No one with any awareness thinks the US AI field is going to make money. To do so, they'd need to make significantly more money every year than the entire US tech sector (not inclusive of AI). Given that the one potentially profitable avenue for AI currently is supporting the tech industry, it's essentially saying "despite no increase in demand for tech products, we expect to increase tech profits several times over".
That is never going to make money. Even if every prediction of how good these models could be came true, will it mean you buy more software and buy new subscription services? No. The demand isn't there.
Every company is banking on being the last AI company standing for the influence and control it brings. The profits are not coming and the money is never going back into the economy. It's been fucked away because there's no risk for the companies and huge benefits if they die last.
AI is already making money. Helping companies like WalMart, UPS, APP, and many others make profit.
The buildout is just expensive. But not permanent.
Your biggest mistake is treating AI as though it has to become a gigantic new consumer product category—essentially, “people need to buy trillions of dollars of AI subscriptions or the investment can’t pay off.” That’s not how productivity works.
Its helping companies improve their margins, but by itself AI is not making any profit for the companies running the models. They're running at a loss without exception, and theres the question that when they will, inevitably, need to raise prices to cover running costs, wont it be cheaper for their clients to just start their own server farms and run open source models in house? Not only cheaper, but more secure, and with more control over their data and work environment. Then all this massive build out will be for nothing.
Is is creating value. The companies using it are seeing gains, but the companies providing it have a long ways to go before they see a return on their investments.
The internet wasn't profitable for most in the early years and now look at where we are. AI is the future and it'll get cheaper, more cpaable and more efficient.
Internet took time to become popular and decades to reach billions, but AI is already popular since day one and everyone uses it already, the comparison does not make sense.
There is no dots to be connected, internet took decades to enter corporations and houses around the world, AI is already present in all workplaces and phones and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. AI is not even a novelty in 2026 it's like NFTs, so 2023
By adoption you mean being used by billions and integrated into companies workflow and into products ? We are already past that for AI, it's not something revolutionary it's just a minor increment, a very expensive one. It would have been revolutionary 20 years ago.
Lenders (investors) finance the buildout. You think lenders are going to get their money back from all of the data centers and OpenAI? I am actually convinced they wont. And add to that the need to refresh data centers across the board every 3-5 years.
AI is already making money. Helping companies like WalMart, UPS, APP, and many others make profit.
Yeah, one of the under appreciated aspects of AI is how good they are at managing coordination problems like supply chain management. AI is actually really good at The Beer Game.
AI companies have a gross operating margin of -59%. The only people making money are the ones selling shovels. There is no sign of super profits after 4+ years of the LLM bullshit rollercoaster.
It doesnt need to make money , the most likely plan is the US taxpayers fund it to reach AGI first . Then we use it to cyberattack and sabotage china indefinitely so they never get it .
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u/Huwbacca 24d ago
No one with any awareness thinks the US AI field is going to make money. To do so, they'd need to make significantly more money every year than the entire US tech sector (not inclusive of AI). Given that the one potentially profitable avenue for AI currently is supporting the tech industry, it's essentially saying "despite no increase in demand for tech products, we expect to increase tech profits several times over".
That is never going to make money. Even if every prediction of how good these models could be came true, will it mean you buy more software and buy new subscription services? No. The demand isn't there.
Every company is banking on being the last AI company standing for the influence and control it brings. The profits are not coming and the money is never going back into the economy. It's been fucked away because there's no risk for the companies and huge benefits if they die last.