It’s all BS

Things these days in the IT world seem an awful like 2001 or so.

Back in the olden days, 1995 or so, when the interwebs came into being, it was everything Internet. In the wild days of the world-wide web, everyone was going to get rich online. It was so stupid that if you could breathe and tie your own shoes, you could get a job in IT.

2001, everyone was figuring out how to use this new disruptive technology. Things settled, gear was repoed, bodies hit the floor. It was a bloodbath. In 2003, when I got laid off, I think there was one listing for a network engineer for the entire DFW metroplex. It was tough getting a job.

Enter AI.

These days it’s everything, everything, everything AI. It’s the new thneed. Something everyone everyone everyone needs. Denninger isn’t buying it:

I’d argue two points:

• AI is a bust — its really expensive and it doesn’t produce. But while that’s likely a part of it, the larger issue is….
• The increasing debt burden and thus interest expensive is hitting all firms, and those in the services sector are getting it the worst. This means their unit labor costs are going up while morale due to what workers can buy with their wages being harmed goes down, and thus so does their output.

One quarter is not proof, but it is a warning — and a very strong one that those in Congress who think we can continue to blow money we don’t have and inflate the credit supply without limit, and not have it fold back on us, are wrong and our economy will wind up dead from it, starting with the most-expensive parts first (medical and education) if they don’t entirely reverse, not just tinker with it, right now.

First thing about the piece is the numbers are cooked, as usual. You really have to look hard to find the truth. Just like back then, when the numbers didn’t add up, it all blew up and we had misery.

Second is, AI is expensive, and really stupid sometimes.

An AI data center, actually any data center, takes an enormous amounts of power. You have all the servers, you have all the cooling. I think I calculated that if I were to use some of my virtual machines to generate bitcoin, I think I’d lose money in the added electric cost. Just one of those servers I used to have, with a few VMs idling, added about $100/month to my bill in the summer. It would wake me up at night when it did updates. It would sound like a passenger jet cycling up for takeoff.

Can you imagine that for a datacenter? You won’t be using just solar and wind, for sure. It’ll have to be monetized in some way. That’ll be when the bubble pops, Just like with the web. Someone will ask “How do we make money with this?”. What doesn’t make money, after expenses, won’t happen.

AI doesn’t know what is true. It can only calculate. You can’t see this, but software like this uses a percentage of confidence. It has the same issue as your garden variety liberal. They to start believing their own bullshit, and after a few iterations, what comes out bears no relation to planet reality. It finds all bullshit, it’ll be just like the automatic litter box with turds gumming up the works. (Don’t ask how I know what that looks like). It’ll just drag them back and forth making a mess. If all it finds is BS, processed BS is what you’ll get.

I don’t sweat being replaced by it anytime soon. I’ve seen it’s work. I work with it all the time. For instance, the system we use can import and summarize a powerpoint. If recorded audio is added it’ll convert the speech to text and paraphrase, or rewrite it well. If the dude that recorded the audio simply read the bullets, what it gives me is the slide, as an image. I have to figure it out myself.

Another problem is that you have to speak clearly and concisely to it. Which means you need a good command of the language, which means a whole lot of people will be left without a seat when the music stops. And stop it will. It’ll settle in a niche and become a tool like any other.

I do find it useful for looking up stuff. Grok is pretty decent. Ask it a question, it summarizes what it found pretty well, and coughs the links up. I like having it generate images, although it usually messes them up. But I can see jobs that will 100% be replaced, in large part, by AI. For instance, I think my company has 3-4 people feeding social media. AI can do that. They produce mostly useless noise anyhow. Would I pay for this?

No.

For now, I use it as a toy, and as a search aid. It’s suggestions for my work are little different than grammar check.