Will A.I. Be a Bust? A Wall Street Skeptic Rings the Alarm

41 点作者 0xlogk8 个月前

24 条评论

AI has busted before and will bust again. It happens so often with AI that there is a standard metaphor for it: AI winter.The current technology of AI is not going to produce profits to justify the gargantuan levels of investment. Generative AIs excel at creative tasks, which is undoubtedly amazing, but creative industries have already had their margins beaten down by the hordes of humans who want to work in creative industries. You’re not going to create hundreds of $billions of revenue by replacing stock photography and blog post authors.In objective contexts, generative AIs struggle with reliability, which makes it hard for folks to build them into the critical systems necessary to generate huge revenue. There is a reason Google did not deploy generative AI into search until OpenAI basically forced them to. And now that Google has rolled it out, does anyone think it is driving huge new revenue for them? No.The reality is that much—maybe even most—of the current levels of investment are predicated on the idea that someone among the current crop of AI companies will create a “general intelligence” which will be intelligent and reliable enough to transform “hard” industries like energy, manufacturing, transportation, health care, etc.Let’s recognize that investment thesis for what it is, a speculative bet. No one even agrees how to define AGI, let alone understands the concept rigorously enough to calculate how to get there from ChatGPT.

评论 #41637220 未加载

评论 #41637135 未加载

评论 #41637148 未加载

mattgreenrocks8 个月前

Some oddly defensive reactions here. Wall St losing faith doesn't mean the tech is bad, just that they're not happy with the returns they're seeing. Plus, AI seems particularly susceptible to these extreme hype cycles. If it's legit, then it will pan out eventually. If not, then it will lay the foundation for something bigger.

评论 #41637417 未加载

评论 #41637469 未加载

Wheaties4668 个月前

A.I. wont be a bust, but your investment in something simply because it "uses AI" might not be a smart choice.I can't blame people for attaching "uses AI" to their pitch to get funding. But I will blame people giving them money for not being able to tell the difference between something revolutionary and something that never needed AI in the first place.

评论 #41637478 未加载

LarsDu888 个月前

AI progress has been dramatic but the revenue doesn't even come close to the infra spend. Also companies like Meta have started to commoditize the models. Consumers could give less a shit about copilot enabled PCs.The actual revenue is in the future and requires more RnD. Many barriers to robotics and autonomy have started to fall. Drug development could greatly benefit from some of these advances.Ai spending is more about fear (of falling behind) than greed

irisgrunn8 个月前

Probably.However impressive LLMs are, they're not AGI.For example this morning even, I was working together with a coworker and he used ChatGPT to ask for some examples. Unfortunately they didn't work, after reading the actual documentation it turned out that the structure had to be slightly different.This is the impression I get from everything that has been generated with "AI", on the face it looks great, but as soon as you start going into detail it's not right or just plainly wrong. The generated code had six fingers. They might be able to improve this eventually but I don't think it will ever be fixed because of the nature of LLMs.

评论 #41637804 未加载

ronsor8 个月前

AI won't be a bust, but your company might be. Don't invest in something simply because it has the label "AI" slapped on somewhere.

fullshark8 个月前

Any new tech gets hyped to the moon because of theoretical use cases. The tech then comes up against genuine limitations and reality sets in. Work is done to get around the limitations, and useful products get built. However if you compare what got built to the theoretical products at the height of the hype cycle, you will find them wanting.AI (as in GenAI) will be no different. I would not call that a bust.

评论 #41637034 未加载

评论 #41637045 未加载

apwell238 个月前

Can someone explain to me how OpenAI has billions in revenue. Almost no one I know outside of tech uses chatgpt with any regularity.

评论 #41637351 未加载

评论 #41637363 未加载

评论 #41637797 未加载

评论 #41637267 未加载

评论 #41637110 未加载

评论 #41637107 未加载

评论 #41643016 未加载

hrzn8 个月前

We likely overestimate AI's short-term impact, and there might even be a financial bubble about to pop. But I also think we underestimate the long-term impact. We're building absolutely amazing capabilities faster than many would have thought possible only a few years ago - I especially think applications to science and engineering will be huge and transformative.

jkaptur8 个月前

Some context that sometimes gets lost: this sort of research is, to put it crudely, content marketing for an investment bank.So when the article says "the firm began hosting private bull-and-bear debates" we can be sure that each attendee was met shortly thereafter by their friendly Goldman salesperson to talk about how to trade whichever way they wanted.

jostmey8 个月前

My suspicion is that AI will simultaneously be a bust and a boom.I think virtually every AI startup won't survive because they just repackage existing AI services. It this sense, it is a bust for investors.But the use of ChatGPT and alternatives, the invention of better AI, and the demand for GPU cars will grow exponentially. In this sense, it is a boom

bottlepalm8 个月前

AI adoption is outpacing computers and the internet..<a href="https://x.com/emollick/status/1838582600165670955" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/emollick/status/1838582600165670955</a>

