The entire US economy right now is 7 companies sending a trillion fake dollars back and forth to each other, but it’s totally not a bubble according to grampa Powell.
The entire US economy right now is 7 companies sending a trillion fake dollars back and forth to each other, but it’s totally not a bubble according to grampa Powell.
Sure, these companies have earnings, but then they go burn all of it plus more on training and inference and data centers and whatever the fuck else. It’s not profitable and it never will be. And yet they’re willing to bankrupt the country on this egregore that Sam Altman and his ilk have created.
It’s worse than that. The revenue of all except for NVIDIA (which supplies the graphics chips) is by selling subsidized products. It’s the classic Silicon Valley model of “growth at any cost” and then enshittifying; except the product they’re offering is intolerably expensive.
The AI products are not just losing money as a corporation; They’re losing money on making their revenue. Most will not pay $200 for a month of chatbot interactions. Most will not pay $200 to generate a handful of sloptok videos. The number of users of these AI programs is so high because the product is sold at a loss – and is being shoved in everyone’s face, all the time. It’s free/cheap entertainment for lonely and bored people. Once it hits their wallet, those commonfolk are gone.
Yup, the only real winner here is Nvidia, for selling the shovels for the gold rush. All the “AI” companies are just spending money to lose money. But I guarantee that - somehow - all of us commonfolk will be left holding the bag, not Clammy Sammy Altman.
It’ll probably be like W. Bush - a big bailout right as the Republican leaders are leaving their term. :P