reply on: The Subprime AI Crisis - Ed Zitron \ stacker news ~tech

40 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 2h \ on: The Subprime AI Crisis - Ed Zitron tech

The products you’re being sold today almost certainly try to wed you to a particular ecosystem — one owned by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon or Google, as a consumer at least — and, in turn, increase the burden of leaving said ecosystem. Even cryptocurrency — ostensibly a “decentralized” technology — quickly abandoned its free-wheeling libertarian ideas and sought to consolidate users on one of a few big platforms like Coinbase, OpenSea, Blur or Uniswap, all backed by the same venture capital firms (like Andreessen Horowitz). Rather than being flag bearers for a new, radically independent online economic system, they were all only able to scale through the funds and connections of the same people that funded every other recent era of the internet.

Ok, but that doesn't mean that Generative AI (and the associated technologies, like embeddings and transformer models) aren't going to revolutionize business. It just means that they're providing them at a loss to capture you into their ecosystem. Eventually, it will enshittify, but for now I think the AI ecosystem is amazingly affordable for what it offers.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 2h

I think the point, over all point is that SaaS business models are returning diminishing profits and many companies are betting the house on AI to make their businesses profitable. But what happens when the cheap/free AI these things are using gets repriced? A sudden rise in cost.

I mean, I can see the logic behind what he's writing. He's not saying AI isn't affordable for users and businesses. He's saying it is being propped up and a lot of weight is being placed on it. Weight that might collapse in a drastic weight when the true cost of these tools is revealed.

That's the subprime analogy. Tech has long been subject to these things. Venture funding is inherently risky. But a large number of SaaS businesses have bought into it.

We will see. I see value in the tools and they will and are revolutionizing tech. But we don't see the cost tradeoffs yet. That will impact their application. I think the idea of investors is that the costs can be reduced over time. But, will the funding supporting all these AIs last long enough. That's the question I have.