Gecko, WebKit and—hopefully—Ladybird are the true alternatives. I used to think this was too extreme. But the ad vendor dragging ad blockers out of the engine flipped my view.
The only "bubble" with AI is that the initial build out is cyclical, and many of the high flying chip stocks with no software arms (ala Nvidia's CUDA) will come back to Earth. I think anyone that thinks AI is going away or won't have massive impact (though maybe not in the doomsday scenario) are in complete denial.
RTFA; it's not about AI's massive impact or lack thereof ... it's about these businesses not having a viable business model that will sustain them (beyond the next couple years).
I think Zitron's problem is he's equating AI to OpenAI and Anthropic. I'd agree with him that both those businesses are in a dangerous position given how fast they've burnt through cash. However, that's not the entirety of the industry and there are a lot smaller labs doing more for a lot less capital.
The business model does appear to be viable for these labs. But that viability comes because they aren't wasting a bunch of R&D money developing worthless products like AI video production.
I admit, I didn't read the whole article; I read a few paragraphs and extrapolated the mindset from which the author operates.
Regarding your comment about the business model—the people in Silicon Valley are not stupid. They know the playbook; we've seen it with social networks. The issue isn't the business model itself; it's that these companies need to dominate the market, and the big players are competing for that on a global scale. It's the exact same playbook that played out in financial systems and social networks, and now it's happening with AI. Once these technologies are deeply integrated into enterprises and the global economy, these players will dominate the market for decades to come.
I can assure you, the people running those companies are smarter than you, me, and the author of this article."
What I suspect isn't that AI goes somewhere, but I do think that the cutting edge companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are in a very precarious position. They don't have very much of a moat and the competition has been catching up quick while spending a lot less doing so. IMO, the main thing keeping them alive right now is name recognition.
If I were to make a prediction, it's that ultimately these cheaper models are going end up eating their lunch. I don't think they'll make back the money they've invested and once that reality hits investors, those two companies are sunk.
That, however, is not the end of AI. Nor will it be the end of Nvidia/micron/etc. It will more just be a localized bubble pop that doesn't eliminate the product from the market.
The moat is the infrastructure and lock-in. Similar to AWS or anything else. Small data centers can't compete, and similarly people without massive compute won't be able to either (at least not on the enterprise level.) You might get a few edge models, but for huge businesses they will be using OpenAI and Anthropic (and Google/Microsoft/Amazon, etc).
The biggest competitors aren't small models, they are just the traditional players that already have an "in" with enterprises. That I think will start to show its face once this initial round of buildout is complete, which may not be for another 5+ years.
I disagree. Mainly because those small models are exactly what erode away the moat of needing a giant data center. Those smaller models have been proving themselves to not be far of from the SOTA models.
As OpenAI and Anthropic look to raise their prices, businesses will be much more compelled to looking at cheaper models. And if the narrative is "do the same as you did with OpenAI at 1/20th the cost" that's going to sell to a lot of businesses.
It certainly cuts into what exactly these companies can sell in general. For example, if I wanted to integrate AI into a product I'd almost certainly not chose OpenAI or Anthropic. That's because they are simply way too expensive and what they'd give me is a lot less. We've actually ran into just this. We needed a classifier for a lot of records, we picked a free model because, as you can imagine, we didn't need something as good as what OpenAI and Anthopic offered and free works.
It is not just about cheaper models; it is about integration with the economy.
These models are building deep integrations into companies and the entire economy. Once that stabilizes, it will be like the electricity grid—pumping tokens to fuel decision-making across the entire global society. Good luck unplugging from that.
Furthermore, there is a massive geopolitical aspect to it: those who are already on the Western financial and technical stack will get integrated even deeper now.
> These models are building deep integrations into companies and the entire economy. Once that stabilizes, it will be like the electricity grid—pumping tokens to fuel decision-making across the entire global society. Good luck unplugging from that.
Much like the electric grid, what we are seeing is a convergence on standard APIs. For example, most of these cheaper models are hosted using APIs compatible with OpenAI. It's not a matter of rewiring your electric plug to work with a different socket standard, instead it's just the process of plugging it into a new socket.
> Furthermore, there is a massive geopolitical aspect to it: those who are already on the Western financial and technical stack will get integrated even deeper now.
Certainly the Chinese models appear to be some of the best when it comes to competition, but they aren't the only ones. There are European models and other US based models which all run for cheaper.
I see your point, but having worked as a consultant for a few years, I think most companies will opt to stay once things are stable. Once these systems are functional, nobody wants to touch them.
