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Have the comments here read the article? It’s arguing that the CEOs themselves have spread the doomer narrative and are now being molotov’d as a result. The subject of the title is/includes Altman, hence the Altman cover photo. This was way way better than I expected of Gizmodo (bravo Gizmodo), warning us that execs are only toning down their AI dooming for self-protection.
Whatever happens, it feels like the AI executives have painted themselves into a corner. They’ve told everyone their product has the potential to destroy everything. They were the doomers, if we want to call it that, at least when it was convenient. And now we seem to be entering a different era where the same people who told us about the dangers of AI try to get us to look exclusively at what they claim are enormous benefits for society; so far, with little to show.
I did. As well written as it is, I don’t think the premise of “the REAL doomers were the CEOs!” is going to spread far enough to dethrone the present, much more popular understanding of what an AI doomer is. It didn’t seem worth addressing. We’ll see though; perhaps every time someone says “AI doomer” on Lemmy, some wag will reply with, “Um a-kually, I think you’ll find the tech CEOs are the real doomers, LOL.”
As to the the notion that the dangers these techbros have released are now coming home to roost: it’s overstated. In my opinion, the techbros will continue not to give the merest shit about the harms they’ve caused, and one misguided soul with a molly isn’t going to change that – or bring back all the dead people LLMs contributed to killing. Will it increase the CEO’s feelings of paranoia? My dude, the wealthy are already maximally paranoid.
interesting. I don’t think the article is saying “the real doomers are the CEOs”, though. what you’ve written in the second paragraph (and just that is incredibly interesting even if it doesn’t have the impact you’ve outlined. it’s incredibly Greek) is fully compatible with agreeing that AI is doomish. I’ll also repeat my point that the article advises increased caution more than before of tech’s claiming of great AI net benefits.
Completely fair, and I definitely agree with your point.
Lol, I’m not sure what’s worse. Using an LLM to summarize and article for you, or not even reading the article and assuming you know the contents by the title. Fucking people…
Me neither. Both have a chance of getting it right, but not a great one.
Have the comments here read the article? It’s arguing that the CEOs themselves have spread the doomer narrative and are now being molotov’d as a result.
The CEOs were talking to investors. They didn’t used to care if the proles overheard all that radical signaling intended for investors. I guess now they have a reason to care.
“Our job at OpenAI and in the AI space — and we need to do a much better job — is to explain to people why … this is going to be really good for them, for their families and for society writ large,”
And here is the crux of the problem - they are lying to us. After making it very clear that they wanted us to integrate AI into our jobs, it has also become clear that their ultimate objective is to replace as many jobs as possible with AI, even if the AI’s results are substandard, because the AI is so much more profitable.
We KNOW the objective is to fire as many of us as possible, so the general public has become extremely hostile toward AI. Now the AI companies want to re-brand as family friendly assistants to our lives. Too late, assholes, we’re already onto you. Tell your lies walking.
It must be awful to have fought to become a billionaire, thinking you could relax on the bodies of your vanquished foes, and enjoy the tranquility that you’ve earned, only to find out that you have created an endless supply of enemies who want you dead. You have to pay millions for security, only to find that someone can still put a bullet through your front window where you were standing only five minutes before. All that money, and the best it can do is buy you a windowless bunker to cower in.
Except it’s not profitable at all. It’s a huge bubble waiting to collapse.
Not yet, but wait until they’ve reduced their workforce by 75%, and they can save all those associated expenses.
It won’t work, of course, but they’ve deluded themselves into believing it.
Certainly part of the sales pitch. But so far it turns out humans are more efficient (cost less). I think the appeal to companies is the control (and the cost while it’s so heavily subsidized by the industry pushing it). The appeal to the major AI investors and execs is to… privatize the profits and socialize the losses. They will golden parachute themselves and leave the people with their mess.
I think the appeal to companies is the control
This part. Rich people never stopped jerking off over the idea of owning slaves.
The vast majority of the costs are HW and infra
I think they’re hoping that reaches more of a steady state
It is very profitable in certain roles in the enterprise. This is orthogonal to it being a massive bubble, about to blow up.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/
It could be, but it doesn’t look promising - and the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to know what the actual costs are is, in itself, very telling.
When you use these services, the company in question then pays for access to the AI models in question, either at a per-million-token rate to an AI lab, or (in the case of Anthropic and OpenAI) whatever cloud provider is renting them the GPUs to run the models. A token is basically ¾ of a word.
As a user, you do not experience token burn, just the process of inputs and outputs. AI labs obfuscate the cost of services by using “tokens” or “messages” or 5-hour-rate limits with percentage gauges, and you, as the user, do not really know how much any of it costs. On the back end, AI startups are annihilating cash, with up until recently Anthropic allowing you to burn upwards of $8 in compute for every dollar of your subscription. OpenAI allows you to do the same, though it’s hard to gauge by how much.
Some enterprises do run their own hardware (these can ROI in 6 months or so), and there the economics is very well known. For the majority of the current use it’s a giant bubble, as Ed Zitron’s great analyses keep telling us.
They are currently selling it at a huge loss, agreed. They’ve got plenty of runway for specialised hardware prices to come down, for companies to get hooked and plugged into the ecosystem and for real value to be demonstrated.
When this happens they’ll raise prices and companies will gladly pay it.
Profit at this point is not relevant, seen from the perspective of investors.
That’s ’embrace, extend, extinguish’ for you. Question is if there is a profitable model to come. The usual economies of scale don’t seem capable of adding up in this case. Even the maniacs on Wall Street are balking.
That’s not quite my understanding of EEE.
- Embrace - adopt something that someone else has done
- Extend - add proprietary extensions on top of the original, quicker than the original owner can
- Extinguish - Kill the original owner off by moving quicker then either slow down or kill your own support for the product
What the AI model owners are doing seems to me just to be normal loss-leading with a view to gain market share.
That’s fair. I think they are trying to utilize EEE to replace search, content creation, and more - everything AI is being shoveled into. But the main goal is just to force utilization through any means necessary and establish a new market & sales model they are unable to define.
“Oh no what if someone believes my hype about building a Torment Nexus and, instead of throwing more money on my money fire, tries setting me on fire instead.”
- 4 capitalist executives quoted
- 0 labor leaders quoted
- 0 relevant scientists quoted
There is good information in the article showing how executives lied and are currently lying for profits centralizing wealth under oligarchs, but there is another voice that can be quoted instead of the article writer directly opposing quotes. In that way it reads more like an editorial than journalism.
Fuck you, Gizmodo, and fuck off. There are consequences when you break the societal contract. This is that.
You love sam altman that much that you have an emotional response to gizmodo giving very valid criticism of him? I’m sorry gizmodo is right and altman is a tool. Please dont worship a man.
