# AI bubble: time to panic? Perhaps not yet... maybe now
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918
**Category:** Offtopic
**Created:** [April 14, 2024, 1:43am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918 "2024-04-14T01:43:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 1:43am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/1 "2024-04-14T01:43:47Z")
> **[From boom to burst, the AI bubble is only heading in one direction | John...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/from-boom-to-burst-the-ai-bubble-is-only-heading-in-one-direction)**
>
> No one should be surprised that artificial intelligence is following a well-worn and entirely predictable financial arc
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### Author:  [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 2:39am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/2 "2024-04-14T02:39:08Z")
OMG! đ¨ Are we going to trust Petrostates with AI?!
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### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2024, 8:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/3 "2024-04-14T08:40:41Z")
Artificial intelligence can be bought, but natural stupidity is free.
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### Author:  [@pitsianis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/pitsianis)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 1:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/4 "2024-04-15T13:00:58Z")
Isnât it self-fulfilling in a way? If AGI matches investorsâ intelligence, he will get the money and make it, but if the investors are more intelligent, they wonât fund him because he cannot do it.
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### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 1:14pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/5 "2024-04-15T13:14:43Z")
I think [Cory Doctorowâs article âWhat kind of bubble is AI?â](https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop) is more cogent, since it goes into _why_ it may be hard to extract profits from supercomputer-scale âAIâ (ala LLMs).
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### Author:  [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 2:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/6 "2024-04-15T14:40:37Z")
Doctorow ends:
I wonder, what, if anything, is currently in this category (i.e. its disappearance will be acutely felt)?
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 2:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/7 "2024-04-15T14:52:26Z")
ChatGPT literally just helped me found the root cause of a bug (conversation: [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/share/b72a8eb2-5a0d-4fb2-8a35-d6e9cf90c808)) and then I could fix it and make a PR ([Fix `JULIA_CPU_TARGET` being propagated to workers precompiling stdlib pkgimages by KristofferC ¡ Pull Request #54093 ¡ JuliaLang/julia ¡ GitHub](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/54093)).
So I donât know what the âAI bubbleâ is. I just use the best tools available to make me as productive as I can. Any other approach seems like a losing battle.
If this thread is about market caps and valuations of companies that develop and sell AI tools then I donât see what is so interesting to discuss. Speculators gonna speculate đ¤ˇ.
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### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/8 "2024-04-15T15:10:32Z")
> [@kristoffer.carlsson](#):
>
> ChatGPT literally just helped me found the root cause of a bug [âŚ] So I donât know what the âAI bubbleâ is.
How much did you pay for this service?
Doctorowâs argument (read the article!) is that models like ChatGPT are incredibly expensive to run, and are currently being kept afloat by investor speculation that they will have big returns someday. But he argues that the fault-tolerant services where AI tools actually work donât pay very much, whereas the high-paying applications (involving _replacing_ expensive humans with computers, not simply augmenting humans with error-checking) are too fault-intolerant to become reality (at least, not quickly enough for the investors). Hence, a bubble.
He doesnât mention one application that _is_ fault-tolerant and potentially _is_ high-paying â oppressive governments (who have deep pockets) who want to flood the web with propaganda (which doesnât need to be accurate). Itâs depressing to think that this might become the main funding source that will keep ChatGPT-scale LLMs afloat.
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### Author:  [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:15pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/10 "2024-04-15T15:15:16Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> He doesnât mention one application that _is_ fault-tolerant and potentially _is_ high-paying â oppressive governments (who have deep pockets) who want to flood the web with propaganda
Which may be why Altman is romancing petrostates in the Mideast!
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### Author:  [@GunnarFarneback](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GunnarFarneback)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/11 "2024-04-15T15:21:06Z")
> [@PetrKryslUCSD](#):
>
> I wonder, what, if anything, is currently in this category (i.e. its disappearance will be acutely felt)?
If itâs sufficiently acutely felt there will be a sustainable market for it, although the product may be more expensive than today.
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### Author:  [@Dan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Dan)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/12 "2024-04-15T15:22:41Z")
AGI, GenAI etc⌠are simply the current names for the game-levels in the game of increasing computation. Mooreâs law going back at least 50 years with no pops or dips suggests we can rest assured this ship will continue for another five years (after that I dare not predict).
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### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/13 "2024-04-15T15:25:01Z")
> [@Dan](#):
>
> AGI, GenAI etc⌠are the current names for the game-levels in the game of increasing computation. Mooreâs law going back at least 50 years with no pops or dips suggests we can rest assured this ship will continue for another five years (after that I dare not see).
