Steven Willems
Mike ElganNow you can keep track of how many billions the AI companies are losing on AI. (Red is spending, green is revenue.) https://isaiprofitable.com/
PaulaToThePeople 😷@MikeElgan I'd love to see stats added on how much profit they create for the fossil industry and how much funding they get from the fossil industry.
Because that's the AI buisness model. Without AI we'd have energy transition.
PS: Also alt text would be nice for inclusivity (not AI written of course).
Sebastian (Gartneren)That's one aspect - #AI as a fossil fuel support industry.
Secondly, killing off the free information web, journalism, art, creativity for good - that's worth the initial losses.
Jules 🍺@sebastian @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
The funny thing is that they utterly depend on those industries for content to train their lying machines, so its a bit hard to see a future for those machines
The funny thing is that they utterly depend on those industries for content to train their lying machines, so its a bit hard to see a future for those machines
@julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
Yes, that might become interesting ... Snake choking on its own tail ... Or rather its own excrements.
Perhaps new models of monetization? Content sweatshops (well, we kinda have those already)?
The degradation already shows ... The web drowning in its own slop.
Yes, that might become interesting ... Snake choking on its own tail ... Or rather its own excrements.
Perhaps new models of monetization? Content sweatshops (well, we kinda have those already)?
The degradation already shows ... The web drowning in its own slop.
Kennedy maintains FOSS@sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan Can't personal websites help with that?
Genuinely asking, not trying to be a smartass. I know the outlook isn't good, just thought that people should do their part individually as well.
I know creating and maintaining content isn't easy, nor cheap. But perhaps what the internet lacks is more people making simpler websites with real content. An interconnected yet decentralized/independent web of real content, like we had in the past.
@sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan I myself have a couple domains for a couple of years and only recently started writing small articles/essays. It is not much but it is nonetheless a fresh cup of water in a vast desert of disinformation and slop.
vicash@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan planting a tree in your backyard makes your backyard nice but does not help with mass deforestation
@vicash @KennedyRichard @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
i am not saying that we should stop writing and creating, preferably on self-hosted or otherwise independent sites, off the corporate platforms.
been doing that for 25+ yrs
but we have to be aware that
1/ this does not address monetization - how does a creator survive?
2/ the vast majority of users will use monopoly search engines to find our content and thus land in the AI fangs of those monopoly players.
see "trees in backyards"
@vicash @KennedyRichard @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
how do readers find content?
"As of January 2022, Google is by far the world's most used search engine, with a market share of 90%, and the world's other most used search engines were Bing at 4%, Yandex at 2%, Yahoo! at 1%. Other search engines not listed have less than a 3% market share"
@sebastian @vicash @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan Fair enough. Although I don't worry about monetization, it is a genuine concern and a need that many projects and creators have.
AccordionBruce@KennedyRichard @sebastian @vicash @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
Yeah, if you have a “real job” then doing a blog as a hobby project like in the old web is fine
And if nobody sees it because AISlop and the collapse of search is like starlink to astronomy?
🪐🚫🔭
Might be better off making zines and doing mail-art like the pre-internet
But we’ve been podcasting our terrestrial radio show for 20 years and will see if RSS or FM gives out first
CohenTheBlue@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan How would you find my home page for example? For a while now, the only way to search for general knowledge is a site:*subdomain.com search. I see a lot of that independent content around, most people aren't aware of it because there's no true useful search unless you already know where to search. There's no lack of content but there is an incentive to lock it away by initially the corporate search engine owners, now AI owners.
@cohentheblue @KennedyRichard @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
You can certainly search not knowing *where* you are searching, but there is always a mediator inbetween - that most people might not be so aware of.
And if and when that mediator not only takes the role of filtering, deciding, but also presenting the results from their engines - no traffic will ever hit the original content.
@sebastian @cohentheblue @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
True. Like I said in reply to the post you just commented on, I don't have a solution to this, but at least it means the problem isn't a lack of quality content, just the discoverability/delivery. Until we find a problem to this, we must take care not to discourage people from writing/creating. We know meaningful content has value, so we must keep creating it while we find a way for it to get delivered to people that cares for it.
@cohentheblue @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
Fair enough. I myself often think some of my stuff didn't appeal to anyone and then after some time access to them spikes randomly when someone shares and suddenly a lot of people are reading/talking about it.
But at least this means we have a discoverability problem, not necessarily a content problem. I know it sucks and I don't have a solution, but while we figure out a solution, we must keep encouraging people to write/create.
@KennedyRichard @cohentheblue @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
These content creators might not even see the spikes anymore, though, let alone be rewarded for them.
Everything they d see is crawlers.
Their content would be presented, and capitalized on, by those who run the centralized gateways.
@sebastian @cohentheblue @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
Yep. As I said, I don't have a solution. I just think we can't stop creating because of that. If we do, by the time we find a solution, there will be only slop.
