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DebtDeflation

Things that are coming to an end:

- Startups whose entire business model is to just provide a wrapper around OpenAI's API.

- Social Media "AI Influencers" and their mindless "7 Ways To Become A Millionaire With ChatGPT" videos.

- Non-technical pundits claiming we are 1-2 years from AGI (and AGI talk in general).

- The stock market assigning insane valuations to any company that claims to somehow be "doing AI".

Things that are NOT coming to an end:

- Ongoing R&D in AI (and not just LLMs).

- Companies at the frontier of AI (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Google, Meta) releasing ever more capable models and tooling around those models.

- Forward looking companies in all industries using AI both to add capabilities to their products and to drive efficiencies in internal processes.

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> - Forward looking companies in all industries using AI both to add capabilities to their products and to drive efficiencies in internal processes.

This collapses as soon as this collapses

> - The stock market assigning insane valuations to any company that claims to somehow be "doing AI".

I can't wait. There are so many pointless or directly insulting AI 'features' around now, and they suck. LinkedIn trying to write my messages for me. Outlook is trying to write my emails. Instagram has a deeply cursed AI button to "make it funnier".

I hope the stock market will give all of these people an atomic wedgie for creating the most pointless garbage to ever pass before human eyes.

Not necessarily. If a call center can improve productivity by 20-30% by driving contacts to self-service (AI chatbots and search) then they will do so regardless of stock market hype.

At the core of it, the high valuations were not a product of the potential LLMs had in assisting and enhancing individuals' works, rather because there was a hope that LLMs could replace some varieties of human labourers wholesale, thereby cutting labour costs which are often the highest expenditure of many companies. This has not materialised. I have seen more stories of PR nightmares out of attempting this than those with good endings. But maybe that is because of the sensationalist nature of news media itself.

Either way if it is indeed a bubble that will burst at some point, it doesn't bode well for the tech industry. With the mass layoffs, which are ongoing, seems like there won't be enough jobs for everyone.

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