5 ms·

Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-

Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.

echelon 3mo ago
> As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.
- anon7725 3mo ago
  I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
  - echelon 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Jtsummers 3mo ago
      > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
    - girvo 3mo ago
      This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
    - II2II 3mo ago
      > I swear the anti-AI crowd would all be picking to die if you each had a choice between immortality and living to 85. It really depends on the cost of immortality. At the very least, it would have a psychological impact that some people may feel is undesirable. > None of you is writing punch card programs. > None of you are building vaccum tube logic. Perhaps none of us, but some people certainly do. We are intellectual creatures. Some of us do things out of pure curiosity. Can we create multinational corporations out of it? Almost certainly not. Can we create businesses out of it? People do so all of the time. There is a market for produce from small farms, hand crafts, heck, even vintage computing. > None of the things we build today are going to last. Your programs will be meaningless in a hundred years. Probably closer to ten years. Try telling that to people who are trying to retire legacy systems. Sure, most of them have been modernized. Perhaps they have even been modernized to the point where none of the original code exists. Yet the core ideas still exist since it turns out to be incredibly hard to discard things. The old ways of writing software will continue, even if they are nowhere near as popular. Call that irrational if you want. I call it human.
    - javascriptfan69 3mo ago
      What if they just like writing code?
    - sublinear 3mo ago
      > Get over it. It's not that important. I don't think you understand what code is. What it does is far less important than how it does it. Software is bureaucracy and always has been. The discipline is just finally maturing into this role like so many other careers have.
    - anon7725 3mo ago
      > AI is better at this than you. Maybe so, but I am better at this when I engage with AI in a controlled manner.
    - overgard 3mo ago
      > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. It's just not though. Plagiarizing some shit it stole off github does not make it intelligent. Edit: just because it's amusing, here's something I'm literally running into right now with Opus 4.8 on "Max" settings being dumb. I asked it to add some C++ code to an existing C++ project for Unreal Engine. It did half the work, then balked, because "it doesn't have a way to compile C++". I just had to tell it "yes, actually, you just need to run the fricking extremely-standard-already-generated-build-script." If I had a novel build system it'd be one thing, but it already knows I'm working on an Unreal Engine project and that the build is completely standard and it still couldn't piece together that it could just run the compiler. I would not employ a C++ developer that could not figure out how to invoke the compiler.
    - otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
      > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. No, you're just really, really shit at programming. You just won't admit it. (AI, in general, is only impressive when you have no clue about the subject domain.)
    - keybored 3mo ago
      > This all feels so damned performative. These are irrational decisions. Oh, it was meant to be rhetorical. Because everyone thinks like you?
    - cryptopian 3mo ago
      > AI is better at this than you Software is better than me at crossword puzzles but that doesn't mean I'm going to optimise my time solving the weekly cryptic
  - account42 3mo ago
    And let's not forget that choosing B is only possible at all because many people chose A before you.
- bigstrat2003 3mo ago
  Option A is fun, whereas option B is miserable. Option A is also cheaper. It's a pretty clear win for option A here.
- sdenton4 3mo ago
  Of course, you can use Option B to write the program, and then run it on your own machine...
- dgellow 3mo ago
  I’m choosing the first option. I’m not sure which one you chose?
- Hugsbox 3mo ago
  You're making a really strong case for option A, whereas B sounds really depressing
thewebguyd 3mo ago
That's my fear, and unfortunately I think its likely to happen. I feel like we will settle down a little bit, but into a new higher "normal" baseline that still largely makes it unaffordable for most. There's also still the risk of the creation of a new economic underclass, if both a) hardware remains too expensive for local inference and b) subscription or pay-per-token based inference also remains expensive or increases in price, then individuals will largely be locked out of the benefits that having access to AI could bring, leaving it purely in the hands of larger companies. People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer, for the benefit of their employer.
- teo_zero 3mo ago
  > People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer Like in the era of mainframes, before the personal computer was a thing. I wonder if universities will play the same role, though.
- abc123abc123 3mo ago
  This is not correct. Prices will adjuts when the crash comes. At worst, the market and prices will just open peoples eyes up to the reality that 99% of the daily software we use, runs perfectly fine on a 5 years old computer. The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. Remember... we reached the moon with the compute power of a pocket calculator, and there is no eternal law that says that everything has to be written in javascript.
  - k4rnaj1k 3mo ago
    [dead]
  - thewebguyd 3mo ago
    > The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. I don't think anyone thinks that? Unless you are trying to do local inference with bigger models, which isn't everyone's cup of tea but I do think is an important capability. Outside of that use case though, prices are still ridiculous. 32GB of DDR5 will run you close to $500 right now vs. $80 before the AI build out, and 32GB is what I'd consider comfortable so long as everything keeps being electron and web wrappers (assuming Windows & macOS here for the general population, obviously you can get by with less on a Linux desktop for the most part). Personally, I'd love to see more software do more with less, and go back to performant native apps but in reality I just don't see that happening, except maybe over here in Apple/macOS land which has always had a decent culture of native apps. For now, the incentives aren't there (for commercial software). I hope you are right on prices, but I don't share the optimism. We've seen time and time again that once prices go up, they don't always go back down even when the supply crunch is eliminated. Manufacturers realize people adapt to whatever "new normal" prices are at and refuse to lower them. Same thing happened post-COVID supply shocks. Companies have zero incentive to start a price war, even after supply shocks are over. I think we are stuck with ~$500 RAM for a long time.
protocolture 3mo ago
>large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Depends how long the RAM correction takes. It is interesting how RAM prices have stifled the creation of cheap laptops capable of running big models. But at the same time, this seems like a second order effect and not the intention.
- api 3mo ago
  It’s a demand spike.