@sebastian @cohentheblue @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan At the very least we should encourage individuals to have their own domains and publish their own content. There's no need for fancy websites, either. Simple text-based websites with meaningful content are the last holdout of a useful internet.
@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan I have a web site. I don't pay for it, it's not on my personal domain but it's my site, easy to port elsewhere if needed. Jekyll generated static html based on markdown source. Link in my mastodon profile.
There's plenty of personal web sites out there with excellent content. I have read lots of it. Most of what is worth a read is similar generated static html with minimal design.
There are striking, simple, elegant designs.
@cohentheblue @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan That is great. I'll bookmark your site when I'm on my PC (I'm on phone right now).
Funny that a lot of people are using static website generators these days. I myself use one as well. Didn't actually find one to my liking but managed to make a simple one w/ Python and the Python Markdown lib.
It seems everyone reaches that moment in life where they just want noise-free work, no distractions, no bs. Just write, generate, publish.
@cohentheblue @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan mines are kennedyrichard.com (general stuff that interests me as a dev), indiesmiths.com (my FOSS projects and related content) and nodezator.com (a generalist Python node editor, also FOSS). All of them have some sort of post/article/essay, but not much yet.
However, I already have a list of articles to write, including outlines that I'm putting on paper before starting to write the actual content on my PC.
@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan Markdown is portable and human readable, html is pretty much not. Hence the generator is not optional. Could use pure pandoc to convert all the pages, that doesn't solve tagging and other stuff that jekyll with plugins automates.
@cohentheblue @KennedyRichard @sebastian @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
I've been using duck duck go for a long time, it finds things
I've been using duck duck go for a long time, it finds things
Frank@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
One problem with that idea is that the crawler from the LLMs are enormously crappy designed and will lead to noticeable traffic.
@derderwish @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan But I'm not presenting the need to create and publish content as a solution. I'm presenting it as a necessary measure to ensure content exists if we ever find a solution. If we stop creating content, there will be no content when or if the actual problem ever go away.
@derderwish @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan I mean, there has to be some way to deal with those attacks, right? First of all, small creators aren't targeted by that, right? Also, I thought dealing with that was the job of the hosting providers, is it not?
@KennedyRichard @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
Friends with statically generated websites are unnecessary often crawled by these systems.
They ignore established standards like robots.txt and try to avoid any kind of regulation.
They try to force their way to get these information with the same shitty behavior they try to force the LLM shit into each piece of software.
Friends with statically generated websites are unnecessary often crawled by these systems.
They ignore established standards like robots.txt and try to avoid any kind of regulation.
They try to force their way to get these information with the same shitty behavior they try to force the LLM shit into each piece of software.
@KennedyRichard
Like this:
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/10/exterminate-all-rational-ai-scrapers-redux-redux/
Like this:
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/10/exterminate-all-rational-ai-scrapers-redux-redux/
Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux redux
Nine months ago I added an infinite-nonsense honeypot to poison LLM scrapers. Today, it comprises 69% of my total URLs served. (Nice.) Normally it feeds junk after a few seconds delay, but in "high-load mode" it bans IPs for 30 days instead. High-load mode is entered when the free-worker count is low, and ends when it has been calm for 15 minutes. This month it has been in high-load mode 50% ...
@derderwish @sebastian @julesbl @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan Also, these businesses providing AI are finally having to justify their non-profitability and AI is finally starting to get expensive. I can't see how these attacks can keep going in a sustainable way, right? Who will cover those costs, with which money? It seems to me AI already started the process of getting to the tail end of the Gartner Hype Cycle chart. And it can't get there fast enough.
@KennedyRichard
Web crawler should have been a solved problem. But anyhow they decided to hack it themselves, in shitty…
🙄
Web crawler should have been a solved problem. But anyhow they decided to hack it themselves, in shitty…
🙄
Zimmie@julesbl @sebastian @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan A future? That sounds like a problem for whoever is in charge later! The people in charge now will have already made their money and power wrecking everything by then.
@bob_zim @sebastian @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan
I'm not sure about that, the shear vast amounts of debt are big even for these big companies, but time will tell
I'm not sure about that, the shear vast amounts of debt are big even for these big companies, but time will tell
@julesbl @sebastian @PaulaToThePeople @MikeElgan I’m mostly joking about how stock-market-focused capitalism heavily incentivizes looking good for the current quarter, then bailing out before people outside realize you did it by selling off all the buildings and signing extortionate leases for those same buildings. Or by laying off all the people who actually make the product the company sells. Etc.
When the lack of good training data becomes a problem, the current heads will bail out before it becomes public knowledge how bad the situation is. Or they’ll be “fired” with hundreds of millions of dollars in severance. They’re incentivized to not care.
Pascal d'Hermilly@PaulaToThePeople I suspect that the energy requirements of AI may end up accellerating the change to green energy because it will faster scale it because its cheaper. When you have to grow your power-net a lot you will scale green energy and faster grow confident in transitioning entirely.
skaphle@Pascal_dher @PaulaToThePeople Well, so far I've heard of plans to run old and new coal, gas and nuclear power plants to power these AI data centers.
