alt Hacker NewsThe “anti-AU hype” phrase oversimplifies what’s playing out at the moment. On the tech side, while things are a bit rough around the edges still the tech is very useful and isn’t going away. I honestly don’t see much disagreement there.
The concern mostly comes from the business side… that for all the usefulness on the tech there is no clearly viable path that financially supports everything that’s going on. It’s a nice set of useful features but without products with sufficient revenue flowing in to pay for it all.
That paints a picture of the tech sticking around but a general implosion of the startups and business models betting on making all this work.
The later isn’t really “anti-AI hype” but more folks just calling out the reality that there’s not a lot of evidence and data to support the amount of money invested and committed. And if you’ve been around the tech and business scene a while you’ve seen that movie before and know what comes next.
In 5 years time I expect to be using AI more than I do now. I also expect most of the AI companies and startups won’t exist anymore.
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People said the exact same thing about (numbers from memory, might be off):
- when Google paid $1 bil for YouTube
- when Facebook paid $1 bil for Instagram
- when Facebook paid $1 bil for WhatsApp
The same thing - these 3 companies make no money, and have no path to making money, and that the price paid was crazy and decoupled from any economics.
Yet now, in hindsight, they look like brilliant business decisions.
On the tech side, while things are a bit rough around the edges still the tech is very useful and isn’t going away. I honestly don’t see much disagreement there.
What? HN is absolutely packed with people complaining about LLMs are nothing more than net useless creators of slop.
Granted, fewer than six months ago, which should tell people something...
In the late 2000s i remember that "nobody is willing to pay for things on the Internet" was a common trope. I think it'll culturally take a while before businesses and people understand what they are willing to pay for. For example if you are a large business and you pay xxxxx-xxxxxx per year per developer, but are only willing to pay xxx per year in AI tooling, something's out of proportion.