echelon 3mo ago

> As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.

anon7725 3mo ago
I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
- echelon 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Jtsummers 3mo ago
    > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
  - girvo 3mo ago
    This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
  - II2II 3mo ago
    > I swear the anti-AI crowd would all be picking to die if you each had a choice between immortality and living to 85. It really depends on the cost of immortality. At the very least, it would have a psychological impact that some people may feel is undesirable. > None of you is writing punch card programs. > None of you are building vaccum tube logic. Perhaps none of us, but some people certainly do. We are intellectual creatures. Some of us do things out of pure curiosity. Can we create multinational corporations out of it? Almost certainly not. Can we create businesses out of it? People do so all of the time. There is a market for produce from small farms, hand crafts, heck, even vintage computing. > None of the things we build today are going to last. Your programs will be meaningless in a hundred years. Probably closer to ten years. Try telling that to people who are trying to retire legacy systems. Sure, most of them have been modernized. Perhaps they have even been modernized to the point where none of the original code exists. Yet the core ideas still exist since it turns out to be incredibly hard to discard things. The old ways of writing software will continue, even if they are nowhere near as popular. Call that irrational if you want. I call it human.
  - javascriptfan69 3mo ago
    What if they just like writing code?
  - sublinear 3mo ago
    > Get over it. It's not that important. I don't think you understand what code is. What it does is far less important than how it does it. Software is bureaucracy and always has been. The discipline is just finally maturing into this role like so many other careers have.
  - anon7725 3mo ago
    > AI is better at this than you. Maybe so, but I am better at this when I engage with AI in a controlled manner.
  - overgard 3mo ago
    > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. It's just not though. Plagiarizing some shit it stole off github does not make it intelligent. Edit: just because it's amusing, here's something I'm literally running into right now with Opus 4.8 on "Max" settings being dumb. I asked it to add some C++ code to an existing C++ project for Unreal Engine. It did half the work, then balked, because "it doesn't have a way to compile C++". I just had to tell it "yes, actually, you just need to run the fricking extremely-standard-already-generated-build-script." If I had a novel build system it'd be one thing, but it already knows I'm working on an Unreal Engine project and that the build is completely standard and it still couldn't piece together that it could just run the compiler. I would not employ a C++ developer that could not figure out how to invoke the compiler.
  - otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
    > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. No, you're just really, really shit at programming. You just won't admit it. (AI, in general, is only impressive when you have no clue about the subject domain.)
  - keybored 3mo ago
    > This all feels so damned performative. These are irrational decisions. Oh, it was meant to be rhetorical. Because everyone thinks like you?
  - cryptopian 3mo ago
    > AI is better at this than you Software is better than me at crossword puzzles but that doesn't mean I'm going to optimise my time solving the weekly cryptic
- account42 3mo ago
  And let's not forget that choosing B is only possible at all because many people chose A before you.
bigstrat2003 3mo ago
Option A is fun, whereas option B is miserable. Option A is also cheaper. It's a pretty clear win for option A here.
sdenton4 3mo ago
Of course, you can use Option B to write the program, and then run it on your own machine...
dgellow 3mo ago
I’m choosing the first option. I’m not sure which one you chose?
Hugsbox 3mo ago
You're making a really strong case for option A, whereas B sounds really depressing

thewebguyd 3mo ago

That's my fear, and unfortunately I think its likely to happen. I feel like we will settle down a little bit, but into a new higher "normal" baseline that still largely makes it unaffordable for most. There's also still the risk of the creation of a new economic underclass, if both a) hardware remains too expensive for local inference and b) subscription or pay-per-token based inference also remains expensive or increases in price, then individuals will largely be locked out of the benefits that having access to AI could bring, leaving it purely in the hands of larger companies. People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer, for the benefit of their employer.

teo_zero 3mo ago
> People will only get to use and experience these tools through their employer Like in the era of mainframes, before the personal computer was a thing. I wonder if universities will play the same role, though.
abc123abc123 3mo ago
This is not correct. Prices will adjuts when the crash comes. At worst, the market and prices will just open peoples eyes up to the reality that 99% of the daily software we use, runs perfectly fine on a 5 years old computer. The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. Remember... we reached the moon with the compute power of a pocket calculator, and there is no eternal law that says that everything has to be written in javascript.
- k4rnaj1k 3mo ago
  [dead]
- thewebguyd 3mo ago
  > The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd. I don't think anyone thinks that? Unless you are trying to do local inference with bigger models, which isn't everyone's cup of tea but I do think is an important capability. Outside of that use case though, prices are still ridiculous. 32GB of DDR5 will run you close to $500 right now vs. $80 before the AI build out, and 32GB is what I'd consider comfortable so long as everything keeps being electron and web wrappers (assuming Windows & macOS here for the general population, obviously you can get by with less on a Linux desktop for the most part). Personally, I'd love to see more software do more with less, and go back to performant native apps but in reality I just don't see that happening, except maybe over here in Apple/macOS land which has always had a decent culture of native apps. For now, the incentives aren't there (for commercial software). I hope you are right on prices, but I don't share the optimism. We've seen time and time again that once prices go up, they don't always go back down even when the supply crunch is eliminated. Manufacturers realize people adapt to whatever "new normal" prices are at and refuse to lower them. Same thing happened post-COVID supply shocks. Companies have zero incentive to start a price war, even after supply shocks are over. I think we are stuck with ~$500 RAM for a long time.

protocolture 3mo ago

>large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Depends how long the RAM correction takes. It is interesting how RAM prices have stifled the creation of cheap laptops capable of running big models. But at the same time, this seems like a second order effect and not the intention.

api 3mo ago
It’s a demand spike.