Another problem with additional power usage is that it is additional. We already need to reduce our primary energy consumption. Transitioning to cleaner energy is a relative improvement for the energy that we still need, but in an absolute sense we need to need less energy.
The most important part of the transition is that we burn fewer fossil fuels and not that we build a lot of solar panels. So fewer fossil fuels burnt should be the metric by which the energy transition can be evaluated.
@skaphle
We agree that we need to reduce co2 emissions. My point is that the increased power demand that is undeniably here today will learn western countries competent management of their power grid as opposed to the last 20-year stalemate with cuts to optimize. Growing competence due to having to meet demands will make it a lot easier to stop burning stuff. The growth will come from renewables simply because its cheaper.
@PaulaToThePeople
We agree that we need to reduce co2 emissions. My point is that the increased power demand that is undeniably here today will learn western countries competent management of their power grid as opposed to the last 20-year stalemate with cuts to optimize. Growing competence due to having to meet demands will make it a lot easier to stop burning stuff. The growth will come from renewables simply because its cheaper.
@PaulaToThePeople
Captain Jack Sparrowlet that mfking #AIbubble BURST!
David W. Jones@MikeElgan So Nvidia's making a killing...?!
Dźwiedziu@dancingtreefrog
In a gold rush sell the shovels.
…only that in this rush the leftover shovels can't be used for something else at the same scale.
Edit: unless by “making a killing” you mean “planning to murder us all for profit”.
@MikeElgan
@dzwiedziu
That, too! We are in what I call 'end-stage capitalism'. Fatal, like end-stage kidney disease.
@MikeElgan
That, too! We are in what I call 'end-stage capitalism'. Fatal, like end-stage kidney disease.
@MikeElgan
N O R M I E@dancingtreefrog @MikeElgan
Nvidia is selling the rest of the companies graphics cards to do AI
its making a killing off people wasting money
Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸@hakona
Unlike their customers, they actually make something. I bet that what they haven't spent actually making hardware has been invested in their customers to prop them up and keep the bubble going!
@MikeElgan
Unlike their customers, they actually make something. I bet that what they haven't spent actually making hardware has been invested in their customers to prop them up and keep the bubble going!
@MikeElgan
Wulfy—Speaker to the machinesThe Internet was losing money for at least 20 years.
Scott D. Strader 😐@n_dimension @MikeElgan Yeah, I sold my stock in Internet too early. Right before leadership at Internet brought it around and started turning a profit.
I have old print mags with "Internet" mastheads.
That'd pretty much what's inside.
Carnivores trying to monetise it
Max L.@n_dimension @MikeElgan In case someone honestly believes this (and this isn't read as the obvious joke about AI-bros saying similar things):
The internet basically was never losing money, it enabled researchers to communicate and compute things way faster than before when they needed to send out mail and tapes manually. The amount of value their faster research created is basically immeasurable.
Also of course the internet wasn't burning our planet alive to work.
Sarah Peper 🏳️⚧️🇺🇦@n_dimension in case this wasn't sarcasm, No, "the internet" never lost money. And outside of government projects (think moon landing, wars), I've never seen unbalanced investment like this ever before.
deepfryed@MikeElgan wait a sec, are you saying Elon might be the smarter one here ? 😂
George BxAI's ratio seems to be even worse than Meta's although the actual numbers are better than most.
Eugen Neuber@deepfryed @MikeElgan Elon is pissed that he is not the lead!
Azad@MikeElgan I don't doubt that they will get all that money back, by selling it to the public, business, or get all the public's money by selling it to the government.
History has enough examples.
History has enough examples.
Patch You Up@azad @MikeElgan or by becoming so large (on paper) that when they fail the government pays out to prevent total collapse of the stock markets. We the people are left footing the bill even though we were collectively fighting against it the whole time.
Oliver Schafeld"Good Lord, where are they getting the money for this?"
And then you scroll up and that one single massive green bar…
🫨
If the difference between red and green bar is the multiplier one can expect for any AI service subscription these companies offer, ouch.
Voline"Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto."
"It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world."
— Meredith Whittaker, Signal CEO, to Derek Robertson. "5 Questions for Meredith Whittaker". Politico, 2023-12-01.
If the C level at all those companies burning budget on AI also holds Nvidia stock… 🤔🤷♂️
bit@MikeElgan I just Love Meta's ROI.
Andi H@MikeElgan
The set up costs are high (data centres etc) ... question is the on going operational costs... and how they will profit from users at the cost of our energy. Revenue streams will be generated through sponsored AI results.
The set up costs are high (data centres etc) ... question is the on going operational costs... and how they will profit from users at the cost of our energy. Revenue streams will be generated through sponsored AI results.
Psyhackological@MikeElgan they're so generous for us