The issue is not whether you can increase the compute power. The question is whether you can afford to. My understanding is that these companies currently arenât profitable, and you canât continue making negative profits indefinitely before investors pull the plug.
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### Author:  [@Dan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Dan)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/14 "2024-04-15T15:27:46Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> My understanding is that these companies currently arenât profitable, and you canât continue making negative profits indefinitely before investors pull the plug.
True. And some investors (probably the dupes of the last bubble) will lose money. But the personel and the compute will move on to be funded by the next unlocked level. So the inside of these companies will stay the same, perhaps the logo outside will change (for a five year horizon). Ilya Sutskever will have a job.
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/15 "2024-04-15T15:28:24Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> Doctorowâs argument (read the article!)
I did, didnât think much of it though.
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> models like ChatGPT are incredibly expensive to run, and are currently being kept afloat by investor speculation that they will have big returns someday.
Thatâs more or less every technology ever invented though.
Anyway, if AI in the end turns out to be too expensive to help me find bugs in code I guess that service will go away (or be expensive enough that maybe I donât consider it worth it). Until then, Iâm using the best tool available for the job.
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### Author:  [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/16 "2024-04-15T15:35:55Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> oppressive governments (who have deep pockets) who want to flood the web with propaganda
FWIW, this already happens. At a state level, hiring 10â000 people to run a trollfarm is trivial. If anything, sophisticated AI âlevels the fieldâ and could possibly be used to combat this.
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### Author:  [@adienes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/adienes)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:39pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/17 "2024-04-15T15:39:12Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> Doctorowâs argument (read the article!) is that models like ChatGPT are incredibly expensive to run, and are currently being kept afloat by investor speculation that they will have big returns someday.
I donât think Doctorow is referring to accurate numbers. The ChatGPT+ subscriptions are already unit-profitable\*. so in the worst case OpenAI could just end the free version
\*According to a friend of mine at OpenAI, so itâs possible his numbers are actually the incorrect ones, but Iâm going to assign higher confidence to his understanding than mine or Doctorowâs
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### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 3:47pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/18 "2024-04-15T15:47:35Z")
> [@kristoffer.carlsson](#):
>
> If anything, sophisticated AI âlevels the fieldâ and could possibly be used to combat this.
One can only hope. Right now the trend seems to be going in the wrong direction, though â the internet seems more and more flooded with junk, to the point where people talk about [adding `before:2023` to search queries](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39671851) in order to improve the results, or adding âredditâ to a query to get something (hopefully) written by a human.
(The biggest weakness of Doctorowâs article is that he doesnât run any numbers on the costs, itâs purely qualitative discussion of potential applications. I found it hard to find profitability estimates for different LLM applications by trustworthy third parties, though. The closest I could find was [this anonymous blog post](https://sunyan.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-large-language-models?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2), which is fairly optimistic.)
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### Author:  [@Ahmed\_Salih](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ahmed_Salih)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 4:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/19 "2024-04-15T16:09:56Z")
Fully agree with this, in regards to code fixing / developing!
AI is really an amazing tool as a âsecond pair of eyesâ, both spotting menial bugs, the silly ones and in some cases the real edge case ones requiring industry knowledge. I have also found that for making small benchmarkable code to test approaches, it is really amazing and generates in a minute what would take me 15 minutes to write, so that is a good speed up.
I think AI will keep to be amazing for coding, but that it will lose its uses in other industries - my gut feeling is that it is overhyped, but that it does have very high peaks, such as image recogniction for vehicles etc.
Going to be fun to see what happens!
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### Author:  [@Jake](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Jake)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 7:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/20 "2024-04-15T19:45:54Z")
A friend with a Tesla with the self-driving option and on the Beta software release cycle has been able to feel the difference in how his car drives with each release and it has progressively improved. I am using my language a bit loosely here, he still needs to keep his hands on the wheel. He mentioned that the current software is over 300,000 lines of code, while the new software is a LLM with 3000 lines of code. Last I checked they have not yet released that software for him. This is at least third hand information so take it as such.
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### Author:  [@Oscar\_Smith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Oscar_Smith)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 7:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ai-bubble-time-to-panic-perhaps-not-yet-maybe-now/112918/21 "2024-04-15T19:59:02Z")
I think the bigger problem is that assuming costs are fixed (or increasing) is likely very wrong. Cost for sota is increasing, but answer quality per flop is decreasing quickly due to better architectures.
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