A new survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and reported on by Apolloseems to show that large companies may be tapping the brakes on AI. Large companies (defined as having more than 250 employees) have reduced their AI usage, according to the data (click to expand the Tweet below). The slowdown started in June, when it was at roughly 13.5%, slipping to about 12% at the end of August. Most other lines, representing companies with fewer employees, are also at a decline, with some still increasing.
The lack of business model is what’s freaking me out.
Around 2003 I was talking to a customer about Google going public and saying he should go all in.
“Meh, they’re a great search engine, but I can’t see how they’ll make any money.”
Still remember that conversation, standing in his attic, wiring his new satellite dish. Wonder if he remembers that conversation at well.
What gets me is that even the traditional business models for LLMs are not great. Like translation, grammar checking, etc. Those existed before the boom really started. DeepL has been around for almost a decade and their services are working reasonably well and they’re still not profitable.