The killer app is “you can’t build your own cloud because we’re hoarding all the compute”

Also many of the skills for building your private cloud have been forgotten or retired because Amazon and azure.

c/selfhosted

I’ve heard theories that I find convincing that the real plan is to transition us to a surveillance-based tiered economy in which the wealthy hoard control over the means of production and then spend generously to pay the largest segment of the economy – tech surveillance – to police the restless masses.

In this framing, the technology becomes profitable in the same way as healthcare: it’s essential. Once something is essential, its demand is unconstrained, and so its price-setting power isn’t based on the price customers consider a good value, it’s based on what fraction of their wealth and income they are able to hand over.

If the top 10% of Americans who participate in the investment economy conclude that ongoing real-time tracking of every American’s location and sentiments is necessary to prevent a revolution, paying to build and maintain datacenters is a must. It doesn’t matter what it costs.

This 10% then becomes the new real economy, and everyone in the 90% just become essentially livestock.

This is exactly what I’ve been saying. They aren’t building a product to sell, they are building a machine to replace and contain you. They don’t care about ROI, they care about the idea of complete control and they won’t stop chasing it until it kills them or they achieve their goals, the rest of us just get to die in the cogs along the way.

Even if AI takes off the way people hope it will, that does not mean that data center investments will pay out.

Local models exist and are a viable alternative (partially to substantially to completely) to sending every query to a centralized data center that is extracting profit from every token.

On top of that, everyone is now aware of the risks of tech dependency, and big players, the ones that would be sending their money to OpenAI or Anthropic, are the ones best able to declare their independence.

Also the vast majority of people don’t get any benefit from LLMs and won’t be willing or able to afford the actual cost to use them.

Hell, I would be surprised if the majority of people used AI for anything digital assistants or web searches were doing successfuly before they were replaced with AI bullshit.

Yes, certainly! It’s hilarious to me that people think the market broadly adopting a FREE product is somehow indicative of its economic viability. You just have to look at the journalism to see the chasm between use and profitability. And LLM’s, unlike almost every other form of modern software-based technology, does not scale. When Facebook doubles their user base, they double their revenue stream, at a fraction of a cost of exanding their costs. But when an LLM doubles its user base, it also doubles its costs.

AI is not a monopolizable product like Facebook, nor a locked-in key infrastructure ecosystem like Microsoft. It is a commodity, like toilet paper or oil or crackers. Anyone can enter the market to compete with you. No company will ever “own” AI–at least not this iteration of it.

Not even adopting really. Theyre shoehorning it in everywhere. When it’s a simple button in your chat app or search then of course people will use it. But they certainly aren’t going to pay for it.

That’s also ignoring the access to data question. Who knows how much the providers are logging. It wouldn’t surprise me if “new companies” pop up out of the blue with surprisingly competitive hardware and software sometime in the next decade.

In order to make $6 trillion by 2031, every human being on earth would have to spend at least $150 per year on average.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot if you’re already paying a $100 a month for a Claude max subscription or whatever, but consider that the vast majority of people don’t pay for any AI at all, and have no interest in ever paying for it.

Also, $150 is a best-case scenario where revenue is 100% profit. In actual reality, the profit margins are much, much lower, and may not even exist at all!

every human being on earth would have to spend at least $150 per year on average.

6b humans would need to spend $1000/year on average. On top of phone/computer + internet/data services. Global average spending on food/year is $1500.

We’re up to 8.3 billion people now, fam.

6 trillion / 8.3 billion = ~750

And that number has to be spread over 5 years since the target date to raise the 6 trillion is 2031.

750 / 5 = 150

But, like I said, that’s still just a conservative estimate that doesn’t account for the fact that the AI firms have astronomical operating costs to cover.

The$6T number is per year revenue target in 2031. 6B is a round number, but facebook has 3b monthly active users, and google ai overview has 2.5b monthly active users. baidu (no google overlap) has 644m monthly active users. So at 3b internet connected users addressable or so, its $2000/user. MAUs double count work/personal/multiple/bot accounts.

Also, there’s about 1b desk/knowledge workers in the world. = $6000/job/year

Jesus… I totally misread the article. I thought it was 6 trillion total, not 6 trillion yearly revenue. That’s so, so much worse.