Coding with LLMs (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) is often presented as the ‘killer app’ for Generative AI. But looking at data, it seems the one piece of the puzzle missing is actual cost. …
Of course they don’t, that’s why they’re building bunkers. Thinking it’ll slow us down, as we’ll open their bunkers like cans of tuna. A bunker only works for so long, then the survivors start hunting for them like delicious shipwrecks.
I don’t think the bunkers are to avoid bad financial decisions, more so to stave off something like rogue ASI or a biosphere collapse which in any circumstance won’t work in the long-run.
And that’s why they’re trying underhanded tactics to inflate earnings and IPO directly into the index funds, so every American’s 401K will legally have to rebalance and invest in them. They’re racing to fleece retirement funds before the bubble bursts.
Not financial advice, of course :p but people should really consider getting their stuff out and into self-directed funds or whatever it is US people do to not depend on auto-allocated funds.
Many applications are suboptimal to say the least but what’s been done with alpha fold and recently in mathematics is very far from a scam. Not to bring up what’s also been accomplished in cyber security. These models are proving open problems that have been around for decades and finding serious vulnerabilities. The issue is consistency and efficiency. Of course the other issue in making them stronger is continual learning and long horizon planning. I think too much investment came in too quickly and what is provided to the masses currently isn’t consistent or efficient enough. That said as a math and comp sci grad and someone who works in the field it’s been absolutely mind blowing to watch what’s already been done. In 2010 the concept of an artificial mind solving something like the Erdős unit distance conjecture would have been seen as pure sci-fi, maybe something we would achieve closer to 2100 than 2026.
For reference, it took Uber about 17 years to become profitable and Spotify 18. They were hemorrhaging cash for over a decade and a half before finally hitting their stride. As for the current AI development it’s honestly from 2017 when the white paper on transformers came out where shit started getting serious, so it’s been about 9 years since investors were serious. Before that point it was all passion projects, absolute moon shots as they call them.
Although, most people aren’t talking about Alphafold when they’re talking about AI. They’re usually specifically referring to the generative transformer models that are currently all the rage.
I doubt anyone would care too much about a linear regression model, or multi-layer peceptron , for example.
Both Uber and Spotify (and AWS too) had economics of scale going for them - the more users they have, the more the infrastructure could be leveraged. This does NOT work for LLMs. More users means using more compute, more advanced tasks (like coding) uses exponential amounts of compute. A single user running a complex task can make 8 Blackwell GPUs run full tilt, and you don’t even have any guarantee that the output will be useable.
There are a few narrow areas where LLMs might be successful, like scanning for security vulnerabilities or searching large amounts of documents. The massive amount of money invested will never be recouped with these usage scenarios.
Of course it is, it’s essentially a scam. They just need enough humans to keep investing until they check out and run with a bailout.
Funny thing is, the US government doesn’t even have nearly enough money to bail all these mfa out. So we are heading into uncharted territory here
Of course they don’t, that’s why they’re building bunkers. Thinking it’ll slow us down, as we’ll open their bunkers like cans of tuna. A bunker only works for so long, then the survivors start hunting for them like delicious shipwrecks.
I don’t think the bunkers are to avoid bad financial decisions, more so to stave off something like rogue ASI or a biosphere collapse which in any circumstance won’t work in the long-run.
Yeah, but it’s not like they would be smart enough to know that
And that’s why they’re trying underhanded tactics to inflate earnings and IPO directly into the index funds, so every American’s 401K will legally have to rebalance and invest in them. They’re racing to fleece retirement funds before the bubble bursts.
Not financial advice, of course :p but people should really consider getting their stuff out and into self-directed funds or whatever it is US people do to not depend on auto-allocated funds.
Money printer go brrrrrrr
Many applications are suboptimal to say the least but what’s been done with alpha fold and recently in mathematics is very far from a scam. Not to bring up what’s also been accomplished in cyber security. These models are proving open problems that have been around for decades and finding serious vulnerabilities. The issue is consistency and efficiency. Of course the other issue in making them stronger is continual learning and long horizon planning. I think too much investment came in too quickly and what is provided to the masses currently isn’t consistent or efficient enough. That said as a math and comp sci grad and someone who works in the field it’s been absolutely mind blowing to watch what’s already been done. In 2010 the concept of an artificial mind solving something like the Erdős unit distance conjecture would have been seen as pure sci-fi, maybe something we would achieve closer to 2100 than 2026.
For reference, it took Uber about 17 years to become profitable and Spotify 18. They were hemorrhaging cash for over a decade and a half before finally hitting their stride. As for the current AI development it’s honestly from 2017 when the white paper on transformers came out where shit started getting serious, so it’s been about 9 years since investors were serious. Before that point it was all passion projects, absolute moon shots as they call them.
Although, most people aren’t talking about Alphafold when they’re talking about AI. They’re usually specifically referring to the generative transformer models that are currently all the rage.
I doubt anyone would care too much about a linear regression model, or multi-layer peceptron , for example.
Both Uber and Spotify (and AWS too) had economics of scale going for them - the more users they have, the more the infrastructure could be leveraged. This does NOT work for LLMs. More users means using more compute, more advanced tasks (like coding) uses exponential amounts of compute. A single user running a complex task can make 8 Blackwell GPUs run full tilt, and you don’t even have any guarantee that the output will be useable.
There are a few narrow areas where LLMs might be successful, like scanning for security vulnerabilities or searching large amounts of documents. The massive amount of money invested will never be recouped with these usage scenarios.