62 points
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And this absolutely will not change the course of AI investment whatsoever because it still driving a huge amount of profit.

The only thing that will finally change the course of AI investment is when the bubble finally burst which will cause the collapse of our economy because, by that point, so much money will have been invested in it. There will be no other possible result.

And why? Because these assholes only care about one thing: short term results at any cost.

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16 points

“profit” is gonna need some qualifiers there.

Firing the staff & reporting “earnings”? Goosed stock price on the above + hypey garbage? Enforced “features” no one wants? AI hardware makers? Okay, that one’s legit, but ironically not AI.

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27 points

Too big to fail, too big even to jail - it’s worked before, they seem to be counting on it working once more.

But I could be giving them too much credit - perhaps they really do believe in it.

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8 points

You think it’s too big to fail now, wait until they start wondering what they built all of those extra data centers for.

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10 points

What’s failing or jailing?

Like, I’m not defending AI here but using a lot of power, and building software tools people buy is not illegal.

We can argue it’s a bit of a scam in the sense that many objectives purported are not accomplished, but that’s a tale as old of time with software.

We can also argue the copyright issue, I think that’s the most relevant topic.

But in general this is just software 2024 MEGA EDITION. Everything sucks, everything is just executives moving money around.

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6 points

I wish i knew of a good way to profit off of this bubble. I could work for a company in the AI space, but I think it would be well above my “executives hyping the smell of their own farts” threshold. And shorting Google and Microsoft is a dangerous game.

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5 points
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If you knew of a good way, you probably already would be.

Also, you probably wouldn’t have a soul

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4 points

You got me thinking a bit on this one. One possibility is if you want to make a bet on it failing to deliver value in the near future, look at the companies whose stock prices have fallen on the fear of AI putting them out of business. For example, Concentrix does call center outsourcing and their stock is down significantly from their 2022 peak, partially on the expectation that AI is going to take business from them. Now, their profit margin is tiny and they don’t seem to be growing much, so I don’t know that they are a great investment, but there could be upside if the negative cloud of AI is removed. There are probably better examples out there, this one just came to mind.

Note: I have not done any research on this idea or on Concentrix and don’t know if this is a good idea, but at least less risky than shorting the AI hype.

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3 points

The thing is… this type of “risk” is already priced into the value of shares like Concentrix. There’s a phrase… “the market is always perfectly priced”, which means that if all information is available to everyone then the price you pay is the correct price, adjusted for risk.

To say the same thing another way, the current price for Concentrix shares is the price they would be if the AI bubble popped, less an adjustment for the risk that the bubble doesn’t pop.

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3 points
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The only thing that will finally change the course of AI investment is when the bubble finally burst which will cause the collapse of our economy because, by that point, so much money will have been invested in it.

We’re not there yet. Remember, tech is not the whole of the economy. The recent tech layoffs have had Silicon Valley screaming, “The sky is falling!!” and the rest of the planet going “huh? You guys hear something? Must’ve been a fly”

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13 points

Link to the article please?

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20 points
16 points
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No, not the research, the article they’re referring to by the tech reporter. But thank you.

Edit: This is the article: https://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/

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1 point

Commenting to save this for later

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5 points
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Haven’t found the specific article yet, but I believe this is his site. I’ll keep looking, but this should be a good start.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/

Edit: I’m big dumb. It looks like it’s the first one on the list.

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7 points
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Thanks, I appreciate it.

Also, since the title of the article is “Pop Culture,” I’m not surprised you missed it. Direct link: https://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/

Edit: Holy shit, read this article! Don’t just do the TL;DR.

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61 points

Number 3 drives me hair-tearing insane, I have straight up seen AI cultists say AI will fix the power grid but only if we keep pouring resources into it so that it can fix all our problems. ಠ_ಠ

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9 points

That’s what Altman himself claims.

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53 points

“I’ll finally have he strength to kick this heroin habit if I just do more heroin.”

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10 points

That is, entirely unironically, how deep addiction makes you think. Just need enough to get to normal…

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6 points

“we should all do heroin to support the habit and mainstream it.” - every fucking company pushing AI onto society when it’s dangerous, janky af and ridiculously expensive.

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24 points

I’m very confident that with carte blanche the electrical engineers already overseeing the grid could solve the problems it faces. We don’t need an ai miracle, we need to remove bureaucratic and funding obstacles for critical infrastructure.

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18 points

And this is it: Many of those “AI will be so smart that it can solve these problems for us!” arguments refer to problems where having a “smart” enough solution isn’t the problem… Getting people to care/notice/participate/get out of the way is.

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9 points

The great AI decrees that you must increase solar and wind subsidies! And pay no attention to the electrical engineer behind the curtain!

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9 points

e/acc. The dumb MFs believe burning fossil fuels as fast as possible will lead to technological advancements to mitigate the problems. It’s all wishful thinking and convienant blind faith.

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3 points

Bitcoiners make similar arguments about using energy being “good for the system”

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-32 points

these are all dumb

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11 points

Ok!

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10 points

In what way, may I ask?

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17 points

You may not ask. They have been declared to be dumb and dumb they shall be. So says @Willy@sh.itjust.works.

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4 points

By his decree, forever

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0 points

Not the original poster, but here I go:

  • The investment is the increase in progress of technology. It will develop faster and more efficient. In all sectors.

  • AI will improve because of its capability to help programmers in order to develop itself.

  • AI is being misused for all kinds of vain projects at the moment. But once the shine wears off people will go jump on the new bandwagon. By limiting use to the things that actually improve through AI, we can stabilise the energy requirement. But I agree we are not there yet.

  • AI is not going to replace jobs. Why would a company fire people when they could just use AI to multiply that particular teams productivity and make more money? Some c-suits do not understand this yet, but they will eventually.

  • Because of copyright, they all need to use non-copyrighted material. Which in this timeline is very far and few between. They will find other ways to improve AI, data feeding is the easiest way but not the only one. I suspect the next innovation will be data refining. Imagine an LLM only trained on scientific papers.

LLMs are only the first step into creating AGI. We are teaching the computer to be able to communicate with us in a meaningful manner. The intelligence will come after.

It is like teaching a baby to talk. Yes it will say dumb shit, but it will improve over time.

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94 points

Unfortunately, as Keynes noted: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”

And my god, they’re committed to irrationality right now.

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9 points

But that’s where the money is!!
(Until it’s not)

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7 points

Your Return of Investment can be someone else’s investment.

One might call it a pyramid scheme

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5 points
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And the suckers w/o means to participate can live and die for generations knowing only disadvantages of it.

But participated or not, their lives will still get even more rounded one the system collapses.

Your Return of Investment can be someone else’s investment.

Lul, just realised that that might be a bit more based than the regular god (aka capital) intended version - the return on my investment can be someone else’s labour.

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4 points

To be fair, I watched a ton of crypto bros use that quote to justify holding shitcoins while they crashed to zero.

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5 points

Nvidia has to be the most obvious thing to short in this whole mess, except for that quote. If the AI bubble popped tomorrow, you’ll make a lot of money. If it pops in a year, you may lose it all before then.

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