None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or “hating,” but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom — is (as I’ve said before) unsustainable, and will ultimately collapse. I also fear that said collapse could be ruinous to big tech, deeply damaging to the startup ecosystem, and will further sour public support for the tech industry.
Can’t blame Zitron for being pretty downbeat in this - given the AI bubble’s size and side-effects, its easy to see how its bursting can have some cataclysmic effects.
(Shameless self-promo: I ended up writing a bit about the potential aftermath as well)
I’m terrified for the future, and not even on hater shit. The public numbers are bad, and barring some extremely surprising reports locked behind a wall of NDAs, the private numbers don’t seem much better - even Saltman, perpetual cheerleader he is, doesn’t have much to offer except desperation to keep the party going, barely even a week after their big model drop.
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Sam Altman responds to a user asking for the promised voice features with extreme pettiness. “how about a few weeks of gratitude for magic intelligence in the sky, and then you can have more toys soon?”
So if all the big tech players know that this is garbage, the continual doubling down on this either points to: 1. scrambling for the pie while it’s there because they need it to stay afloat, or 2. everything else they have to offer is even worse somehow? And in either case, the aura of being a tech company instead of a company is lost, and I don’t know what happens in the fallout. The probably best case scenario is that only tech workers like myself have to eat the blowback, but I suspect things won’t play out so cleanly.
User requests something that accommodates their actual use-case. Altman responds by dismissing it as “toys,” in that same cultivated faux-casual lowercase smarm that constitutes the bulk of his public identity. This man is not fit to be an executive.
I don’t understand this and am kinda afraid of what hides behind this
It’s about hype and economics.
Tech companies can theoretically scale well and are valued on the expectation of growth while normal companies are manly valued based on what they currently do. An app can basically be copied for free to millions of users once it has been coded and servers don’t cost that much. A traditional company, say a car company, that wants to increase profits has to build a new factory or something. The problems arise when a companies perception goes from startup/tech company to normal company.
Example: wework was a startup that rented office space long term and lets it customers rent short term from them. Once people realized, that it was a real estate company and not a tech company it’s value plummeted, it couldn’t raise more capital and went bankrupt.
Edit: spelling
So I should be clear, I dont think theres anything special about Tech companies that should let them be treated differently. But for whatever reason, it is a fact that places like We or Tesla or Theranos or fucking Groupon gets stupid valuations just because they’re “tech” adjacent.
If the market ever catches on that theres no secret ingredient (and as Zitron’s shown, there are pretty visible public numbers pointing at this), we’re looking at a correction at the trillion dollar scale. Or maybe we never ask Google to put up or shut up, and just keep the fairy powder in our eyes forever.