New podcast I stumbled into called “Better Offline”. Just finished the episode called, “The AI Bubble is Bursting” which is pretty good. Ironically enough, I’d bet dollars to donuts AI did the transcription, cause it messed up more than a few words. Quotes are from the second in the series. I just realized I listened out of order… whoops. They are in proper order below.
Some bits I found interesting, like no one can say if it is actually profitable. And side note, this is from the transcription which is wonky.
“ In October twenty twenty three, Richard Windsor, the research director at large of Counterpoint Research, which is one of the more reliable analyst houses, hypothesized that open AI's monthly cash burn was in the region of one point one billion dollars a month, based on them having to raise thirteen billion dollars from Microsoft, most of it, as I noted in credits for its Azure cloud computing service to run their models.
It could be more, it could be less. As a private company, only investors and other insiders can possibly know what's going on in open Ai. However, four months later, Reuter's would report that open AI made about two billion dollars in revenue in twenty twenty three, a remarkable sum that much like every other story about open ai, never mentions profit. In fact, I can't find a single reporter that appears to have asked Sam Mormon about how much profit open ai makes, only breathless hype with no consideration of its sustainability.
Even if open ai burns a tenth of windsors estema about one hundred million dollars a month, that's still far more money than they're making.”
“Salesforce chief financial officer Amy Weaver said in their most recent earning score that Salesforce was not factoring in material contribution from Salesforce's numerous AI products in its financial year twenty twenty five.
Graphics software company Adobe shares slid in their last earnings. It's the company failed to generate meaningful revenue from its masses of AI products, with analysts now worried about its ability to actually monetize any of these generative products. Service now claimed to its earnings that generative AI was meaningfully contributed to its bottom line.”
And I do love me a good ending rant, lol!
“ And the AI revolution, despite its spacious hype, is not really for us. It's not for you and me. It's for people at Satya Nadella of Microsoft to claim that they've increased growth by twenty percent. It's for people like Sam Altman to buy another fucking Porsche. It's so that these people can feel important and be rich, rather than improving society at all. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe all of this is the future, maybe everything will be automated, but I don't see the signs. This doesn't feel much different to the metaverse. There's a product, but in the end, what's it really do? Just like the metaverse, I don't think many people are really using it. All signs point to this being an empty bubble. And I'm sure you're sick of this too. I'm sure that you're sick of the tech industry telling you the futures here when it's the present and it fucking sucks.”