26 Comments
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Chris Wasden's avatar

Very well done. I was a very active entrepreneur during the dotcom bubble, and this is so different. I remember the crazy valuations justified by eyeballs, and the many years it took to absorb all the dark fiber from over-investment. This time, we have real companies, generating real revenues, and every chip and all power deployed as soon as it comes online, not dark fiber phenomenon this time. We may need to see ROIs that justify the level of investment, but we clearly see this as real economics and not some speculative bubble justified by crazy ideas about the future that are not based in reality. I also find the rate of change so much faster than in the dotcom era. I did some measurements of this recently, comparing adoption rates, and found that we are moving 50% faster with AI than we did with the internet. It is hard, maybe impossible, to keep up with all that is changing on a daily basis.

WJM's avatar
19hEdited

“This time we have real companies generating real revenues…”. You mean like real banks involved generating real loans on REAL estate? That kind of real?

I think the AI (artificial intelligence) boom is a bubble. A significant portion of the potential market for is are not interested in it or see the pernicious possibilities from its ubiquitous use in this country. I cannot find the economic sense in these huge expenditures. As far as I am concerned, I will do anything to stay away from it. I have disabled it on my computers to the point of installing linux.

I know something about business too. The thing that surprised me the most getting all that business education and experience was the mediocrity of the thinking. Much of it is pure follow the leader in one mad rush from one bubble to another. Herd mentality, thy name is MBA.

Johan Grillo's avatar

How is it that everyone's an expert in tech all of a sudden? Thanks for your unsubstantiated opinions. I guess.

Johan Grillo's avatar

The massive investment in hardware to support LLMs IS NOT SCALABLE. Brute force is a lazy approach. I think the big players are run by lunatics. Get ready for the Great Correction. APPL seems to be the only adult in the room.

Ben Kerry's avatar

Problem is that the Chinese model is much more mature...

Being utterly outcompeted would certainly mean doom. (worst case scenario America will look like all the Ba'athist countries before Arab Spring, the left behind of globalization clinging to visions of past glory)

samoan62's avatar

And all we'll have to show for it is the ability to generate meeting notes and AI p*rn.

CJ's avatar

A fantastic summary. First there was FRED but you're introducing a slew of other quality data sources. Thanks.

Tom Hudak's avatar

The term "semi-reliably" in regard to AI's ability to complete tasks says it all. AI is inherently a shoddy product and should be subject to far greater regulation. I guess as usual we'll have to wait for airplanes to fall out of the sky before anything is done about it.

David Muccigrosso's avatar

RE office construction being outpaced, did your analysis account for the post-COVID hangover in vacant office buildings?

Feral Finster's avatar

TL:DR:

Heads, AI wins. Tails, taxpayers lose.

M Harley's avatar

Did you even read the piece? Why would tax payers lose? These are private companies paying their own money to build factories, data centers and chip manufacturing in the US). Each center, factory, building, increases local tax revenues. And if other tech companies get eaten, so what? Most Americans don’t work in tech!

Feral Finster's avatar

Because if the boom goes bust, the oligarchs will run screaming for a bailout.

Same as it ever was.

M Harley's avatar

lol this not true at. In most busts, the US didn’t bail people out (NFTs 2001 dot com, Enron) and the one time the US *did* do bailouts, the US taxpayer made a $15.3 billion profit while currently owning Fannie and Freddie Mae with assets approaching $500 billion

Yall just say anything without any thought. Which is a shame, because Joey puts a ton or work into creating thoughtful analysis

Feral Finster's avatar

And institutions have no oligarch owners and those owners never ever would lobby the government or Fed on behalf of the institutions they control?

Whether or why any bailout made the government a profit is irrelevant.

M Harley's avatar

I think it is relevant because that means the tax payer made money!

And which institutions? Which “oligarchs”? Tech ones? Healthcare? Climate? Just vagueness all the way down

Feral Finster's avatar

Whether the taxpayer made money is irrelevant to the folks wailing for a bailout.

Johan Grillo's avatar

You should try to understand things better. Cya, 3 follower account.

Johan Grillo's avatar

The first thing you learn in design is the Energy Budget. Seems like they've abandoned 1st principles. It's madness at scale. Whole ecosystems will fail, spectacularly. Consumers will foot the bill to maintain what we already have. If there's no investment in the power grids, everything will blow up. Buy a generator.

samoan62's avatar

The private tech companies are not the ones paying for the AI boom. On day 2 of his administration Trump began the Stargate project to direct $500 billion to AI investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_LLC

M Harley's avatar

Maybe you should read the sources you cite considering it says that all of the financing for star gate is coming from private companies, with SoftBank taking the lead. None of it is federal lol