4 ms·

It’s a bubble. “AI” could be quite successful at this point, and the economics still don’t work out.

ikiris 5d ago
The economics work out just fine. Their actual target business model is replace every knowledge worker. Their thought process is "look at all these people making 150k+, we can do their jobs for 10% of that, think how much money that would be if we had all of it" Sure, the next step is complete regression to feudalism, but they aren't thinking that far ahead, they just want to take every job in existence that isn't physically turning a proverbial wrench.
- autoexec 5d ago
  the moment AI is capable enough to replace every knowledge worker and all knowledge workers are fired and/or dead the AI companies will just hike up the price for access to their bots until every company is paying at least as much if not more than what they were on human workers.
  - Gigachad 5d ago
    What even is the economy after they have killed all the workers and it's just bots clicking on each others ads?
    - greatquux 5d ago
      Once the economics work out, the economy as a whole doesn't, therefore the economics DOESN'T WORK OUT.
      - ikiris 5d ago
        I think you're making an assumption that the owners of this capital aren't: "That the economy has to work out for everyone."
        jeremyjh 5d ago
        It doesn't work out for the owners of the capital. Their wealth is entirely based on their claims on future production that is consumed by people with money.
    - heroprotagonist 5d ago
      Then it's on to centralization of the "human" components of the workforce into company towns, robot armies and competition for natural resources that will be processed from raw.
    - mitxela 5d ago
      Rich people trading houses and shares to each other
  - mitxela 5d ago
    This already happened btw
  - bloppe 5d ago
    You can't hike up the price on open-weight frontier models. It's a commodity.
- rylando 5d ago
  It’s wild to me that anyone can have that thought and yet not think about what happens to everyone whose job you took. Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns. Especially after seeing what the “learn to code” movement has brought people into, I can’t imagine those people will just roll over and peacefully enter homeless encampments..
  - hydrogen7800 5d ago
    >citizens known for owning guns. They're largely the ones voting for this.
  - voidfunc 5d ago
    This is a country that voted for Trump twice soooo... it's anybodies guess.
  - charlieyu1 5d ago
    I’m old enough to remember when people said computers would do all jobs 30 years ago
    - anonzzzies 5d ago
      They said it every decade since invention. My father who worked in IT since the 60s told me to become an electrician when I was kid as computers will replace all jobs soon. I did become an electrician, welder and have two doctorates; math and cs (which was part of the math dep then). But this time does feel actually different; cheap LLMs are good enough to do advanced work, better than most colleagues I worked with over the decades. Sure you need humans still, just not many. Robots are crap still mostly but we are just starting out… I will not have to worry in my lifetime, but if I had kids or grandkids, I would be worried. But I guess all generations, like my father, have that anyway; we will see.
  - sofixa 5d ago
    > Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns. This has always been a story Americans tell themselves to sleep better at night that has zero relation to reality. The US is a country that has seen many injustices perpetrated by the government. From concentration camps for people of a certain descent to legal racial discrimination (and slavery before that) to wanton violence by security forces against innocent people (pick your favourite police/ICE/etc murder here). When have armed Americans ever risen up against a government injustice? Best I can think of is the Oklahoma city bombing and I'm pretty sure that's not what you're all refering to.
- goatlover 5d ago
  But they haven't replaced every knowledge worker. The unemployment rate remains unaffected by all the AI progress. At some point the bill comes due, and if most of those jobs are still around, then what?
- sofixa 5d ago
  Even your back of napkin optimistic math doesn't work. The median white collar job in the US (picking it on purpose because it's a country with high wages, your math would be even worse in a France or Italy) is in the $60-70k. Yes you have to add benefits and etc, but we're still pretty far off 150k. How much tokens does $80k buy you and do you think it's capable of replacing a human's output? For some, definitely. For plenty, I doubt it. Currently token costs are subsidised by the bubble frontier labs and already we're seeing tightening of budgets because it's costing more than expected
  - anonzzzies 5d ago
    I think you never worked with ‘plenty’; most people I worked with in the past 40 years in IT I am suprised when they actually can walk in on their own. I would say most can be replaced by deepseek flash now, let alone Astra or Fable. I never know in what heaven HN people work, but my company is doing some fixing for a multinational with 20k ‘devs’, most outsourced and they are quite literally morons, far behind even bad LLMs. Their trick is basically to schedule as many calls with as many people as possible to look busy and make their timesheets somewhat plausible. And these are mostly devs. When you see the questions to jira tasks you worry about if they don’t forget to eat or go to the toilet randomly. Oh yeah, most are classified as seniors. An we visit many companies like this. So I am definitely confused how people on HN seem to think most humans can do something worthwhile.
- bloppe 5d ago
  You can't be a feudal lord if you're forced to accept razor-thin margins (assuming they're positive at all) due to relentless competition
- int_19h 5d ago
  > Sure, the next step is complete regression to feudalism, but they aren't thinking that far ahead, They are though! They are literally building castles for themselves already.
vagrantJin 5d ago
well, according to finance bros, shovelling cash into a furnace to power a boiler to steam some eggs is considered a wild success. Economics is for normies.
hackernud3s 5d ago
Parts of it can be a bubble while other parts are not. The need for datacenters can be real while the valuation of model providers can be a fantasy.
- cyphar 5d ago
  If the need is driven by a bubble economy, when the bubble pops the demand disappears too. This can even lead to a separate bubble popping (see: the dotcom and telecom bubbles). Yes, datacentres can be reused for other purposes but dark fibre didn't save the telecom bubble and the utility of train tracks didn't save the railway bubble.

