Publicly, the Trump administration is bullish about AI. Privately, some of its analysts are weighing AI against the dotcom bust.
  • qarbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    This is what always fucks me off. We always used to learn, after 20-30 years, that people knew about all the bad shit that was about to happen.

    They knew cigarettes caused cancer; they knew climate change was caused by burning fossil fuels.

    They know AI is going to pop and drag the economy into the pits of hell.

    And fuck all is done about it. Shit finally hits the fan and they wring their hands, saying “Oh God, we need to do something!” They act like they are dealing with a new crisis, like the rest of us. Meanwhile, they have had the information for decades.

    You are the government. All the information is available to you. Do something with it, or pass the fucking controller.

  • jeanpascal@lemmy.zip
    29·
    4 days ago

    The report stresses that AI companies maintain some fundamental differences from the businesses that dominated the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, which was defined by speculative excess and an overreliance on debt financing. Many of the top AI companies, by contrast, are more mature, profitable and maintain healthier balance sheets, which could blunt the impacts of the “bubble” bursting — or if it bursts at all.

    Sorry, what profit? I mean, Nvidia is making a killing, but the rest? https://isaiprofitable.com/

    • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
      10·
      4 days ago

      Well, I take that to mean that Google (ad profit), Meta (ad profit), and Nvidia (hardware profit) are profitable companies even if AI is a notorious money-sink. I do agree that if they weren’t able to absorb vertigo-inducing billions of dollars of AI losses via their other income, the AI bubble would have popped already.

      • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Except LLMs are hurting Google’s ad revenue. Companies don’t want to pay for views they can’t verify are even people. On top of their LLM results box pushing their sponsored results down the page, and removing people’s likelihood to click into any links, where AdSense might be present

      • jeanpascal@lemmy.zipEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        Ah yeah, I see what you mean. When the article mentioned AI companies, I was thinking of OpenAI, Anthropic etc. only, but true that Google could absorb a hit from a bubble. Not sure how they’ll do long term, since they’re all in on this and planning to remake completely how you search with them.