Discussion
Good news!
* AI goes broke next year
* that means all the AI bros are left without their spare brain
* no, approx 0 of them will be doing shit with rapidly aging local models in practice lol
they'll have to learn to code again of course, so we can get back to proper artisanal hand crafted enterprise quality shit code again
@davidgerard Don't do this, man. Don't give me hope.
@kawa oh it's fine! we'll emerge from the AI bubble into Great Depression 2 and it's gonna suuuuuuuuck. But at least we won't have the chatbot.
@davidgerard last year I would've agreed with you the music won't stop until 2027. But now? I am not so sure. I think it might happen this year. Oracle bond going to near junk, Softbank couldn't raise such a measly margin loan, Uber COO questioning the value of all this shit... Much like with everything else with these companies IPO is just talk. There's no date -- and I doubt ever will be. They *can't* "open the kimono" and publish an S-1, they would crash in that instant.
@davidgerard I'm 100% confident a new fad/scam that the entire industry will fall for again is on its way.
@davidgerard
It’s happening…soon!
@davidgerard several coworkers are to variing degrees mentally handicapped now. One of them seem bewildered when people do not agree with him. Another gets weirdly defensive in the face of any critisism...
Granted, it might not (only) be AI. I have the dark-humored guessing game "Covid or AI?" for when personalty and/or capabilties degrade drastically.
@davidgerard
You forgot “lovingly”, as in lovingly hand crafted. Oh, and bespoke. Don’t forget bespoke.
@djzerkel love is not a parameter in these equations
in other news if i'm right about the near term future of the AI bubble i haven't got a journalistic beat any more, suggestions welcomed
@davidgerard since you were mentioned in the book acknowledgements in "Easy Money" (crypto), I assume you'll be early to whatever the next grifts are.
Like some other commenters I'm assuming one of those is quantum (or magical quantum-AI hybrid technology, whee!), but I know you're already paying attention to that.
I still wonder about the idea of Big Tech making everything Cloud, and making it so consumers can only buy dumb terminals and a subscription. I know that is one hope they have for post-AI, but I don't know whether it'll actually be implemented at scale.
@davidgerard
I would imagine the general chaos and truth bombs that emerge from the bubble collapse might keep you occupied for a while yet with a bit of luck. People hate this shit and I think gossip over internal discussions and what is and wasn't vibe coded will the talk of town for sometime afterwards.
@davidgerard Big Tech will still be doing some or the other kind of shenanigans. Quantum or some other BS.
@davidgerard Solace of Quantum.
@davidgerard there's always money in the quantum stand.
There will be desperate vibe coders posting on Reddit, flopping like fishes on land. You could make fun of them for just a little while longer. 🙂
@davidgerard the bubble will wipe out a whole load of AI companies, but I suspect it won't kill the cult. Crypto is probably more politically influential now than it was at its peak. The people who got rich on this shit will be less rich, but far from destitute
@davidgerard Silicon Valley tech shenanigans in general? There’s an awful lot of it out there, even if most of it is currently all in on LLMs.
@davidgerard I think you have a good grasp on the griftosphere all the way back to your Bitcoin and Libra books. Once the AI bubble crashes all these grifters aren't going to shut up they're going to double down doing the only thing they know how: Grifting. It will be a new era, a Griftmas for everyone.
So I don't have any ideas but I just wanted to thank you for your work and I will follow you to whatever you cover next :)
@jookia sorta annoyed Matt Binder used "Scam Economy" already (and was a *great* podcast, i went on it a coupla times)
@davidgerard Prediction markets? Or maybe weird stocks?
@davidgerard It's all the same beat - the "rich nazi cultists seriously intend to kill at least four billion of us on a boiling planet so they can pretend capitalism is still sustainable for at max two more generations of Musk spawn rule" beat.
@AnarchoNinaWrites @davidgerard And this finally answers another question, “Why is ‘cryptocurrency’ still a thing?” For the same reason as petromaxxing and AI. Because capitalism is stuck in a sunk-cost death spiral. They need to prove(to themselves, nobody outside the cult is going to be convinced) that eternal growth works. Petro can’t fail. Crypto can’t fail. AI can’t fail. Et cetera, ad nauseam.
@davidgerard The next investment trend will be either Quantum or Space Stuff so pivot to one of those
@davidgerard Most people think the next tech hype bubble will be quantum computing and while they're probably right I think you should cover your bets and look into another possible candidate as well — nanobots. I've got a feeling about this one ...
A bunch of investors are pivoting to ‘physical AI’ (robots and stuff) and trying to distance it from GenAI. They’ll probably drop the ‘AI’ bit from their pitches once the AI brand becomes toxic. So you may still have a beat covering the same people doing the same things.
@davidgerard Quantum. Post. Pre. Quantum blockchain. That’ll be what they jump on. I also notice the SEO folks renaming themselves to AEO experts. AI Engine Optimisation.
So one thing I've been wondering about is its the USA companies are that are running out of money.
The Chinese are also building AI models and I don't think we know about their finances
@alienghic well, e.g. Moonshot is also going for a local IPO
@davidgerard We both know "quantum" is the next grift.
I can't wait to see "quantum" added to everything, followed by inevitable revelations that whatever was advertised as "quantum" was, in fact, not.
You know all the scumbag criminals at major cloud providers are already giddy at the prospect of providing non-quantum compute on old hardware at premium prices by falsely advertising it as "quantum." How long until GCP advertises "quantum TPUs" that turn out to be old hardware? Not that long.
@davidgerard guess quantum will have your back.
@sherold Why is Nvidia the only one actually profitting from their investments into "AI"? @davidgerard
@levampyre @sherold see all those billions of dollars? that's who they're going to
@davidgerard The next bullshit hype! Probably quantum computing.
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