If there's a decrease in AI ram demand, it will not be because the models get better. Models getting better will increase RAM demand, because it grows the part of the economy that models are useful for. Classic Jevon's Paradox.
For 1, AI datacenter builders have said that they have more equipment than they have places to put them. Leaving a ton of hardware shelved while you wait for datacenters to build out is bad business to say the least.
For 2, I think we are nearing saturation for the usefulness of AI. I certainly could be wrong, but I don't really foresee there to be a bunch of new exciting usages of AI that will ultimately justify the continued buildout.
Unless some other breakthrough in AI happens, like applying AI to some other large market.
Overall i think that AI is here to stay, if anything it will become more common.
Maybe in ten years we’ll all have some 256gb ai machine at home, like we most (all?) of us have AC.
If that happens, hopefully the ram price comes back to earth.
I’m sure some people will. But most people I know don’t think about software like that. They don’t know what use cases are, or ask themselves how their life could be simpler with different software. LLMs only make software if you prompt them. Most people don’t frame the problems they have in life as “I’m missing software to solve problem X”.
I think most people will never prompt LLMs to write software. Just like I don’t have a 3d printer, because I don’t think about how problems in my life could be solved with little plastic doodads.
I also know someone that thought about making a SaaS for his specific niche he works in, he asked me if I ever used Claude then told me his project.
Yes, most people will never do it because they're not the type of people that are self-motivated and courageous enough to dive into something with confidence to see how it goes.
But probably, as more people build stuff and it makes headlines that X person built Y service and is making Z$$ per month and he can't even write a hello world to save his life, a lot more people will try it out.
Or they’re just not interested. Just look around to see how many things that people are doing that you have no interest into. That’s the same disinterest people have towards programming and sys admin.
If person X didn’t contribute anything but a prompt, he probably wont be able to charge much.
First guy I mentioned spent a month tinkering, testing what he could, getting a basic high level understanding of the problem space to understand why his prompts didn't work, etc
But plumbers are still in very high demand, and charge really high prices for what is in many cases really simple stuff.
For a lot of folks, the idea just never enters their mind that they can solve simple problems themselves. Most people don’t want to spend the time, undertake the learning, have the possibility of doing it wrong, risk their property, insurance/code issues, etc. And this is an absolutely reasonable position to take! We can’t all be specialists at all things.
All that to say: people will long think that software is something that is made by someone of a special role. Even long after that’s not necessary anymore. That’s not great job security, but it’s what I’m going with for now!
This is why ROI is so critical, and I’d argue that picture looks a lot less optimistic for it to pan out functionality wise today than it did in March, when everyone was being forced to use it. Faced with millions of dollars in token costs and gains not materializing, the question is more about the overall usefulness of LLMs as a matter of returns.
We do seem to be spending trillions of dollars to drown our public spaces in grey goo