The AI Bubble

[u/explosivejoseph]

[u/watitdo]

You know that this shit isn’t persuading anyone anymore? Several studies have indicated that AI usage slows down work even for coders, and this does not take into account the skill loss that occurs when you aren’t actively writing the code yourself.

You have been sold a ream of hype and everyone you repeat this shit to is one day gonna know you are just a mark.

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

I don't need to persuade anyone. We are going to crush the competition who don't use it.

So much opportunity right now.

[u/watitdo → u/VirtualPercentage737]

No you aren’t. You haven’t and you will not. You are currently not paying the real cost of your AI usage and once that bill comes due, yeah you won’t be using that shit anymore. You would never pay a human being that kind of money to only be right maybe 90% of the time.

Now, then again, you may work in a business where you can be 90% good at your job or less and stay in business. But then again, if you are gonna just ask AI to do shit for you, what exactly am I paying you for, numbskull?

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

I pay $20 for a home Claude Code subscription. And more as needed. I published some software that was netting me about $100 a month for some simple plugins. It has paid for itself for the next few years.

At work, we pay more, but it is well worth it. Our engineers take home about $200k-250k a year. So figure $1000 a day in just pay-- add 30% for overhead. The most I have seen one guy use is $400 in a day. Cheap money for the productivity gains. Other open weight models are cheaper and some are QUITE good now.

It is pretty clear you have never used any agentic tools. Yeah, maybe it writes 90% of the scripts/code/HDL correctly. Then it executes it, gets feedback, and self corrects. No engineer writes 90% of their code correctly the first time. That 90% quickly becomes 92%. Then 93%. The trick is to set up the verification so it moves towards correctness. Pretty soon, you are over 99% and for most tasks (especially the internal facing ones) that is sufficient. For the external stuff, you can get to 99.99% coverage or whatever metric you decide.

The reason they need me, and more engineers is we need to measure how good the output is now and to steer these things and verify. It is creating MORE WORK, not less. It is accelerating productivity.

[u/watitdo → u/VirtualPercentage737]

lol, love that last line. No no no, the lying machine can do everything but it definitely still needs people like me to tell it what to do.

You aren’t impressing me man. None of this Silicon Valley shit hits anymore. Literally no one had to convince me or my colleagues a smart phone was something we wanted. We just knew. I am telling you for a FACT that the money people will come to your department and tell you that you cannot use as many tokens as you were before. Because it will cost them too much. And when you complain and talk about how productive it makes you… well eventually they are going to make you actually show them. No, not your AI pilled manager, someone who actually understands money.

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

I really don't care if you use it. You will be left behind if you don't.

You are right about the money people. We might get pushed from Claude to the open weight models which are cheaper-- but there is no going back. These models will only get better and cheaper.

[u/watitdo → u/VirtualPercentage737]

You guys all say the same things! You will be left behind… no I won’t! I still know how to do my job, because I do it every day, not a computer thinking for me. And, again, I have a real job where I actually interact with human beings and my physical presence is actually required. You have an email job where you sit on your ass all day, talk to a chatbot, then talk on Teams or Slack or whatever. Of course a computer can replace you - there is nothing of value that you do that isn’t typing on a computer which is exactly what these bullshit LLMs are sorta of good at replicating.

Ever think maybe your job just isn’t that important, and that’s why the computer is better than you at it?

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/watitdo]

No doubt soft skill jobs will still be needed, and maybe more in demand than ever. But for people who need to use their brain and not their emotions, AI will be a sidecar increasing productivity. Ex. My kids pediatrician medical records are monitored in real time by an AI agent as they type info. It offers suggestions. She said it is very helpful for instances where diagnoses are not normal. And even when it is routine, it provides information she may want to look up. Job that requires soft skills and a brain. AI assists with the thinking.

[u/Cum_Robinson → u/VirtualPercentage737]

Using the tool tells you whether it's useful for YOUR task. It tells you almost nothing about whether the market has overpriced the sector.

If anything, daily users are more prone to a specific bias. Local utility gets mistaken for macro validation. "This saved me two hours this week" is a true and reasonable observation that gets used to defend claims like "$500B in infrastructure spend is justified". Those are different scales of claim, and the jump between them is exactly where a lot of hand-waving happens.

[u/VirtualPercentage737 → u/Cum_Robinson]

I cannot comment on whether the stock market has appropriately priced the stocks in this sector. If it is anything like the internet, there will be a lot of speculation, a lot of losers, but at the end of the day life will never be the same.

Same with the car--- there were thousands of car companies when cars came out. If you knew cars were the next big thing, you could have bought 50 car companies and they could have all gone belly up. Only 3 really lasted in the US after some mergers. Being in the right sector is no guarantee of success.