AI Companies Are Parasites

57 points by cdrnsf 2 hours ago on hackernews | 37 comments

Parasite takes and gives nothing back, but clearly a lot of people are using those models, which the author ignored, so the entire premise is false.

bigwheels | an hour ago

The use of the models completes a self-improving feedback loop which keeps feeding the beast and helps it grow even stronger.

: aogaili | an hour ago
But that's not the definition of parasite. People are using it because they are gaining value.
: dudebro69420 | an hour ago
ah so symbiosis

4MOAisgoodenuf | an hour ago

drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

gridspy | an hour ago

The models might benefit you, but they do not benefit the Host websites that were scraped to feed you a result.

brainwad | an hour ago

University graduates might benefit you, but they do not benefit the authors of the textbooks that were borrowed during their education.

Enough with the IP maximalism, it's perfectly fine to extract non-copyrightable ideas from copyrighted works.

someonebaggy | an hour ago

Yes they do, they pay the authors excessively, up to $200 per semester per author.

brainwad | an hour ago

Right, but AI companies are also buying copies of books (and then destroying them, because stupid copyright law). So what's the problem?

someonebaggy | an hour ago

I didn't get paid for a copy of my content published on the internet for free for non-commercial use.

aogaili | an hour ago

You work is not relevant on its own. It's the aggregate of billions that shaped those models.

Society/governments need to figure out another way to take back from those companies and give to the public.

brainwad | an hour ago

Maybe you should not have published it for free if you wanted to be paid. CC-NC and similar licenses only apply to derivative works if copyright law applies in the first place. But you could have still paywalled your site if you wanted.

: someonebaggy | 43 minutes ago
How dare I not predict the AI revolution in advance of it happening, and the fact that copyright law would become irrelevant to the right to copy?

aogaili | an hour ago

So you want them to pay the host websites for scrapping their publicly shared content? Or give attribution to how this is forming its opinion?

It's narrow take I think, let us say someone read my comment or blog, among others, and used that shape their understanding, and then by doing that, they offered better consultation, then should that person pay back every author, book and blog they read?

I don't understand what's the argument here, and also the same methods is used to give us open source models..

otreblatercero | an hour ago

> At least we get stilted prose, images that look like Pixar rehashes, and code nobody understands.

Parasites are mostly bad for health.

1298-12236 | an hour ago

Oh, so they are Robin Hood stealing from poor OSS developers and website authors and giving to the rich owners and their $200-per-month users.

aogaili | an hour ago

So they are either parasites or Robin Hood?

someonebaggy | an hour ago

parasites or reverse robin hood, which is the same thing

: salawat | 56 minutes ago
Reverse Robin Hood would be the Sheriff of Nottingham.

sailingparrot | an hour ago

There are many documented cases of parasites being beneficial to the host in some particular situation while being harmful overall.

So your entire premise is false.

simianwords | an hour ago

This is a fallacy and it is known as non-central fallacy.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...

aogaili | an hour ago

But who said it's harmful overall? That's a statement you are making not the people deriving value from it. The fact is many are benefiting otherwise they wouldn't pay that subscription.

sailingparrot | an hour ago

Where did I make that statement?

Your point was that parasites give nothing back, thus AI companies can’t be seen as parasites because we get some usefulness out of them.

My only point is that argument is false, since a host can get benefits out of a parasite.

: aogaili | an hour ago
In number 4 of the author's definition of parasite, the parasite kills the host not benefit it.
I guess that analogy would be people stop sharing their thoughts publicly, which is as likely as people stop sharing on social media, very unlikely for many reasons.

gridspy | an hour ago

Bear in mind that like many toxic blooms, once the investment hysteria feeding them dies out they will die also.

- Companies using investment funds to play the Ai Agent lottery will run out of funds

- Less tokens will be demanded, causing AI companies to raise prices to pay for overheads

- Bubble pops.

10xDev | an hour ago

Cool, bet on it: https://polymarket.com/event/ai-bubble-burst-by

Meanwhile NVDA go brrrrr.

: inknight | an hour ago
NVDA is hardware. https://isaiprofitable.com/
: MengerSponge | an hour ago
A fool's errand. "the market can remain irrational a lot longer than you can remain solvent."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/

simianwords | an hour ago

I'm willing to have a public bet that the number of tokens (or whatever the equivalent is) would increase by more than 10x in the next 3 years.

(for equivalency of tokens I'd use something like "tasks done by AI")

bryanlarsen | an hour ago

I think you have the mechanism of the pop wrong. IMO, the bubble will pop because of value competition from open source / non-frontier models. This will kill the margin of OpenAI/Anthropic, popping their valuation. Without access to capital, they will slash their training budget, killing demand for B200's etc. But the same low price that pops the bubble will make demand for inference explode, along with demand for efficient inference chips, like Tensor.

simianwords | an hour ago

I find it sad that people don't generally think about non zero sum possibilities.

I think it comes from a misreading of Marx because Marx considers value coming from Labor which is purely zero sum.

In my bubble within friends and family, practically everyone uses AI and has fun using it and gets value out of it.

SoftTalker | an hour ago

Among your friends and family, who use AI for fun, do they pay for it? Would they?

My non-tech friends use AI to make funny meme images that they send around on group chats, but would they pay for those? I doubt it.

I can't think of anything in my personal life that I would pay for an AI to do. Businesses, sure... as long as they are getting real value.

robotpepi | an hour ago

> I think it comes from a misreading of Marx because Marx considers value coming from Labor which is purely zero sum.

Don't you think it's a bit overconfident to dismiss Marx just on such a simplistic interpretation (as he had simply failed to consider that economic activity can be non-zero-sum?)

: simianwords | an hour ago
He's not that stupid but value according to Labor theory of value is zero-sum. He knows that wealth is positive sum but his followers don't..

senko | an hour ago

The post is a zero-information personal rant (good for him/her!), impossible to comment on without violating at least half of the HN guidelines[0].

[0] literally; even this comment violates a few

altmanaltman | an hour ago

I mean, if you really extend that line of thinking, human beings are parasites in general. We are just sucking up all the resources to make more Walmarts and McDonald's. It would then be fair to say that humans should be dislodged from the earth and should never have attached to it in the first place. However, that would be a simplistic and rather naive view of how society works and does not have a solid moral standing behind the argument other than an emotional appeal: "THE ROBOTS ARE STEALING OUR HUMANITY!!!"

Rather, why not go deeper? Why not look at the world around you and see what incentives we've built up that allow us to plow trillions of dollars into this without a second thought. We've seen the bust cycles happen and yet here we are: going all-in on a potential technology that might/might not work out as we are hoping it will. If it truly works out as these companies are hoping then it'll be an economic disaster. If it doesn't work as these companies are hoping then it'll be an economic disaster.

Yet the Darios and Altmans of the world always find a way.

discreteevent | 35 minutes ago

Watch the parasites swarm all over this thread. (It's been flagged already). The host (HN) is at the point of suffocation.