementations are (looking at you Azure) I think cloud infrastructure you can at least say does solve a lot of problems for a lot of firms. I can't remotely say the same for AI. It has a lot of uses don't get me wrong, but not nearly the number being pitched currently, and I don't know that I've seen any that I truly can't live without. And at the prices that are going to need to be charged when we turn the proverbial profit lever... I mean I'm sure tons of huge software houses where shipping is all that matters, behind things like quality, maintainability, the sanity of the development team, what have you, AI code assistants will have a lot of uses and the company will (probably) pay for it. But I think it's a stretch to say it's even remotely as good a trade as Cloud infra was. In the handful of years since we've gotten all these supposedly revolutionary tools, software quality has already taken a gut-punch, will no sign of that slowing down, quite the opposite. And that's not even going into all the AI features being crammed into everything that few, if any users want or use. In fact the obsession with shoving AI shit into Photoshop instead of fixing any of the issues that've been present in that software since ~2009 was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and I've left Adobe behind entirely, and I know for certain based on communities I'm in, I'm far from alone in that.
- huurtehoog 2mo ago
  The purpose of the system is what it does. The goal is to increase return on capital. Take a look at the historical developments of wage participation in global income, labor productivity growth vs wage growth, and so forth. It works very well. As long as the most capable laborers are paid well enough to go along, the rest of us have little choice. Especially after citizens united basically privatized American elections.
  - cyanydeez 2mo ago
    And VC capital is now buying democracy...

doublerabbit 2mo ago

Someone gets it. The start of the end to the AI bubble bursting.

huurtehoog 2mo ago
No, see, I'm making the opposite argument. This is not a bubble, this is a deliberate play by capital owners to increase returns on capital to the detriment of labor. Much like "the cloud" before. The increased capital intensity in software was inevitable and it has accelerated since 2022.
- doublerabbit 2mo ago
  Which is the start of the bubble bursting. VCs invest, no one can compete and those with the moats survive.

galangalalgol 2mo ago

So anytime someone comes out with something efficient it will get bought and bloated?

seanclayton 2mo ago
Businesses trust brand names, not efficiency.
huurtehoog 2mo ago
Can you think of examples of that not happening? I mean, haven't you just described VC?
- Y-bar 2mo ago
  And SV in general. Thinking of Skype and Slack as prime examples on top of my head.
mcmcmc 2mo ago
In America, yes

ToucanLoucan 2mo ago

> Not too different from what "the cloud" did to this market from 2015 or so... I mean for all the inefficiencies of the cloud, it solved a lot of problems. It also created a new category of problems but rarely does any particular technology arrive as a pure boon without it's own compromises. Despite it's issues and despite how hot ASS some implementations are (looking at you Azure) I think cloud infrastructure you can at least say does solve a lot of problems for a lot of firms. I can't remotely say the same for AI. It has a lot of uses don't get me wrong, but not nearly the number being pitched currently, and I don't know that I've seen any that I truly can't live without. And at the prices that are going to need to be charged when we turn the proverbial profit lever... I mean I'm sure tons of huge software houses where shipping is all that matters, behind things like quality, maintainability, the sanity of the development team, what have you, AI code assistants will have a lot of uses and the company will (probably) pay for it. But I think it's a stretch to say it's even remotely as good a trade as Cloud infra was. In the handful of years since we've gotten all these supposedly revolutionary tools, software quality has already taken a gut-punch, will no sign of that slowing down, quite the opposite. And that's not even going into all the AI features being crammed into everything that few, if any users want or use. In fact the obsession with shoving AI shit into Photoshop instead of fixing any of the issues that've been present in that software since ~2009 was the straw that broke the camel's back for me and I've left Adobe behind entirely, and I know for certain based on communities I'm in, I'm far from alone in that.

huurtehoog 2mo ago
The purpose of the system is what it does. The goal is to increase return on capital. Take a look at the historical developments of wage participation in global income, labor productivity growth vs wage growth, and so forth. It works very well. As long as the most capable laborers are paid well enough to go along, the rest of us have little choice. Especially after citizens united basically privatized American elections.
- cyanydeez 2mo ago
  And VC capital is now buying democracy...