The economics work out just fine. Their actual target business model is replace every knowledge worker. Their thought process is "look at all these people making 150k+, we can do their jobs for 10% of that, think how much money that would be if we had all of it" Sure, the next step is complete regression to feudalism, but they aren't thinking that far ahead, they just want to take every job in existence that isn't physically turning a proverbial wrench.

autoexec 5d ago
the moment AI is capable enough to replace every knowledge worker and all knowledge workers are fired and/or dead the AI companies will just hike up the price for access to their bots until every company is paying at least as much if not more than what they were on human workers.
- Gigachad 5d ago
  What even is the economy after they have killed all the workers and it's just bots clicking on each others ads?
  - greatquux 5d ago
    Once the economics work out, the economy as a whole doesn't, therefore the economics DOESN'T WORK OUT.
    - ikiris 5d ago
      I think you're making an assumption that the owners of this capital aren't: "That the economy has to work out for everyone."
      - jeremyjh 5d ago
        It doesn't work out for the owners of the capital. Their wealth is entirely based on their claims on future production that is consumed by people with money.
  - heroprotagonist 5d ago
    Then it's on to centralization of the "human" components of the workforce into company towns, robot armies and competition for natural resources that will be processed from raw.
  - mitxela 5d ago
    Rich people trading houses and shares to each other
- mitxela 5d ago
  This already happened btw
- bloppe 5d ago
  You can't hike up the price on open-weight frontier models. It's a commodity.
rylando 5d ago
It’s wild to me that anyone can have that thought and yet not think about what happens to everyone whose job you took. Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns. Especially after seeing what the “learn to code” movement has brought people into, I can’t imagine those people will just roll over and peacefully enter homeless encampments..
- hydrogen7800 5d ago
  >citizens known for owning guns. They're largely the ones voting for this.
- voidfunc 5d ago
  This is a country that voted for Trump twice soooo... it's anybodies guess.
- charlieyu1 5d ago
  I’m old enough to remember when people said computers would do all jobs 30 years ago
  - anonzzzies 5d ago
    They said it every decade since invention. My father who worked in IT since the 60s told me to become an electrician when I was kid as computers will replace all jobs soon. I did become an electrician, welder and have two doctorates; math and cs (which was part of the math dep then). But this time does feel actually different; cheap LLMs are good enough to do advanced work, better than most colleagues I worked with over the decades. Sure you need humans still, just not many. Robots are crap still mostly but we are just starting out… I will not have to worry in my lifetime, but if I had kids or grandkids, I would be worried. But I guess all generations, like my father, have that anyway; we will see.
- sofixa 5d ago
  > Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns. This has always been a story Americans tell themselves to sleep better at night that has zero relation to reality. The US is a country that has seen many injustices perpetrated by the government. From concentration camps for people of a certain descent to legal racial discrimination (and slavery before that) to wanton violence by security forces against innocent people (pick your favourite police/ICE/etc murder here). When have armed Americans ever risen up against a government injustice? Best I can think of is the Oklahoma city bombing and I'm pretty sure that's not what you're all refering to.
goatlover 5d ago
But they haven't replaced every knowledge worker. The unemployment rate remains unaffected by all the AI progress. At some point the bill comes due, and if most of those jobs are still around, then what?
sofixa 5d ago
Even your back of napkin optimistic math doesn't work. The median white collar job in the US (picking it on purpose because it's a country with high wages, your math would be even worse in a France or Italy) is in the $60-70k. Yes you have to add benefits and etc, but we're still pretty far off 150k. How much tokens does $80k buy you and do you think it's capable of replacing a human's output? For some, definitely. For plenty, I doubt it. Currently token costs are subsidised by the bubble frontier labs and already we're seeing tightening of budgets because it's costing more than expected
- anonzzzies 5d ago
  I think you never worked with ‘plenty’; most people I worked with in the past 40 years in IT I am suprised when they actually can walk in on their own. I would say most can be replaced by deepseek flash now, let alone Astra or Fable. I never know in what heaven HN people work, but my company is doing some fixing for a multinational with 20k ‘devs’, most outsourced and they are quite literally morons, far behind even bad LLMs. Their trick is basically to schedule as many calls with as many people as possible to look busy and make their timesheets somewhat plausible. And these are mostly devs. When you see the questions to jira tasks you worry about if they don’t forget to eat or go to the toilet randomly. Oh yeah, most are classified as seniors. An we visit many companies like this. So I am definitely confused how people on HN seem to think most humans can do something worthwhile.
bloppe 5d ago
You can't be a feudal lord if you're forced to accept razor-thin margins (assuming they're positive at all) due to relentless competition
int_19h 5d ago
> Sure, the next step is complete regression to feudalism, but they aren't thinking that far ahead, They are though! They are literally building castles for themselves already.

vagrantJin 5d ago

well, according to finance bros, shovelling cash into a furnace to power a boiler to steam some eggs is considered a wild success. Economics is for normies.

hackernud3s 5d ago

Parts of it can be a bubble while other parts are not. The need for datacenters can be real while the valuation of model providers can be a fantasy.

cyphar 5d ago
If the need is driven by a bubble economy, when the bubble pops the demand disappears too. This can even lead to a separate bubble popping (see: the dotcom and telecom bubbles). Yes, datacentres can be reused for other purposes but dark fibre didn't save the telecom bubble and the utility of train tracks didn't save the railway bubble.