I was having ads played even with the most expensive Spotify subscription a few years ago because ... feel this:
The ads were CHOSEN BY THE END CLIENT, not Spotify itself as a legal entity.
Needless to say that I am no longer using Spotify for a few years now and I highly encourage a mass exodus from the platform.
If you have an app where the user must give their address when subscribing, what are the test that can be done?
User doesn't exist, invalid character in a field, user exists, wrong street name for the zip, wrong state for zip, wrong house number in the street, age below threshold, age above threshold,...
Each of these example must be done manually at least once to prove that the logic is correct and the tester must keep a report of it.
But, for each of these basic test, the data must be in a specific state (especially for the name already exists) so between each test you usually have a data preparation phase.
When you have a lot of these tests because it's spanning logic from decades, it takes time, especially when dealing with investments or insurance.
And usually for these test, you hire specific people that are targeted on correctness, not speed.
Now imagine what happens when you're at step 89 of your test and it fails.
The dev fix the code, fix the automated tests... And the tester restarts from step 1.
...Sir/madam, we have test environments, and comprehensive banks of (overtime hopefully idempotized) test data. When your schtick is software verification, one of the first things you develop a damn near fetishization for is test data management infra, and a place to store it. It's... A weird fixation admittedly. But getting data to land in just the right place at the right time so your testcase can run in a maximally parallelized fashion... chef's kiss Is perfection.
Some sort of an AI crash / bubble bursting is expected to be honest - now if that will take the rest of the US economy as well.... debatable. Any strong opinions on this?
> now if that will take the rest of the US economy as well.... debatable.
In the grand scheme of GDP, the US hasn't done much growth in anhtjjg else this decade, all while massively increasing spending to prevent post COVID recessions.
It certainly doesn't look good. But this was being setup for 30 years as we outsourced our strong manufacturing wing to make the top brass richer in the short run. So I do think the house of cards falls if AI does.
The sad part is that we may have been able to whether the storm under the right leadership. But that sure isn't the leadership in the White House right now.
I'm not an expert, my knowledge is just from reading around a lot, but I think there's some stats that would suggest the US is particularly exposed:
- At points, AI investment has actually seen more spending that US consumer spending[0], there's some debate on this[1] but if true, that leads to a narrative of the US being 'propped up' by AI investment.
- US GDP growth was strong last year, but behind quite a lot of other similar countries like the UK, Germany and Japan, which doesn't suggest a comparatively strong economy.
- The US is actively increasing it's borrowing substantially (Big Beautiful Bill) while lowering it's currencies value through trade wars and unpredictability (see bond market). That reduces its ability to use its wealth to borrow its way out of a financial crash (like with the 2008 crash, or Covid).
This could be a little overblown and is hard to tell, the US is definitely an extremely wealthy country, even if its less wealthy comparatively that a few years prior.
On (1):
Might be useful to separate investment flows from the rest of US's economic activity.
AI investment is propping up capital flows, the GDP statistic, and responsible for most of the gains on SPX, but its still a small fraction of the economy.
Most of the activity is with the same old big tech stocks, and the largest investment by far is not even market driven. Stargate is defense spending.
AI doesn't have to sway consumers, and it doesn't even have to work that well now or ever for governments to keep pumping money into it. The whole point of Stargate is to de-risk with reduced need for security clearances to handle big data (whistleblowing) and eventually get away from foreign tech. Also, there are a ton of businesses who have always done things on-premises for compliance and they can now cut costs by migrating to these government vetted data centers.
It genuinely shocks me how rarely anyone brings this up. It's been very loudly said by Trump and OpenAI since he took office, and it was going to happen regardless of who was elected.
What else does the economy consist of these days? It's pretty much already in a recession if you exclude the big AI companies.
Besides, basically every company had been desperately shoving AI into all their products. Throwing all of that out when the bubble pops won't be pretty.
I imagine depreciated AI features will be like the soft varnish surfaces of some 90s cars after 10 years - disgustingly sticky, shedding flakes left and right, and in hindsight an obviously stupid idea that wasn't tested sufficiently before pushing it on consumers
Yes, the concentration of wealth led to the AI boom and it’s going to lead to the crash for sure. The AI boom was nothing but a crypto bubble. And since it’s making up a large majority of the investment right now I would say that’s the only reason that we didn’t have a crash last year.
Me personally: absolutely not - and I fundamentally do not understand the need for something like this. I would never use such a tool under any possible circumstance knowing what I know about the current technology underpinning these clankers.
These feels on par with Microsoft's push to shove Copilot down everyone's neck at every step possible whether we like/need it or not
Could you give only a few examples from those PLENTY of other places that are better? Like the first 10 that come to your mind, you made me very curious!
Not even close. The 2008 financial crisis is better comparison. And even then I think most negative effect will come from investors pulling money away from everything non-AI, than OpenAI/Anthropic/Oracle crashing and burning.
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