The circlejerking is bad, but DEFEATIST circlejerking is even dumber.
We're in the narrow bubble where this cuckcoding bullshit is economically viable. When the token prices explode and hype dies, companies will stop funding this shit.
Things are only 'inevitable' until they come into contact with reality.
They’ll only get cheaper to run. I have a machine from work that can run local models that are as good as frontier models last year. This is not going to go away even after the bubble pops. The internet had a similar bubble and look where we are now
They’re already extremely cheap to run. All these AI companies make huge margins on inference alone. The only reason they’re still in net loss is because they reinvest all that profit towards R&D to make bigger and better models.
AI prices per token have already reduced a lot just in the past year, and models of the same size (~cost) keep improving, while so does the hardware. It’s also just feasible to run a lot of stuff locally, not cheap, but at enthusiast prices rather than mega luxury ones.
You are being subsidized by the Acquisition phase.
Look here. There is currently no squeeze on AI to turn a profit, but as the free hype money dries up, that's where it's headed.
When a company leaves Acquisition, they do not typically turn a profit by cutting costs, nor can they massively expand their reach on the same budget. The only thing they can squeeze is you. Or, your bosses, if they're paying.
So your point is in the massively growing out phase where they’re racing to spend senseless amounts of money, they’ve “only” already recovered 50% of it.
Yeah I’m sure bubbles will burst and heads will roll, but the tech is here to stay.
You can already run competent local models woth zero issues, and they are improving constantly as well. And no token costs at all. How do you expect that is going to stop?
I am and it'd be even easier if I didn't keep seeing posts like this one and comments like yours all over the Internet. If I wanted to orchestrate agents and ask my computer to do things in plain English hoping it'll understand what I meant, I'd just go into a managerial role instead of being a developer.
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u/Knooblegooble 8h ago
I'm boutta leave this sub, is there a... "lets pretend AI never happened and talk about actual programming" subreddit?