The systemic risk that OpenAI poses to the tech industry and the markets is significant. I believe it is creating the illusion of demand for AI compute, of revenue that exists either to feed OpenAI, or for OpenAI to feed into every AI compute company until it runs out of money and collapses.
OpenAI can absolutely run out of money, because it burns billions of dollars a year. The true cost of this company is over $80 billion a year across venture capital to sustain its burnrate and the capital expenditures to keep it scaling. Eventually somebody chokes and can’t sustain the capital.
The fact we are burning 8 times as much money as it would take to solve homelessness in the USA on the bullshit machine is so fucked up.
Are you suggesting the tech oligopolies will eventually destroy themselves in a haze of money orgies and lust for the prospect of a fully automated economy? How big of a hole is this going to rip in our social fabric?
I don't think any of them die at all, I just think they back off this then desperately try and make money in whatever way they can, it's going to be chaotic
My guess is Altman will transition to live organ transplants
No hope of jail time or firings? Can I fire Sundar Pichai out of a cannon packed with silly string, loose screws, and thistles?
And so, why do it? The people behind this aren't dumb, they're true believers indistinguishable from religious zealots. They think that _someone_ is going to crack the super intelligent nut, and whoever does will rule the world. They look around and see the other guys burning money at the same rate
it’s much simpler: this is the only thing they can do. OpenAI must grow, because it is built to grow. These companies are not capable of sitting still, they must be constantly growing, they must be constantly burning. They are stuck on this path until it burns them to death. Same with Anthropic.
and knowing the other guys have the same belief. Whoever blinks first dies, until there's one company left holding all the marbles. Pretty classic game theory death spiral, they've all staked their careers and businesses on this fantasy yielding world domination, but it's all vaporware.
I want to call it the biggest scam in history, but they actually believe they'll birth their machine god so it's not a scam, it's a train wreck.
It also isn't a scam! It's just very bad illogical business run to its natural end. It's likely there isn't anything fraudulent going on, just that a system built on growth is going to exhaust itself
Yeah it’s kind of just another American death cult. Which I’ve known for a while from having friends there but I don’t think that’s ever been grappled with honestly in the American zeitgeist but I think it’s hard not to get in the weeds about it because there’s so many death cults here.
Have you read Paul Kedrosky’s posts on this? paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-cap... And paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-cap...
Article says in effect: less spending on non-Ai business so less new jobs As Ai permeates businesses THEN WE WILL SEE MASSIVE JOB LOSS
Buddy, I talked to Paul myself www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-mone...
well, the "good" news is that Paul Krugman thinks that AI infrastructure spending is the only reason Trump hasn't cratered the stock market paulkrugman.substack.com/p/about-that...
I thought it was going to tear a chunk out of the economy. Is it really going to yank the entire kit and caboodle off the table?
it’s Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol
And it's doing all this while starving other ventures of investment. Imagine if some of that money was spent across other sectors to advance medicine, materials, energy production, and other technologies instead of being all in on LLMs.
The assumption I assume now is that OpenAI and it's clients need to convince the government to prop it up before then...even then, I dunno if that'd save them from being torn apart by the markets when the wind changes.
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Okay. But what's the SYSTEMIC risk beyond a bunch of vc/pc choads getting fucked?