alt Hacker NewsThere are some similarities between Anthropic (or OpenAI) and WeWork. Obviously the large difference is software but there is a whole lot of leasing hardware going on (neither frontier lab owns any infrastructure as far as I can tell), long term capital commitments, short term monthly subscriptions, no real moat for the frontier labs (or a hip office rental space), etc.
I think 2027 will be when a lot of companies revisit their AI spend and ROI. Have there been measurable business benefits reported by the media outside of programming?
Nothing solid. All the reporting I see is that numbers are measurable but not on the level many people expected, and that these systems are proving incapable of wholesale replacing employees, which clicks with my own knowledge of some large layoffs accompanied by press releases about streamlining corporate structures using AI and the outgoing employees asking “what AI?” Because they didn’t train an offshore team or document their department responsibilities before being let go.
My suspicion (and many others as well) is that AI is used as a way to cover for large corporate restructuring in the face of money no longer being available for “free” due to interest rates.