I'm usually skeptical of doomer articles about new technology like this one, but reluctantly find myself agreeing with a lot of it. While AI is a great tool with many possibilities, I don't see the alignment of what many of these new AI startups are selling.

It makes my work more productive, yes. But it often slows me down too. Knowing when to push back on the response you get is often difficult to get right.

This quote in particular:

>Surveys confirm that for many workers, AI tools like ChatGPT reduce their productivity by increasing the volume of content and steps needed to complete a given task, and by frequently introducing errors that have to be checked and corrected.

This mirrors my work as a SWE. It increases productivity and can reduce lead times for task completion. But there's a large gap between increased productivity in the right field in the right hands vs copying and pasting a solution everywhere so companies don't need workers.

And that's really what most of these AI firms are selling. A solution to automate most workers out of existence.

I do worry about the viability of OpenAI in particular. So much of its talent went to other firms which then built up amazing capaibilities like Anthropic with Claude. And then they also have the threat of OpenSource models like DeepSeek v3.1 and soon DeepSeek R2 while at the same time OpenAI is raising its prices to absurd levels. I guess they are trying to be the Apple of the AI world... maybe...

That said, I expect protectionist policies will be enabled by the US government to protect them and also X.AI/Grok from foreign competition, in particular Chinese.

Anthropic didn’t build shit, it’s got the same closed output rules as ClosedAI and xAI and Perplexity and the Gemini API. Send them your precious questions and code and what do you get back? Output you with a prohibition era policy telling you not to use it to compete with their thing that does everything. That’s such a dumb deal, I immediately think people are dumb when I hear them mention using closed output AI services. Government protections for explicitly anticompetitive services? What a joke!

> OpenAI is raising its prices to absurd levels

When customers don't know how to differentiate on quality, they use price as a signal.

> worry about the viability of OpenAI in particular [...] they also have the threat of OpenSource models

It's a real shame OpenAI didn't succeed with their core and most fundamental mission of being open and improving humanity as a whole, where new FOSS models would have been seen as a success, not as a competitor or threat. We're all worse off because of it.

> It's a real shame OpenAI didn't succeed with their core and most fundamental mission of being open and improving humanity as a whole

You frame it like they sincerely had this mission at all. Which I doubt seriously. Why would anyone who funded them have such aim?

In some ways it resembles the drug industry. Heavy investment in what looks like a promising line of development only to have it flop like 4.5 with marginal improvements.

> I guess they are trying to be the Apple of the AI world...

They're looking more like Alta Vista.

Are there specific policies that come to mind?

Epictetus would hate this trend to outsource mental work

Confirming Ed Zitron's careful analysis of the situation with SoftBank, Microsoft, and OpenAI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/optimistic-cowardice/. "Outside of NVIDIA, nobody is making any profit off of generative AI, and once that narrative fully takes hold, I fear a cascade of events that gores a hole in the side of the stock market and leads to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs."

You'll note that the prospect story mentions Zitron multiple times.

A clear eyed take, Nvidia is reaping the benefits of this new rush for now.

There is a move towards software again, as ime a lot of the "AI" oriented investment was around hardware [0].

In my opinion, it was a side effect of how hardware became sexy again as an investment story, though in action, the fabless players like Nvidia and the diversified players like Broadcom that could take full advantage of that "AI" and "Hardware" story.

I've also been very open about my opinions that companies that sell a foundational model cannot build a strong long term moat, as an overtrained or specialized models will outcompete foundational models in PoCs and domain specific applications, and the actual hardware needed isn't that exhorbitant as DeepSeek has shown (that said I don't think they spent $6m - it was probably in the $20-50m range, but even then fairly reasonable for most organizations).

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/u...

We appreciate China for its strong push toward open-source AI. Without models like DeepSeek and Qwen, the U.S. was set to dominate AI with closed-source systems, charging tens of billions in rent every month while deciding who gets access based on politics.

"Hey, Eritrea, you're authoritarian—you can't use our democratic AI until you democratize." "Hey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, you're not authoritarian—you can have our AI."

Once again, thank you, Chairman Xi, for saving us from this nonsense.

One of the reasons I'd like this bubble to burst is to see Nvidia's stock collapse. I'm sick and tired of their exuberant prices.