AI investment has helped keep markets and economic growth ticking along, but the IMF fears the boom could quickly turn to bust if the promised profits fail to materialize. With tech giants borrowing billions and investors piling into the same handful of companies, a selloff could leave more than just Silicon Valley nursing a hangover.

  • deeprlyeh@lemmus.org
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    24 days ago

    If profits are what will make it fail. It is going to fail. They need everyone to subscribe to their premium tiers at this point.

    • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zip
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      24 days ago

      Wouldn’t matter. The cost to execute the tokens is greater than the subscription. It’s all VC funds that they’re burning every day. It’s inevitable to fail unless they can convince every day users to pay $2k a month

      • Tartufo@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        I’d pay them 2k a month for every month they pay me 10k for. Ofc I need to be paid first because otherwise I won’t have the money to pay them and still comfortably live.

        • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zip
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          24 days ago

          No that’s kinda the point. If AI charged for actual cost, no one could afford it. It’s all subsidized now. Basically a money shredder

          • Tartufo@lemmy.world
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            24 days ago

            I know, I was making fun of them by suggesting a “give me your money and then I’ll give you some of my money”-circlejerk because that can never be sustainable in the long run.

    • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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      24 days ago

      API costs start to approach the operating costs of these systems. The ultra premium subscription tiers still lose money.

      Tech has high market value because there’s the potential for growth, and the cost to grow is minimal after the initial startup costs. Adding a subscriber to a newspaper costs, say $0.20 for each subscriber; adding a Facebook user has a cost approaching zero as the user count grows. The problem with GenAI is that the inference cost grows linearly with usage, and the constant creation of new models means the training costs are also not recouped.

      The debt the datacenter builders are taking on are being traded as junk with high interest rates already, and they’re going higher. They’ll never generate the income that the rates demand much less recoup the cost of building.

      • JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch
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        24 days ago

        The problem with GenAI is that the inference cost grows linearly with usage, and the constant creation of new models means the training costs are also not recouped.

        probably even slightly more than linear at this point as they use up so much electricity and other resources that it becomes more and more expensive to serve more users. User 1 is easy, that’s just the existing data center. User 1 million, well, you need a new datacenter and drive up hardware prices, but it’s fine. User 10 million, you need to build/rent gas power plants, figure out where to get water from, RAM and everything costs 5 times as much as it used to, bribe local politicians to build despite backlash etc.