No surprises here, but it’s interesting/staggering to see quite how large the disparity between spending and profit is for some of these companies.
I enjoy the fact that there’s a real-time ticker on the site so you can watch Amazon (for example) burn five thousand dollars a second.
When I tell people that generative AI, as it’s currently used, is unsustainable, this is what I’m talking about. Unless there’s a quantum leap in AI efficiency (for which I’ve seen no evidence of the feasibility) or a dramatic increase in the charged cost of LLM services (on the order of a tenfold increase assuming the increased cost does not drive any customers away; more if it does), this whole thing looks like a house of cards.
I feel like this was the criticism of social media companies in the 2010s, but in the end ad sales ended up being hugely profitable, and investors in Facebook and Google were right about their IPO valuations.
Now that I’ve written that, ad-infused LLMs seem like the inevitable end state. That’s terrifying.