The AI dooooooom thread

[Josquius]

Apparently quite a lot of hate for GPT5 from the big AI fans.

Read this today which is fairly encouraging

https://archive.is/20250815182025/https://www.ft.com/content/d01290c9-cc92-4c1f-bd70-ac332cd40f94

[Savonarola]

I will admit, I never expected to see the following headline:

Why Is TikTok Overflowing With AI Country Music Erotica?

Oh brave new world.

[Valmy]

I never thought I would see the words "AI County Music Erotica" combined. What a world.

[Josquius]

Seeing a bit of gloating on social media that the bubble is bursting as Facebook cuts back on its AI team...

[Tonitrus]

It makes sense that Facebook should be slowly fading into MySpace territory...with AI bots mostly keeping it alive.

When I was teaching...in our lesson on Russian social media, I'd almost ask my classes how many of them use Facebook.  Almost always zero hands would go up...that leaves people probably age 40-50 and up if I were to guess.

[Sheilbh]

Although a key difference to MySpace, as Mike Bird has pointed out, which is really incredible is that Meta has publicly and seriously messed up on its last two big projects (the metaverse and AI) but has also offered >300% returns to investors in the last three years.

Their power in online advertising (and the fact that the biggest Western companies are basically all in advertising) is big even when everything else is failing. And ads is, I think, something like 99% of their revenue.

[Tonitrus]

Yeah, I get that.  MySpace was a bit ahead of the times of major online advertisement revenue...and the 40-and-older has almost always been a key demographic for advertisers (because they have the money)...but I will expect this will likely fade over time as their demographic dies off.

I also wonder how much of Meta's revenue is actually from Facebook itself, or other Meta products (I may or may not bother to research that  )

[Josquius]

I guess MySpace was unfortunate in relying on teens. They're ficcle and adapt to new stuff quickly.

Facebook may be dying and have a restricted audience but people over 50 are slower to change and have money.

[HVC]

I thought 18 to mid 30s was the golden demographic for marketing?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah although a lot of it doesn't massively depend on Facebook though - there's Instagram and WhatsApp especially.

But also it's just adtech infrastructure at this point - the Meta pixel is really embedded all over the internet now in ways that it really, really doesn't need to be but is hoovering data (which Meta basically don't really know what they're doing with, it just flows everywhere). There was a report in the UK about NHS hospitals with the Meta pixel on their site - and no doubt they do some analytics from that but they don't need to advertise or earn money from it. I'm no sure about the case for US hospitals but I think there was a follow up that found about 90% of US hospital websites reviewed had the Meta pixel.

(Going to re-up my view that Musk and Twitter get all the attention but the really evil tech company is Meta and Zuckerberg )

[Tonitrus]

No evil status for Alphabet? 

[celedhring]

No evil status for Alphabet? 

One of my favorite moments in tech history is when they retired the "don't be evil" slogan, because reasons 

[Josquius]

It is true Google does sit quite apart from the evil companies. Its so obviously much of the same.... but somehow gets a bit of a pass.

I thought 18 to mid 30s was the golden demographic for marketing?

I think its bigger than that? 18-34 or even 18-49 or something?
But isn't the thing there that this is so coveted because its hard to reach?

Maybe thats the most desired thing. But consider how they move around a lot, are increasingly aware of ads and ad block, etc.... complete dominance of everyone over 50 is nothing to sniff at. I do know on TV ads are ever more shifting towards being aimed at older people as they're the main ones still sitting through ads.

I'm sure marketing people have given a proper answer somewhere

[Jacob]

Saw this post on reddit, summarizing the drivers of the upcoming AI bubble bursting. It references a podcast (which I didn't listen to at all). It seemed reasonable enough to me, so I'm posting it here for people to tell me how it's not 

Better Offline covers this most thoroughly. The gist is this:

AI companies are spending tens and hundreds of billions of dollars

AI companies are earning (single digit) billions of dollars

AI companies are profiting no dollars, or negative billions depending on your position on "investment in infrastructure")

AI companies almost all rely on other AI companies to use their product, generating the revenue they do make from their hardware off contracts from the companies that write chatbots and other programs that have guaranteed token use

NVidia, valued at over $4 Trillion, relies on continued sales of their chips to the hardware folks

Nearly all the AI companies are not traded publically, yet are valued in the tens-to-hundreds of billions, making them nearly impossible for someone to buy

When the non-profitable software guys stop paying the hardware guys, NVDA has a dip in stock, a "correction," and it'll scare the shit out of the markets

Those startup companies that were too expensive to buy will now be left with no more venture capital and huge negative run rates, meaning less NVDA buys, meaning more dip, more VC pull-back, fewer and less buys, etc, etc, etc

Because they are all incestuous with each others equipment and software, when one falls, it'll rip the others like crabs in a pot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1mx1p2c/the_warning_signs_the_ai_bubble_is_about_to_burst/

[HVC]

So what you're saying is we're getting cheap graphics cards back?