[gloxkiqcza]

In some ways AI sounds almost utopian. I theory it could redistribute manpower more evenly between small and large businesses, allowing them to compete more fairly and improving the efficiency of capitalism (the idealistic model, not the real world state). However, than you remember that the AI tech is currently almost fully in control by the big tech (and its next generation) and you have to ask whether they’ll be able to sabotage that improvement because they will do their worst for sure since liberating the market is not beneficial to them. Let’s hope that despite all odds and current trends we actually reach a state where AI is possible to run on-prem/locally and there are still SOTA models at least as open as they are today.

[aurareturn]

Whoever has compute, will have the power. This is why big tech is plowing $1t into data center capex in 2026.

Disclaimer: I'm an AI compute investor.

[ForHackernews]

Strongly dispute this. Compute very depreciates rapidly. Inference is cheaper than training. DeepSeek was the warning shot across their bow, but the big AI firms can't afford to change course without jeopardizing their "Wile E. Coyote off the cliff" economics.

LLM performance is already plateauing; models will get more efficient. Good-enough models will be deployed on chips, the same way H.264 is a good-enough video codec but used ubiquitously.

[karmakurtisaani]

More than your points, I'm very curious how these AI companies are going to turn profit without making using AI insanely expensive. Some time ago, each prompt was highly subsidized, I doubt the picture has changed much.

Edit: maybe the model efficiency you mentioned is the key, we'll see.

[ForHackernews]

I suspect they just won't. First-mover disadvantage is real for many markets. Everyone knows Amazon, but how many remember Kozmo.com?

My assumption is that OpenAI, Anthropic, etc will go bankrupt and eventually be subsumed into Microsoft/Google/ByteDance & friends. New entrants will take their pioneering work and sell inference for pennies on the dollars without investing in massive R&D spend.

[mmiliauskas]

Supposedly they could make money, if they wouldn't have to burn a lot on the research. There was an interview with Dario where he stated this and hinted to the fact that a monopoly would not have the research problem, and thus could start making money.

[lelanthran]

> Whoever has compute, will have the power.

Nonsense. There's a temporary shortage, but even with the shortage it's still a commodity.

[aurareturn]

No. There will never be an oversupply again. Tokens = work in the same way that humans = labor.

[lelanthran]

> No. There will never be an oversupply again. Tokens = work in the same way that humans = labor.

So? Electricity = work as well, and yet it's a commodity.