[shirro]

Over investment in AI data centers is having a huge negative impact all over the economy. Other sectors are missing out on investment limiting their growth and stalling the economy.

Companies have reduced staff prematurely on the promise of productivity improvements that have not occurred and lost customers to terrible customer service and declining product quality.

Many hardware launches are going to be delayed or not meet expectations which really is the tip of the iceberg.

The US/SK memory cartel understandably sold out for a massive short term windfall but they their long term decisions to limit supply have created a huge opportunity for China. I wouldn't be surprised if this will go down in the history books as the start of the exit for US/SK from the industry and the start of Chinese dominance.

The smart phone industry is likely to respond with an increasingly hostile anti-consumer approach as they try and lock customers into the cabins of the sinking ship. I expect cheap and cheerful Chinese budget phones aren't going anywhere.

I am happy for ram, cpu and storage to stall. I want a more robust and open phone which can take a fall and be updated long after the vendor loses interest. I expect to uninstall most of my apps rather than install new ones as I increasingly disconnect from an ever more distracting and worthless medium. I have cancelled nearly every subscription service in the last 12 months. And I have been deleting a lot of free accounts and apps. Its like doing a big cleanup. Surprisingly rewarding.

HN has felt like more than 50% AI industry promoting blog spam of little interest to me as a reader for some time. I am setting a budget of ten, no make it five, more posts here. Then I am out for good. Account deletion and no looking back.

[mr_toad]

> Companies have reduced staff prematurely on the promise of productivity improvements that have not occurred and lost customers to terrible customer service and declining product quality.

Companies have reduced staff because of the impact of tariffs, because of low consumer confidence and spending, or as a ploy to pump share prices. Then they claim it’s AI, because it sounds a lot better to say that you’re reducing headcount because of AI than it does to admit that you’re cutting costs because of falling revenue.

[globular-toast]

The deeper problem is that businesses are now expected to be funded by investors. There was a time when banks funded new businesses with loans, but now most of their lending is mortgages. Banks were better because they would lend to any business they thought wouldn't go bankrupt and weren't subject to FOMO and thinking only about future profits/exit, which they weren't entitled to.

Question is, is it really impossible for businesses to fund themselves with bank loans now? John Kay wrote about this years ago arguing the finance sector is no longer a good thing for society but has become more of a leech: taxing the money supply but not supporting new businesses. I feel like it's only become worse now. Even insurance is barely really insurance any more. It's more like a savings account that you might be able to withdraw from when you need it, but not necessarily.

[mikestorrent]

I agree with you on the AI blogspam. This is a lot like the dot-com era, where a profusion of capital is causing people to develop complete horseshit products nobody needs. When the shine comes off, a lot of companies will fade, but many will stick around, and become the FAANGs of the 2030s.

In some ways it's pretty interesting to watch the entire world mobilize production for AI; some folks like to call this "hyperstition" as the future AGI reaches backwards in time to compel its own creation. Wild, but when trillions of dollars - i.e. millions of people's entire life output of work - are being put into something, it's truly an effort on a scale that no societal project has ever been before. There's no leader, nobody is in control, nobody has the grand vision other than "build the thing and get rich in the process". Amazing times to live in. The best use of our time and resources and coordination? Probably not... as we look around our broken cities, stepping over our poor and hopeless...

[donkeybeer]

Are we sure these are ram shortages or ram "shortages"? If these are "shortages" why blame the ai companies for exposing it, you should complain to the ram maker for refusing to manufacture any.

[namibj]

The AI boom is worse for DRAM fab planning than the crypto boom was for GPUs. It's way way way bigger, somehow has huge money behind it, and DRAM fabs are investments with usually no less than 5 years latency from starting to build any particular one until the first memory sticks show up on a best buy shelf, while planning for the factory to produce continuously for 20+ years in normal times to turn profit if one calculates in lending rates/interest.

They are not curtailing themselves in a market as lucrative as the current one; they probably boost their marginal work planning impacts to productivity via predictive maintenance like actions to err on the side of more productivity due to the immense profit each Gigabit they can deliver this year makes them. Literally like over half of what a consumer pays today at best buy could be expected to be just profit of the factory based off of the non-artificial supply limits and the huge AI demand pushing out all but the wealthiest home-PC demand...

[donkeybeer]

There have been multiple RAM price fixing scandals in the past so my default position is strong skepticism in this matter. I am sure they have various "explanations" but I will wait before believing them.

[fsflover]

> I want a more robust and open phone which can take a fall and be updated long after the vendor loses interest.

Such phone exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

[crowcroft]

> Other sectors are missing out on investment limiting their growth and stalling the economy.

Would love to know what sectors you would say are obviously under invested. Sounds like an opportunity.

[tty456]

The U.S. gov't is now committing a sizeable chunk of GDP to investments and subsidies to AI companies and data centers and has reduced overall investment in wind and solar.

[mikestorrent]

Brutally cold capitalist take. Go walk around your city, friend; remember the tragedy of the commons. There is a lot that needs to be done that isn't being done, because we're soaking up people's life's work on this effort that we don't even know the end goal of. It could result in some awful outcomes for everyone if not guided correctly, and it seems like it's not being guided at all - or worse, it's being guided by the Department of War.

[inigyou]

Everything that produces useful stuff or does useful stuff.

[mikestorrent]

9 amazing words right here

[m4rtink]

With launch costs finally falling there really could be more investment into space related technologies.