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Comment by frozenseven | Hacker News Reader

>biggest AI companies in the world are not making any profit

Companies that are exploding in popularity and expanding as fast as possible are not expected to make a profit. This is not unusual in the slightest.

>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time

No, people use AI because they want to use AI. New users arrive on their own. If you take a closer look at what the legacy media is actually saying, they tend to have a negative slant against AI. Yet people still show up. And will continue to show up.

>Sam Altman, let him spew out utter gibberish, and not even question him on it

If Altman is pissing you and Ed off, he's doing at least something right. That said, I follow AI news every single day and I barely even glance at what Altman is saying. Here lies one of the biggest follies of the anti-AI crowd. Zitron et al. think that they can make AI go away by canceling Altman.

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Dunno if I need to comment on the first point since "will AI be able to Uber itself" is talked to death by zitron, and if we're disagreeing on their ability to turn a profit later on, then talking it out isn't gonna change much.

>>the entire media industry is pushing for everyone, everywhere, all of the time

>No

Yes it is. You can't just "no" this. People aren't just "happily using AI and getting bothered by the EVIL AI haters!!!". The push for AI is literally made of threats "You WILL get left behind", "people WILL replace you". Even if it is undeniably disruptive, you can't not call that pressure on a very large scale.

Just because I ask copilot once every few days to write me a piece of boilerplate doesn't invalidate the fact that my workplace has been made to believe prompting is an "essential skill" that must be enforced via mandatory e-learnings.

>think that they can make AI go away by canceling Altman.

I didn't say that and I don't think that. That last paragraph's basically bait.

>is talked to death by zitron

Yes, Zitron talks all the time. Loudly and insultingly. Here's a suggestion: he should put his money where his mouth is. If he honestly thinks the market for AI is actually 100x smaller than reported and ready to collapse any moment now, he could easily bet against the market. He could earn millions and look like a genius. Make it all public, let his fans join too. You could join. Why not? He supposedly knows the hard truths, he brought the receipts, etc.

But he won't. That's too real. Endlessly prophesying the end of AI is more lucrative.

>You can't just "no" this.

Fundamentally my argument is that the media has little say in this. Take all the new releases this week. Another ~200 million new users will shuffle their way in. Not through fear or fervor, just basic curiosity and a need for getting things done. Models will continue to get better and this trend will continue. It's just how it is.

>I didn't say that and I don't think that. That last paragraph's basically bait.

In any case, I'll leave the Sam Altman discussion to you and Ed.

That's a nice suggestion but also an overdone one. I've seen this "epic own" as much as you've probably seen anti-ai "epic owns" (I need to spend less time looking at AI discourse). It's yet another taunt but I'll bite anyways, shorting has no lower bound, it's risky as hell. I don't wanna be a trader.

Back to the media thing. I still don't fully agree that media coverage has absolutely no influence on the success of a technology or that the best solution always wins (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the argument you're making). If my fundamental argument is "it has an impact" and yours is "it doesn't" then we've reached a stalemate and can drop that topic too.

Have a good day, it hasn't been nice talking with you, but it's helped me realize that I should care less when I have no stake in it.

Yes but the main thrust of his criticism is the fragility of the whole 'AI' stack, where every part of the stack is unprofitable, unstable and inter-reliant - if any one of those parts goes tits up - everybody else goes with them.

Also, a lot of AI 'users' arrive, search for an actual use case, find none, and then move on.

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