I remember one government project where we wanted to migrate a system from COBOL to a modern stack. The requirement was for the UI to stay exactly the same as the old green terminal; the evaluation criterion was pixel-perfect proximity to the original. We literally had to build terminals using web tech.
These models are not the same as each other. Once they are integrated and working, the incentive to change them is incredibly low. So really, the race is about who can integrate deeper, wider, and faster over the next couple of years—that is what will determine the long-term winners.
This is the exact same playbook we saw with social networks. There is a reason why we have only a handful of them dominating globally, and guess what? It's not because of the tech.
There is no incentive to rewrite working software in COBOL to something else. You don't really change the people cost of maintaining that code all that much and you incur a huge rewrite cost.
AI is different, it's an ongoing cost to the company. If that cost raises aggressively, you can bet companies will race to eliminate it, no matter how integrated it is. Companies can and do do this all the time.
And the models are close, not the same, but close. That's what matters in LLM stuff in general. If a model is capable of doing the same work for less, it will be chosen. Especially since the switch over cost is often on the level of "point the tool at this URL instead of that URL".
I get what you are saying if this were a more sticky concrete tech that is harder to move away from. But that's simply not the case for these LLMs. A big selling point they have is that they are super flexible.
I don't think the transition will be as simple as just flipping a URL. There is an entire legal and technical infrastructure being built around these models and their integration. I think you underestimate an organization's resistance to change once things actually work, as well as the sheer complexity of making that shift.
I also expect pressure will eventually drive the cost of running these models down. Power plants are being built, more capable chips are being produced, and a big chunk of the capital right now is being used to scale the physical infrastructure—the data centers and energy grid. Once that stabilizes, these companies will have positive cash flows. Again, it's highly similar to what we saw with the expansion of social networks, just with more aggressive and widespread adoption.
Ultimately, a handful of companies are going to provide these core capabilities, just like we have a handful of major cloud providers right now. Why do you think this would change? If anything, the trend toward deep vendor lock-in is even stronger now.
Tesla trades at a massive multiple, Microsoft doesn't. I think a lot of you just hate Microsoft and ignore (or rather prefer to pretend) the reality that the world runs on it.
> "GitHub Copilot had competitive pricing until yesterday when they changed from per-request to one of the most expensive per-token quotas. Seriously, take a look at their burning subreddit for some laughs"
AI is expensive and it has been heavily subsidized. I you think $20/mo for Codex/Claude flat vs a more usage based model you're in for a shock. Especially once these companies go public and have to meet investor expectations.
AI snippets are just terrible, I always just scroll past it. I want to find the website I'm looking for, if I wanted to use AI I'd open up an AI app or website.
America is very very rich, the average person is much wealthier than the average European. 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable. It's a media sensationalist headline grabber which virtually every economist ignores.
People don't like saying America is rich because it defies their beliefs, but the actual stats don't lie. Every American I know that has moved to Europe (and I have lived there as well, in Munich) moved there with, shock...American money and savings. So they don't actually get the initial start many Europeans do and it clouds their view to think that's just how all Europeans live.
That doesn't guarantee that this will always be true, but given Europe's current trajectory, even with the US's many shortcomings...it's hard to say Europe will catch up anytime soon.
> 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable.
Do you have any sources for this? The reason why I personally don't believe your claim is because every single US citizen I know lives paycheck-to-paycheck, quite literally
Per the Federal Reserve, the average 35 to 44 year old has over $141,000 in retirement savings. That’s just incompatible with the idea that everyone is living paycheck to paycheck in the full sense of the phrase. Every dollar is not being spent: plenty is being saved for retirement, spent on unnecessary things, etc.
Are most of these people allocating every dollar that comes in each month to bills, living expenses, and savings? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they have no money left in the paycheck.
All of this stuff tries to be factual and scientific about something that is a feeling, really - if you're $80k in debt (not that I know ANYONE like that no, sirreeeeee!) and have no plan and don't even know how much you owe each month, you're going to be stressed and pissed and always surprised.
If you're in the exact same situation but have it all documented and budgeted and planned for (what I call "knowing exactly how fucked you are") you'll be much better off mentally even if not financially (at first, that will follow).
I read enough HN to know what it is -absolutely- true. HN comments, including this thread, often just read like BlueSky screeds half the time the US, US government or Sam Altman/Elon Musk/etc are mentioned.
They all deserve criticism, but when that's all a thread turns into when these items come up, well the discussion becomes very hollow and partisan really quickly.
There are users or bots that post political headlines on here with an obvious one-sided bias and do it to farm points, similar to Reddit. It'd be nice to have an impartial forum but it always seems to devolve into an echo chamber.
