Link to the article without the paywall
Once these AI companies go belly-up, those people with critical thinking and research skills will be able to name their price.
Those abilities have been in high demand for millenia. Focus on the basics.
Probably not going to go belly-up in a while, but the enshittification cycle still applies. At the moment, investors are pouring billions into the AI business, and as a result, companies can offer services for free while only gently nudging users towards the paid tiers.
When the interest rates rise during the next recession, investors won’t have access to money any more. Then, the previously constant stream of money dries up, AI companies start cutting what the free tier has, and people start complaining about enshittification. During that period, the paid tiers also get restructured to squeeze more money out of the paying customers. That hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. Just keep an eye on those interest rates.
Probably not going to go belly-up, in a while
Don’t be so sure about that, the numbers look incredibly bad for them in terms of money burned per actual revenue, never mind profit. They can’t even pay for the inference alone (never mind training, staff, rent,…) from the subscriptions.
As long as they can convince investors of potential future revenue, they will be just fine. In the growth stage, companies don’t have to be profitable because the investors will cover the expenses. Being profitable becomes a high priority only when you run out of series F money, and the next investors can’t borrow another 700 million. It’s a combination of having low interest rates and convincing arguments.
BTW I don’t think this is a good way to run a company, but many founders and investors clearly disagree with me.
The difference between AI companies and most other tech companies is that AI companies have significant expenses that scale with the number of customers.
That’s a very good point. Actually, video hosting services also suffer from a similar problem, and that’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to compete with YouTube. Since there are so many LLM services out there at the moment, it makes me think that there must be a completely ridiculous amount of investor money floating around there. Doesn’t sound like a sustainable situation to me.
Apparently, the companies are hoping that everyone gets so hooked on LLMs that they have no choice but to pay up when the inevitable tsunami of enshittification hits us.
There are some numbers in this blog post https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the-tech-industry-2/ (and a couple of others on the same blog) and they really don’t look like OpenAI is going to last a couple of years until profitability.
Wow, those are some pretty big numbers! About 10x bigger than what I was thinking. I knew these things can get pretty weird, but this is just absolutely wild. When expectations fly that high, the crash can be all the more spectacular.
When you notice that your free account can’t do much, that’s a sign that OpenAI is beginning to run out of money. When that happens, the competitors will be ready to welcome all the users who didn’t feel like paying OpenAI.
Thank fuck I graduated college decades ago…
Actual education/teaching is under assault in the US from all sides these days… Not certain today’s students have any chance. 🙄 🤦♀️ 🖕 💩
it is not just the US… the VSE - Prague’s university of economics and business has decided to abandon graduation theses, because it is supposedly “impossible to verify” whether they were written by student or AI, and replaced them with “hands-on” graduation project)
“hands-on” graduation project
Does hand-on mean supervised?
no, it means they will try to somehow apply the knowledge they acquired to real life problem. creating a project, instead of writing a text.
i graduated just before the fuckery, and they were at the forefront of using software/weeding out software for jobs already. when i was HS, students already had given up on doing homework, and they were passing people with failing/D grades to graduation. eveyrone that graduated during the pandemic, or is taking classes, said my old college is pretty bad now. because most of them elected to be online classes. theres also other prevailing issues that never were solved when i was still in college. them USING CHATGPT, is probably a step up from just copy and pasting content from various sites with the same exact question or essay.
There are people who want to do their own thinking and those who don’t. The ratio hasn’t changed much over time. Only the possibilities.
When I walk around in my uni people openly talk about using chatgpt to pass their classes. When I ask for help on some lecture groupchat first 4 answers are “I just used chatgpt.”
They gave me a whole speech about how they take academic dishonesty so seriously at the beginning but I am honestly just disappointed now. Even using solution manuals make you considered a “good student”
it has gotten so bad? no wonder my state uni have been complaining review sites about the schools lack of direction for its direction.
“You are going to pay me to think.”
Nah, thank you, I will keep doing that my way…
“Hi, what version of chatgpt did you use in your surgical training? Great!”
“You say the engineering team that designed this suspended walkway just used chatgpt during their training? Sounds good!”
I’m not supporting higher education becoming reliant on for-profit companies like this, but AI tutors and the like, if properly implemented, would be kinda awesome. For example, it’s usually not feasible to have real life staff on hand to answer student questions at all hours of the day. Especially at the more early years of university, where content is simpler, AI is more than capable of meeting needs like this.
I don’t fully agree with most of the people on this thread. I also hate AI slop being forced into what feels like all aspects of our life right now, but LLMs do have some genuine uses.
Yeah man for profit companies should be banned in higher ed also unrelated did you renew the license for your textbook?
🤔
Just ask ChatGPT what this means, it will explain it to you like you’re five.
