Look, I actually buy a lot of what the letter says, but it's also something I could have written myself with my passing knowledge of current AI tech. "They're hitting a wall" isn't exactly a groundbreaking proposition, and the letter offers nothing to back up the assertion. "AI is widely astroturfed" is certainly believable, but again, there's no specifics here. With no actual details, with no information that's not publicly available, and with no actual proof that the author is who he says he is, it might as well be an LLM prompt: "write a letter purporting to be from a ML engineer explaining why AI is about to hit a wall and things are fine for programmers in the future."
but it's also something I could have written myself with my passing knowledge of current AI tech.
Yes, I touch on this in detail in the final section of the post. I think I approached the letter with a healthy amount of skepticism.
it might as well be an LLM prompt:
You'll have to take my word for it, but there was one final line in the email that I cut off, that convinces me that it's was a specifically targeted and human-written mail.
(The emailer was making a reference to a game I'm tangentially involved in and I place it beyond the machine to figure that out and then add a unique, tongue in cheek reference at the end of the mail.)
And I'm pretty sure any larger company's upper management is expected to buy into the Current Thing, because if it turns out to deliver, you don't want to be the chump who was left out by not jumping on the bandwagon.
This has always felt weird to me, honestly, because it's an extremely safe position to take when your shareholders are usually much more for taking risks - after all, that's how they make money.
If you invest in AI when everyone else is investing in AI, you'll crash with the rest of the market if things go wrong, which is why it's "safe". However, explicitly going against AI will make you stand out, possibly attract customers, and if the AI gamble doesn't pay out, you've ended up in a much better position, as you haven't burnt money and goodwill.
I suppose the answer is that larger companies just "walk the walk and talk the talk" without actually investing any real money (relative to their scale) into the current bandwagon.
AI crashes and you bought in: Sucks for everyone, but unless you've ridiculously overcommitted, you're relatively in the same neck of the woods as everyone else.
AI crashes and you didn't buy in: You're in a better position than others, assuming positives coming from the amount of funding and traffic AI brought them before the crash and the negatives of the crash summed still didn't place them in a disproportionately better situation, than you are. I'm sure a lot of "AI investments" are only tangentially related to it, if at all.
AI thrives and you bought in: Business as usual, if you were a strong player, you likely stay a strong player. Those who didn't buy in, but should have are easy pickings.
AI thrives and you didn't buy in: RIP.
From a purely risk assessment perspective, you don't want to gamble on the "buy in" axis.
I suppose the answer is that larger companies just "walk the walk and talk the talk" without actually investing any real money (relative to their scale) into the current bandwagon.
I think they very much do. There's news about MS and Uber cutting back on their token quotas, because they've been spending so much money on them. I think all of Big Tech is shovelling bucketfuls of cash onto this every second, because they somehow still expect that to be cheaper than "being left out".
You should add that, sometimes, being the only winner is not a solution. You actually want to follow the herd. Like when everybody is crashing but you didn’t buy it, so you think you are in better position but, suddenly, the government decides to help the crashed companies and you cannot benefit from it.
And that’s only considering the company perspective. On the individual perspective, as long as you follow the bubble, you receive huge bonuses and, wthen it crashes, you simply walk away with the money already earned. This is an often overlooked property of modern capitalism: the C-suits have no interest at all in the company surviving the next bubble. They have interest at the company making stupidly high valuation during a bubble then exit just before it pops. They litterally cannot lose. That’s also why they are so unethical and selling bad products: at worse, people die, there’s a scandal and the company pays a fine. But individuals have no responsibilty (just remember VW CEO during dieselgate).
And you can even track and experiment now, without any sort of big buy in. I've always been a fan of this with vendors, too... even when I'm happy w/ a vendor I use, I keep loose contact with their competitors and occasionally do a free trial of a product or spend a bit of money on a small install just to keep up and keep options open.
I don't think your general (as in, individuals, pension fund etc) investors are all about risk taking (that's more for venture capitalists and startups). They value sustained growth over big all-or-nothing attempts.
And I would note that by not investing in the current hype, you are sure to lose existing customers to competitors who are investing in the hype, all because it's a hype. It's a fashionable thing to do and people are going nuts over it, even if a couple years from now it may be gone. Many (even non-technical) people are genuinely enthusiastic about these tools (for instance, we got proudly shown by a realtor what a kitchen would look like if we changed the color, by uploading a picture of it to ChatGPT), even if they are less than enthusiastic about the AI capabilities of, say, Google Docs. Sad as it is, I think it is rational (up to a point) for a company to partake, to possibly attract new customers but moreso to avoid losing customers. When put this way, it's easy money and a logical way to expand the business. It becomes problematic when millions are thrown at it in a feeble attempt to "keep with the times" and cramming AI into products where it doesn't even make sense.
jfloren | 13 hours ago
Look, I actually buy a lot of what the letter says, but it's also something I could have written myself with my passing knowledge of current AI tech. "They're hitting a wall" isn't exactly a groundbreaking proposition, and the letter offers nothing to back up the assertion. "AI is widely astroturfed" is certainly believable, but again, there's no specifics here. With no actual details, with no information that's not publicly available, and with no actual proof that the author is who he says he is, it might as well be an LLM prompt: "write a letter purporting to be from a ML engineer explaining why AI is about to hit a wall and things are fine for programmers in the future."
