InfoSecBenDec 19, 2023

Reading the AI bubble essay by @pluralistic in Locus, it rings very true to me as a survivor for the dot.bomb. I do think that there will be some residual value in the wreckage of AI hype, but I doubt it will be LLMs or AI images. I think the tools to wrangle data at the vast scale of training these models will be the real value, but that they require actual knowledge and understanding that only people can bring.

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?

Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech bubble. Pick up a rental car at SFO and drive in either direction on the 101 – north to San Francisco, south to Palo Alto – and …

Locus Online
Show threadKen Ryan

@Infosecben @pluralistic
I think Cory ironically forgets the one low-risk, high-value application for AI that will not be going away anytime soon: the enshittification of the internet.

So long as the YouTubes, TikToks, and Facebooks of the world value high volume over high quality there will always be a robust market for LLMs.

Dec 19, 2023 at 7:28pmTusky
Show threadInfoSecBenDec 19, 2023
@kenryan @pluralistic I know some of the top earners make substantial money, but for the low-effort content mill crowd, would they make enough to pay for the LLM time? 🤔
Show threadKen RyanDec 20, 2023

@Infosecben @pluralistic
Some of the top channels apparently make enough to be able to buy expensive cars or even planes for stupid destructive stunts.

I don't think compute time will be an issue.

Show threadCory DoctorowDec 20, 2023
@kenryan @Infosecben None of those channels are AI-generated. The AI generated spam on YT only makes money because they flood the service with thousands of files (e.g. the automatically read obituary channels), which they pay nothing to create. If they had to pay enough to recover the running costs associated with each of their queries, they would lose money on every video. YT ad rates are so low as to be nearly zero.
Show threadCory DoctorowDec 20, 2023
@kenryan @Infosecben The people buying cars are doing so through sponsorships, not programmatic ads. Colgate isn't going to strike a sponcon deal with a robot voice that reads out obituaries as part of a low-dollar/bottom-feeding SEO scam.