[rchaud]

The bubble is that every $1 in capital going to OpenAI/Nvidia is a $1 that cannot be invested anywhere else: Healthcare, Automotive, Education, etc. Of course OAI and Nvidia will invest those funds, but in areas beneficial purely to them. Meta has lost $20bn trying to make Horizon Worlds a success, and appears to have abandoned it.

Even government-led industrialization efforts in socialist economies led to actual products, like the production of the Yagan automobile in Chile in the 1970s[0].

We've already had a decade plus of sovereign wealth funds sinking tens of billions into Uber and autonomous driving. We still don't have those types of cars on the road and it's questionable whether self driving will even generate the economic growth multiplier that its investment levels should merit.

[0] https://journal.hkw.de/en/erinnerungen-an-den-yagan-allendes...

[DANmode]

As well as the artificially increased valuations for every company with the .ai TLD for their landing page.

[oblio]

I did a quick check and it seems like the entire Uber and clone industry is net negative. Uber, Lyft, Didi, Grab seem to have lost more money than was invested and once they stabilize they look like mediocre businesses at a global scale (Uber's been banned from many jurisdictions for predatory practices and in many other jurisdictions it seems to trend towards being as expensive as taxis or more once profitability becomes a target).

[jstummbillig]

Fair enough. I personally would have a hard time spotting an outsized lost opportunity value with confidence, if it existed.

It feels, though, that this argument could (maybe a be little too easily) be applied to any new industry sector, in horse-vs-car fashion.

[polski-g]

When Meta "lost" 20bn, they actually spent it on salary. The employees then go out and buy things like the Tesla Automobile, an actual product.

[acdha]

This sounds like the broken window fallacy. You could use the same logic to suggest that Meta dump piles of cash on the sidewalk in front of their office - it’d circulate but it wouldn’t help them.

[rchaud]

If the same $20bn was spent on fixing a bridge, people would spend those wages to boost economic activity AND have a fixed bridge that will improve output even more. Horizon Worlds isn't a productive use of capital in that regard.

It'd be one thing if they open-sourced their VR tech, some of that could lead to productive tech down the line, but as a private company, they're not obliged to do any of that.