评论 #41637065 未加载

xnx8 个月前

Organizations (Salesforce, Adobe, etc.) that have lots of proprietary data (chats, documents, clickstream, etc.) will benefit from applying AI tools to their products to automate work. It' almost certainly folly for those companies to build novel foundation models themselves.There's also the possibility that this is a great and useful new technologies, but it becomes so cheap and democratized that there will be no big winner (aside from Nvidia stock price in the short to medium term).

tim3338 个月前

There may well be a difference between the value for society which will probably be a lot and the return for investors which may not be good. At the moment I'm enjoying using the AI but not paying anything. It may go a bit like the airline industry where overinvestment in planes tends to lead to price wars and the investors losing overall.

bee_rider8 个月前

IMO, if AI pops, for the top 3 companies by market cap:Apple might not noticeMS will be in troubleNvidia will take a hit but as the premier designer of high-throughput compute devices and owner of the ecosystem, they’ll be well positioned to take advantage of the next thing.

havefunbesafe8 个月前

I'd suggest not, since it is integrated very deeply into my daily workflow.

评论 #41636925 未加载

throwawa142238 个月前

At some point it will be considered professional negligence to use LLMs in any professional setting and I hope that day is soon.

Workaccount28 个月前

When progress decouples from investment is when I'd say there is a true bubble. But so far progress has continued to soar.Nobody thinks GPT4-o1 or Sonnet 3.5 is going to change the world. People are looking at the past 2-3 years though and extrapolating forward, and right now they don't see any evidence that progress will slow down. Quite the opposite actually.As for where that value will manifest itself the most in the stock market? That's probably where this guy is getting hung up.

评论 #41637029 未加载

评论 #41637067 未加载

评论 #41637019 未加载

评论 #41636954 未加载

nine_zeros8 个月前

I hope a bunch of wealthy investors lose their shirts on AI "investments". No bailouts for them.

评论 #41637131 未加载

fragmede8 个月前

Judging by the value of SMCI, it's already been busted.

adamnemecek8 个月前

Why does Wall Street never ring alarm against Wall Street?

评论 #41637576 未加载

FrustratedMonky8 个月前

There are now equal measures of Skeptics and Alarmist to Sales and Hype-men.So generally that there is an article about 'skeptics', do they really have some new take on this versus all of the 'skeptics' from a month ago, or a year ago.

bbor8 个月前

Thanks, “head of stock research”. Definitely a real job that’s not at all made up. I’m sure he did a lot of chin stroking and graph glancing to come to this technical decision! Someone should let all the scientists know that they’re wrong, and intuitive algorithms are “not needed”…EDIT: I'm 'posting too fast', so I'll break the rules instead and post my response here:Thanks for the polite reply, despite the disagreement! No offense intended to any finance folks on here, but it's a murderously harmful industry built on lies. Being an expert in evaluating businesses in general is an absurd job, IMO; the whole system is a mix of gambling and coercion, and the veneer they put on it of "making the right plays" and "reading the market" is a tiny, tiny percentage of what they actually make money from, if it even works at all.In other words: what would you study to become an expert in the concept of predicting the future of all human activity? Here's the report discussed in this article: <a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/images/migrated/insights/pages/gs-research/gen-ai--too-much-spend,-too-little-benefit-/TOM_AI%202.0_ForRedaction.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.goldmansachs.com/images/migrated/insights/pages/...</a> AFAICT, his entire argument boils down to this:<pre><code> In our experience, even basic summarization tasks often yield illegible and nonsensical results. This is not a matter of just some tweaks being required here and there; despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful for even such basic tasks. </code></pre> This analysis needs citations of academic discussion on the specifics of the new technologies and how exactly they will fit into existing ones, not "we tried it around the office and couldn't get it to work". Certainly the bosses at Xerox failed to see any use for PCs in their own lives; after all, it's quicker to call someone on the phone, and cheaper to just write a letter!Just like desktop PCs were a clunky presentiment of the countless applications of miniaturized computers (phones, smart appliances, automotive features, and microcontrollers in general), today's chatbots are a clunky presentiment of countless applications of intuitive algorithms (adaptive UX, actually helpful smart speakers, assistive technologies for the disabled, and self-improving systems in general).For the second point, here's his quote:<pre><code> Overbuilding things the world doesn’t have use for, or is not ready for, tends to end badly. </code></pre> This quote is either misguided or a completely empty tautology, depending on how much leeway you give to "overbuilding". The world definitely has a use for intuitive algorithms, but it definitely doesn't have a use for too many intuitive algorithms -- that's what "too many" means!TBF the "not needed" phrasing was a complete fabrication by NYT, so that's my bad.

评论 #41636927 未加载

评论 #41637027 未加载

jacknews8 个月前

Sure AI is just nothing .. lol.Fckn bean counters, this just shows what's wrong with the current economic system.They've thrown money at AI, and, honestly, it isn't quite ready for it.But at the same time, it's an amazing advance, that's ignited the field and opened whole new vistas.Obviously, current AI is missing some very significant pieces of the puzzle to advance, but the current state is truly a giant step from just 10 years ago.What was the 'profit' in the first moon landings, an iconic historical achievement, for example?The 'no profit in it' naysayers just show that the capitalist model is not actually the thing responsible for the amazing innovation of the last 100+ years, and is wholly unsuitable for the next.