[OP] nemin | 12 hours ago
Yes, I touch on this in detail in the final section of the post. I think I approached the letter with a healthy amount of skepticism.
You'll have to take my word for it, but there was one final line in the email that I cut off, that convinces me that it's was a specifically targeted and human-written mail.
(The emailer was making a reference to a game I'm tangentially involved in and I place it beyond the machine to figure that out and then add a unique, tongue in cheek reference at the end of the mail.)
DustyFuzzy | 22 hours ago
This has always felt weird to me, honestly, because it's an extremely safe position to take when your shareholders are usually much more for taking risks - after all, that's how they make money.
If you invest in AI when everyone else is investing in AI, you'll crash with the rest of the market if things go wrong, which is why it's "safe". However, explicitly going against AI will make you stand out, possibly attract customers, and if the AI gamble doesn't pay out, you've ended up in a much better position, as you haven't burnt money and goodwill.
I suppose the answer is that larger companies just "walk the walk and talk the talk" without actually investing any real money (relative to their scale) into the current bandwagon.
[OP] nemin | 21 hours ago
I reckon it's all about risk management.
AI crashes and you bought in: Sucks for everyone, but unless you've ridiculously overcommitted, you're relatively in the same neck of the woods as everyone else.
AI crashes and you didn't buy in: You're in a better position than others, assuming positives coming from the amount of funding and traffic AI brought them before the crash and the negatives of the crash summed still didn't place them in a disproportionately better situation, than you are. I'm sure a lot of "AI investments" are only tangentially related to it, if at all.
AI thrives and you bought in: Business as usual, if you were a strong player, you likely stay a strong player. Those who didn't buy in, but should have are easy pickings.
AI thrives and you didn't buy in: RIP.
From a purely risk assessment perspective, you don't want to gamble on the "buy in" axis.
I think they very much do. There's news about MS and Uber cutting back on their token quotas, because they've been spending so much money on them. I think all of Big Tech is shovelling bucketfuls of cash onto this every second, because they somehow still expect that to be cheaper than "being left out".
ploum | 21 hours ago
You should add that, sometimes, being the only winner is not a solution. You actually want to follow the herd. Like when everybody is crashing but you didn’t buy it, so you think you are in better position but, suddenly, the government decides to help the crashed companies and you cannot benefit from it.
And that’s only considering the company perspective. On the individual perspective, as long as you follow the bubble, you receive huge bonuses and, wthen it crashes, you simply walk away with the money already earned. This is an often overlooked property of modern capitalism: the C-suits have no interest at all in the company surviving the next bubble. They have interest at the company making stupidly high valuation during a bubble then exit just before it pops. They litterally cannot lose. That’s also why they are so unethical and selling bad products: at worse, people die, there’s a scandal and the company pays a fine. But individuals have no responsibilty (just remember VW CEO during dieselgate).
mtset | 19 hours ago
But... why? If AI becomes much better in 6mo, why not buy in then, rather than having spent 6mo wrestling with now-outmoded technology and practices?
ploum | 15 hours ago
FOMO
abeyer | 8 hours ago
And you can even track and experiment now, without any sort of big buy in. I've always been a fan of this with vendors, too... even when I'm happy w/ a vendor I use, I keep loose contact with their competitors and occasionally do a free trial of a product or spend a bit of money on a small install just to keep up and keep options open.
sjamaan | 21 hours ago
I don't think your general (as in, individuals, pension fund etc) investors are all about risk taking (that's more for venture capitalists and startups). They value sustained growth over big all-or-nothing attempts.
And I would note that by not investing in the current hype, you are sure to lose existing customers to competitors who are investing in the hype, all because it's a hype. It's a fashionable thing to do and people are going nuts over it, even if a couple years from now it may be gone. Many (even non-technical) people are genuinely enthusiastic about these tools (for instance, we got proudly shown by a realtor what a kitchen would look like if we changed the color, by uploading a picture of it to ChatGPT), even if they are less than enthusiastic about the AI capabilities of, say, Google Docs. Sad as it is, I think it is rational (up to a point) for a company to partake, to possibly attract new customers but moreso to avoid losing customers. When put this way, it's easy money and a logical way to expand the business. It becomes problematic when millions are thrown at it in a feeble attempt to "keep with the times" and cramming AI into products where it doesn't even make sense.