'At some point you've got to make money': Goldman's top AI skeptic warns the clock is running out ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs

https://lemmy.today/post/54311965

'At some point you've got to make money': Goldman's top AI skeptic warns the clock is running out ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs - Lemmy Today

Lemmy

I’m not much of an AI skeptic compared to most on Lemmy. I think the technology is incredibly useful and probably beneficial to society if we can remove the control of the ruling class.

That said I truly don’t understand how the AI business model is supposed to work. I’m sure there is some market for businesses, governments, etc., basically people who have too much money who may want to pay for the latest and greatest models.

But I don’t really see the average consumer doing this when slightly less good versions will almost certainly be available for free. And the above customers will not be able to support the level of investment that’s going on right now.

technology is incredibly useful and probably beneficial to society

For what? It’s not reliable enough to actually automate anything and people that use it regularly inevitably stop checking the output and start falling victim to hallucinations. It’s pretty good at rifling through social media posts which I don’t think is good for society and it’s OK as a frontline support system but even that they normally go too far and just make it infuriating

I automate plenty with it, no you cant be an idiot about it but i can do what used to take me weeks in hours with it.
Yeah I think Lenny’s generic take is heavily colored by the absolute morons using it moronically. That’s a large number of people because lots of people are…well, morons. But you can definitely use it in productive ways. Keeping a human in the loop right now I think is very prudent, for cost and reliability reasons, but man does it decrease drudgery in capable hands.

People are scared because they think they could lose their jobs. Even if they say out loud they don’t think it will happen and that they think AI is useless. They need AI to fail for peace of mind.

If anything they’re most at risk for losing their job due to a stubborn refusal to adopt technology. What people don’t realize is that we don’t live in an ideal world where the optimal solution is the only way. Even if LLMs are less than perfect, there’s a scenario where it remains commonplace because it’s what’s in style. The stubborn abstainers will find themselves left behind when everyone else is leveraging it to complete mundane tasks much faster and checking the work.

We already live in a world full of cumbersome enshittified technology. There’s nothing we can do but make do with what we have. At this point people are dreaming if they think the AI bubble will pop and the technology will be shelved. It’s not going away. It’s already demonstrated usefulness. That it’s not turning a profit is a different story.

Maybe some others are simply scared that they don’t have the expertise to check the work of LLMs in the first place.