The AI Bubble Monitor

(cepr.net)

44 points | by mooreds 1 hour ago

14 comments

  • solyin 1 hour ago
    > I have a lawyer friend who pays $20 a month for an Anthropic system.

    I have a lawyer friend who's seen a dip in clients reaching out. Turns out, they're having Claude draw up contracts.

    • pizzafeelsright 41 minutes ago
      Low end - absolutely.

      High end? Not yet. Corporate contracts are getting human only oversight with us. We have tried to compare but found that the signal vs noise generated doesn't compete with our expensive legal department.

    • arealaccount 53 minutes ago
      Or probably even moreso - reviewing contracts
    • bluefirebrand 59 minutes ago
      I used Claude to help me draft some letters to negotiate severance after I was laid off. It was really useful and I did manage to get a bit extra from my former employer

      We're going to be in for a really rough time as more and more stuff gets replaced by AI and it becomes harder for people to earn incomes

      • RankingMember 54 minutes ago
        Soon it'll be your AI message going to an AI on their end making the severance call with no human in the loop (if it wasn't already!).
    • soco 57 minutes ago
      I have a lawyer friend who receives Claude contracts for drafting. Oh dear, the level of bullshit they find, apparently quality is classes below vibe coding. But as long nobody checks...
      • scrollop 44 minutes ago
        Maybe they're using the free version...
  • _air 52 minutes ago
    ”China’s bubble already collapsed, leading to a plunge in its AI-tech index of 40 percent” This was news to me, is there any good coverage on what happened?
  • etempleton 1 hour ago
    The article asks the 25 trillion dollar question. ‘What is the near term demand for AI?’ And the answer is nobody knows; especially not these companies. I think the bubble is almost inevitable. Everyone is racing to gain market domination as they see it as winner take all, but it just doesn’t appear to be shaking out that way. There are five very competent US based models alone and then I don’t even know how many open weight models. Unless the industry coalesces around 2-3 models soon I don’t think anyone makes any money on this in the next 10 years+.
    • airstrike 1 hour ago
      There's no real incentive for the industry to coalesce around 2-3 models. I think it's very unlikely to happen.
      • pizzafeelsright 43 minutes ago
        Nobody wants to admit that while partial to one company or another, brand and all that, I highly doubt that within 1-2 years we can tell the difference between model output for 90% of our tasks.

        Except for the 'vibe' of some of the models with their writing or testing style I am not certain I could tell you which model is which unless asked.

        Switching from model to model at the moment has been seamless without extensive 1 to 1 bench-marking but most of my tasks are never 1 to 1.

        • etempleton 39 minutes ago
          Completely agree. And for companies, if things are that indistinguishable, it is going to come down to cost and enterprise security / privacy. Sure companies will be slower to switch, but they will. It will be a race to the bottom.
      • Zambyte 51 minutes ago
        Training is expensive. That seems like an important incentive.
      • etempleton 46 minutes ago
        I agree. Which is why I think the bubble is going to pop in the nearish term.
  • crisleo94 45 minutes ago
    AI solves problems that do not exist, it creates problems and then promise to solve them, that's why there's neither a market for them nor any profit.
  • ramon156 55 minutes ago
    the only realistic demand is see is similar to why Azure, digitalocean etc are still breahing. There are incompetent companies that cannot live without certain services, so they'll stay dependent. A lot of companies are doing agentic engineering, and the rat race is even stronger there. You need a product that is better than a vibe-coded app, but you aren't competent enough to get there. These companies are going to die out at some point, and what will be left is the better half.

    Even that won't make back the 3 trillion that is needed.

    • pizzafeelsright 45 minutes ago
      From what I am seeing about 10% of our AI spend has any ROI. You can count 90% loss of $XX but the ROI we get from that 10% is 200%-10000% of our spend.

      Getting and retaining customers is 99% of profit which is why sales, marketing, advertising, and creativity is always in high demand. After that, quality.

  • ndom91 45 minutes ago
    Shameless self-promotion: https://artificialliabilities.com for a nice story-like AI infra overview. Based of FRED, SEC, and other publicly available data.
  • dudeWithAMood 50 minutes ago
    Given the debt and deficits the government is running I worry they're not going to haveh te financial muscle for a rescue package when this implodes.
    • hughw 45 minutes ago
      Not a problem if the govt takes back the minting of money from the Fed.
  • SubiculumCode 1 hour ago
    Doesn't the title presuppose the outcome?
  • xnx 1 hour ago
    Some great charts in there that emphasize how absolutely ridiculous SpaceXS(?)ITesla is.

    My take on "bubble" activity from HN chatter: https://www.alwaysleaveanote.com/hacker-news/bubble-talk/

  • thinkcontext 42 minutes ago
    The author, Dean Baker an economist at a non-profit policy group, called the housing bubble. Not wealthy, he sold his condo in 2004 and bought a house in 2009.
  • rowdyranga 1 hour ago
    The AI companies are assuming that there will be demand in the future for their products. That is why they are trying to scale up to meet the demand.
    • dspillett 45 minutes ago
      They are hoping rather than assuming because if there isn't sufficient demand (sufficient paying demand, not people who wouldn't pay just using it for free because they can), there is no way back for them that isn't an amusingly catastrophic collapse, and they are scaling up as if the demand is a forgone conclusion because it just isn't worth trying to plan for the other option.
  • Gseries00 41 minutes ago
    Yes the AI bubble is real, but the good things is, it is expaning like an unverse which has enourmous posibilities. I could has said that it will burst soon but after LAYA and JEV, we all are going to witness the lots of changes.
  • deadbabe 56 minutes ago
    The stages of AI bubble are basically like this:

    1. Denial: “No way these companies are worth anything. Zero profits.”

    2. Anger: “Idiots! This will end like the 1999 dotcom crash!”

    3. Bargaining: “Ok maybe if it goes lower I’ll… I’ll buy!”

    4. Depression: “It just keeps going up…”

    5. Acceptance: “I missed out, it was so obvious, now I’ll just buy in.”

    • rootusrootus 46 minutes ago
      That right there is a pretty good demonstration of the alternative position. "This time is different."
  • stockpearl 56 minutes ago
    [flagged]