alt Hacker NewsCurrent AI datacenter/model development investment rate is roughly 1T/year. That's a lot. But the US economy is 33T/year. So the investment pays back (roughly) over ten years if, each year, the AI investments increase overall productivity by 0.6%, assuming the AI companies can capture half of the value of that productivity gain.
> „[AI vendors are] paying for a fixed cost with a depreciating commodity“
That's just a confusing way to say you don't think future models will be worth the development costs. Because if future models are significantly better, why would the price of tokens to access those models deprecate?
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The $1T number seems more promises than reality, which is closer to the $300B to $500B level. Still a big number, but between a third and a half of the value used in the popular media.
These are similar numbers to the dotcom bubble. With GDP growth and the percentage of productivity AI contributes staying the same in this scenario this requires regular gains in revenue or growth. If things just stumble, like with most datacenters going unbuilt the bubble will pop.
I'm surprised people think LLMs, a thing which mainly excels at advertising, spam and writing code is going to generate that much economic activity.