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Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by _fat_santa on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:07AM (#40837573)
I think this is even the case for tech companies. So many products I see now that offer AI where I go "is that really necessary?". Even in the case of my own startup, my business partner has been pushing me to figure out some way to integrate AI into our product and my response to him every time has been to convince him that it's not in our best interest to go down that road. I told him that even in a world where we could adjust our subscription prices to compensate for the added expense of AI, we would be burning valuable time on AI when we could be spending it in other areas of our product.

Even though we are a tiny startup I have a feeling that this applies to many other tech companies as well.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by eureka-belief on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:16AM (#40837657)
The reality is, the economy is on a ticking timer for when it will be turned upside down by 1) LLM agent workflows 2) AGI 3) superintelligence. There are many companies who know this and want to hedge against that future but they simply don’t know how yet. The tricky part about productizing LLMs is that your product designers need to have a full understanding of LLMs and what they can and cannot do. So currently many of the existing product designs and AI user experiences still suck.

The biggest misconception is that just because chatbots are now more capable that somehow that means that you should replace your UI with one.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by hatefulmoron on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:21AM (#40837690)
The timer might be much longer than it's fashionable to believe right now, which would make this sort of FOMO investment completely pointless.
Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by alephnerd on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:43AM (#40837836)
Depends on the industry and use case.

For example, AI leveraged SOC is going to be operational within 3-5 years, and there goes 50-70% of jobs in that sector.

Others segments are significantly behind (robo-taxis) and I'm sure there are other segments much further ahead (call center automation), but the change is absolutely coming - not because of LLMs alone, but because the entire ecosystem around ML/AI is a 15 years old now, and there's an entire generation of SWEs that are just as competent as ML PhDs were 15 years ago.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by voiceblue on Sunday June 30, 2024 @12:19PM (#40838058)
GP is rebutting the “upside downing” of the economy by superintelligent AGI. If you meant to argue that case, your points seem insufficient.
Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by alephnerd on Sunday June 30, 2024 @12:28PM (#40838121)
I don't think superintelligent AGI will occur in our life span.

That said, most investment in ML/AI is around applications of ML in automating specific domains.

My argument is against this:

> FOMO investment completely pointless

I have an example of a 10-11 figure TAM industry that is actively in the process of migrating to being majority automated, and there are plenty of other industries in the midst of this as well.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by hatefulmoron on Sunday June 30, 2024 @02:45PM (#40839141)
The part of my post you're replying to concerns my thoughts on something much broader, though. My claim is not that all investment today is pointless, but that investment predicated on the belief that we're a few years away from the economy being "turned upside down by 1) LLM agent workflows 2) AGI 3) superintelligence" is bad.

It feels like a Motte-and-bailey type issue. If I point out that the original claim doesn't have enough evidence and is purely speculation, I don't really want to hear about how call center jobs are being affected by LLMs. I don't disagree, but we're not talking about the same thing here.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by alephnerd on Sunday June 30, 2024 @03:28PM (#40839535)
> investment predicated on the belief that we're a few years away from the economy being "turned upside down by 1) LLM agent workflows 2) AGI 3) superintelligence" is bad

No one is investing on that assumption. I've been in the PE/VC for a couple years now and I've never heard anyone from Associate to LP say that straight faced and unironically.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by hatefulmoron on Sunday June 30, 2024 @05:16PM (#40840452)
I was replying to someone who believes it, I'm talking with him. I'm not exactly sure what your point is.
Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by Jensson on Monday July 01, 2024 @01:16AM (#40842729)
> No one is investing on that assumption

I am pretty sure some are. Some very rich people are talking as if AGI will happen soon they for sure are investing into this assuming that billions will turn to trillions, as long as they invest in every AI company they will get it right for one of them.

This happened in the IT bubble as well, most companies were overvalued but the total set of IT companies went on to become many trillion dollars of value, so if you invested in every IT company then you became really rich, they expect the same thing to happen now but even more extreme.

Now I don't expect this to turn to AGI, but many do, and those who do would be stupid if they didn't take that into account for investments.

> I've been in the PE/VC

Are you talking about the calculated VC groups? Or are you talking about eccentric rich individuals? The first group for sure wouldn't it would be career suicide to do it there but some of the second group would since they invest their own money. Think people like Elon Musk etc.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by rsynnott on Sunday June 30, 2024 @01:38PM (#40838605)
I’ll… well, I’ll believe the magic robots replacing security people when I see it. That seems a _particularly_ implausible one, really.

As you imply yourself, robotaxis did not deliver on the grandiose promises of a decade ago. What makes you so sure that the generative stuff will be any different?

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by alephnerd on Sunday June 30, 2024 @03:26PM (#40839507)
> the magic robots replacing security people when I see it. That seems a _particularly_ implausible one

That's not what SOC is...

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by rsynnott on Sunday June 30, 2024 @04:20PM (#40840043)
Wait, what is it, then? I assumed you meant security ops.
Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by SgtBastard on Friday July 12, 2024 @06:46PM (#40950146)
>there goes 50-70% of the jobs in that sector.

Does this always follow though? Mass automation can just as easily make the existing staff far more effective, making the ROI easier to justify.

Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by QuantumGood on Sunday June 30, 2024 @11:41AM (#40837819)
It's mostly the "staying relevant" subset of FOMO that is pushing such widespread adoption. Like FOMO, "staying relevant" is poorly defined and emotionally driven, making it effectively meaningless. Probably the smartest response is to slap something flashy on that does little, and took few resources to add. The more resources you apply to staying relevant generally the worse the decision is.
Re:Goldman Sachs says the return on investment for AI might ... by kevinventullo on Sunday June 30, 2024 @12:42PM (#40838198)
It sounds like your partner is not pushing for it because it will improve the product for users, but because it will improve the product for investors. It’s a branding exercise. So, if you’re doing anything at all that involves statistics, or multiplying matrices, using some kind of backtracking algorithm, maybe just call that AI and everyone wins. Or just slap a “genAI” button tied to a ChatGPT API next to your user input.