Your statement that it's humans and dismissing botted activity is a blanket statement, whereas I never used absolute language.
If it's a human getting up and rushing to to write about promoted ragebait content devolving a forum into an echo chamber, of course someone takes the bait and lists grievances in hysterical language unsolicited. Such emotionality is totally uncalled for on a tech forum, and proves my point.
Maybe I can ask ChatGPT to reply to this concern trolling because apparently I can dismiss humanity very easily that way. "hey grok give tip this person over the edge on this AI-induced psychosis screed."
And from my side of politics it seems like every thread about that group has a handful of dick riders who will stand for zero criticism of their cult leaders.
There are people actively insinuating in this thread that Sam should be...killed, and they are still up. Very odd moderation, surely there is a better way to flag these things.
It seems you or the team have culled many of them. There was one in particular that stood out but it seems to have been removed or they are heavily buried now. I just saw your post further down the thread, so you have seen them and I assume action was taken, thanks. There are still some that I find distasteful, but not as bad as what I was originally seeing towards the top.
I'm glad to hear that we at least got to them after a time lag. Time lags are inevitable but hopefully the worst stuff does get flagged and moderated before too long.
The politicization of everything and constant doomerish on here sure has echoes of early 2000s Slashdot. That's not a compliment. Reading the comments here is actually depressing. Human progress is never all at once, we can't even celebrate this triumph? Life is almost never "one or the other," the program could be scrapped to a junk yard and that wouldn't solve global hunger or global conflicts. Setting human eyes forward is good.
I pray to never reach a point of cynicism where my response to watching humans leave the planet on a rocket is immediately "meh, whatever, here's my political complaint of the week"
Global hunger's a great example. When we last left the moon (1972) 35% of the global population was undernourished. Today it's ~8%. Optimism is a choice, and generally a more rational one. That doesn't mean we don't have real issues.
In many ways I agree with you, but you have to acknowledge that things change when the _benefits_ of going forwards are funnelled to fewer and fewer people. That is what colors people’s view of what is happening in the way you are seeing.
Don't confuse bureaucracy with "gutted." The federal government is bigger than at most any point in US history. Arguably that fact is -why- it's 15 years behind schedule.
That's per 100k (which just says it's mostly flat per 100k), net spending of the federal government is more than ever, and actual workforce is bigger than ever. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is stubbornly high despite us being in "peace time," and not recession spending.
If you all don't think bureaucracy is the main driver of government delays...well you clearly have never worked with or in and around government. I try to live in reality.
No, it's a plain headcount. Your first link is a chart of non-inflation adjusted spending. Your second link is all government, not just federal employees so it's not really germane to the discussion, and your third link includes things like Social Security, and frankly...good. Without the government stabilizing spending the economy would be even more of a dumpster fire of random investor panics.
I'm close to a number of people in the public sector. They're brilliant, they do great work and they aren't paid what they're worth. I've also worked for a long time in a mega-corp. It was frequently just as bureaucratic and wasteful, if not more so, than the government.
Even assuming what you're saying is correct and government spending doesn't matter (odd thing to say when you're arguing that the government has been "gutted,") your own chart is only flat over time because of USPS workers being less due to automation/retirement and there being less military recruitment (both account for about ~1.5M employees lost,) and doesn't include offloading to contractors. Underlying agencies and government is bigger than ever before. The government (federal AND state levels) itself is much larger, with more regulations, than it was even 20 years ago.
Every company has bureaucracy, but it's nothing compared to government work. Also, government has no competition, bureaucracy in big companies will eventually be punished (even if it takes a long time.) In government it is often rewarded, both internally and externally (via regulatory capture, etc.)
In any case, saying the federal government has been "gutted" is a flat lie. I don't see how people can argue otherwise. I want more money going to NASA, and more money going to civil projects like HSR, but would that magically remove 15 years of bureaucratic mess? No. More money to these projects can only happen on a large political scale if/when the bureaucratic red tape is cut to lower the costs. Adding an additional layer of bureaucrats and middle managers and pot of gold everyone can dip their hands in before it reaches the final project doesn't fix the issue.
> They're brilliant, they do great work and they aren't paid what they're worth
The headcount of such wonderful people you are describing has been reduced but then replaced by 3x+ times the rates Gov is paying for the contractors that were hired (I am one of them). so this headcount being low is a nothing more than political smokescreen that will probably be used in campaigns leading up to November election (not probably, certainly cause there is nothing else to run if you are member of the ruling party)
I am willing to concede that it would be more financially responsible for the United States to greatly increase the size of the permanent federal workforce, and to stop making its size a political football.
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