[tyleo]

Ed Zitron,

He gets things others are missing.

He also misses things others are getting.

I think it’s nice to have a voice criticizing the fundraising aspect of these companies. I do think we’ll see at least one of them blow up. The technology is obviously useful though. Hundreds of thousands of developers have already changed the way they were working for decades. Some of the criticisms that the technology doesn’t work at all go a bit too far.

[vb-8448]

> Hundreds of thousands of developers have already changed the way they were working for decades

I agree on this, but it doesn't mean that there is an automatic benefit on business side ... and business is what is paying our wages & tokens!

We are still in the discovery phase, but we don't know yet if there will be enough return to repay those hundreds of billions already invested and other few trillions that will be invested in the near future.

[jqpabc123]

Some of the criticisms that the technology doesn’t work at all go a bit too far.

It's not enough for it to "work". It has to work in a way that is affordable and cost effective for widespread use.

Otherwise, people/companies will use it sparingly or not at all. Anything less than widespread, "universal" use is a big problem for those investing $ trillions in AI.

[therobots927]

Would you be able to quantify how useful it is? Trillions are at stake here, so you’ll need to get specific.

[zulban]

I can't quantify how useful GitHub is as a software developer either. That doesn't prove it's useless, just that it's hard to quantify.

[therobots927]

I never said it was useless. But you better be able to quantify the value of something you’re spending trillions of dollars building.

This seems like common sense to me.

[Mistletoe]

Some numbers for the people in the back.

https://isaiprofitable.com/

[jqpabc123]

Some logic for those who don't do numbers:

Token rates need to double in order for the industry to "break even".

In reality, just "breaking even" is not enough. Venture capital expects a sizeable return on their investment. So look for token rates to triple.

In reality, most companies are not at all prepared to feed AI vendors what they need in order to become profitable.

Uber is an early example of what is in store.

https://aimagazine.com/news/why-uber-has-already-burned-thro...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2026/05/17/uber-bu...

[Timshel]

The header looks not too bad until you realize that 2/3 of the industry revenue is Nvidia ... If you remove the shovel sellers (Micron/Nvidia/AMD) revenue is left at $183B.

[Mistletoe]

Yep you see how deep the scam goes. It’s like in the gold rush if the ONLY people that made money were the one shovel seller.

[tim333]

That doesn't actually show profit in the GAAP sense.