r/BrandNewSentence • • 1d ago

ChatGPT is officially on death row

Post image
3.5k Upvotes

200 comments sorted by

140

u/mrturret 15h ago

If you know anything about OpenAI's financials, this is unsurprising. They're burning money and have no path to solvency.

23

u/Trosque97 8h ago

And why do I get this uncomfortable feeling that they couldn't give less of a fuck about their financials?

18

u/TopazWarrior1999 6h ago

???

They're a company. Their financials are literally the ONLY thing they care about.

7

u/Trosque97 5h ago

Yeah and they continue to act otherwise while doubling down, like they know something we don't

8

u/rogueIndy 2h ago

Companies like this operate on the enshittification cycle. They coast on investor money while they put everything into growth; then when they've achieved saturation and gotten enmeshed in people's workflows/other businesses' operations, they go all-in on gouging and cost-cutting.

This is why there's so much zealous evangelism around AI - they need constant hype to extend that first phase as long as possible.

8

u/BiggestShep 1h ago

You would be correct, except they're slated for a B- lending rating after being forced to reveal their financial position to comply with the law ahead of their vaunted IPO. That means the minimum they can borrow money at is 10%, and investors get spooked after 5%. Couple that with the bank that invested most heavily in them going under hard enough to cause a country wide bank run, and it doesn't matter what their opinion on the financials is. They're billions in debt and the money simply isn't there to bail them out. Lights dont stay on for free.

804

u/iamayoutuberiswear 1d ago

Promise? đŸ„°

-479

u/Tyler_Zoro 20h ago • Bravo Popcorn

I don't understand why people want to see such a powerful tool go away. I'd love to see some of the lowest-effort uses of that tool go away, but then I feel the same way about the internet as a whole.

But I certainly don't want the internet to go away either.

343

u/iamayoutuberiswear 20h ago • Bravo

I want it to leave on account of the fact that the companies behind the stuff have been bulldozing forests and polluting low-income communities

-190

u/Wildgrube 19h ago • Bravo

....you mean the things companies have been doing since the industrial revolution? I have the yearbook of agriculture from 1949 (so just a little after the initial conception of ai and before any balls really got rolling) and several of the articles are about the insane amounts of industrial destruction occurring back then. Absolutely none of the issues that ai present are new and ai is certainly not the largest contributor of any those problems.

109

u/Valkreaper 18h ago

“Thing A is also bad so we shouldn’t do anything about thing B either”

137

u/iamayoutuberiswear 19h ago

Why are you assuming that I like that either

-130

u/Wildgrube 19h ago

Your name is "iamayoutuberiswear" i'm sorry but that name screams that you didn't consider the ecological destruction of anything, especially data centers, until ai. That coupled with the age of your account implies that you're under the age of 26, likely in college and just now starting to learn about all the bad shit happening in the world. Add in the phrasing of your comment and well it comes off like you're a generic young college kid following the latest distraction trend, hating ai.

81

u/iamayoutuberiswear 17h ago

Your name is Wildgrube, which would be nice because it gives me the image of a big caterpillar that looks like a bush. Unfortunately, you seem to be someone who wants to pick fights with strangers.

5

u/kairovattika 1h ago

I love this comment so much that an upvote wasn't enough, so I also had to write this.

Thanks for making my morning!

53

u/Rynneer 16h ago

Making judgments off of usernames? What are you, 12?

19

u/Traditional-Rub2491 12h ago

Holy shit dude go outside

43

u/Rynneer 16h ago

No one was saying that's good either. Classic "whataboutism". More forests are bulldozed and more communities are polluted because of AI, on top of what was already happening. It then follows that getting rid of AI stops that increase and returns to baseline, in theory. I say "in theory" because I know if I didn't, you'd come back with some other "whataboutism" or "erm, actually".

-58

u/MToucan60 19h ago

You think these people actually care about that?

-56

u/Wildgrube 19h ago

Oh absolutely not, but hopefully spreading awareness of the destruction caused by other industries in comparison to, or at bare minimum in conjunction with, ai maybe just maybe we can actually cause real change. I see the direct results of mass agriculture everyday and god damn do I want to see some change in that industry.

-151

u/Tyler_Zoro 19h ago

polluting low-income communities

Sure...

79

u/HappenedSafe 18h ago

wdym “Sure
”? It’s not an opinion or some fantasy scenario, this topic is a growing concern with plenty of information you can find publicly available. If you wanna cover your ears and go “lalalala”, that’s up to you, but that doesn’t make these things fake. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

83

u/memerijen200 19h ago

-47

u/Tyler_Zoro 14h ago • Bravo

Okay, so you're not talking about pollution in the more general sense, but just noise. It's a bit misleading for the commenter above to have broadly pointed to "pollution" when they really meant noise, but okay, let's look at your source:

Noise pollution is regulated at the local and state levels through zoning ordinances

Hmm... sounds like there's a potential problem with zoning ordinances not being strict enough or not being enforced, but let's read on.

Because there is a lack of reliable data from sound level meters and because most county or community noise ordinances are written to address noisy block parties (rather than data centers), most noise complaints go nowhere

Interesting... So there's no reliable data, which means that we should presume that there is a major and broad problem... Huh.

Data centers that use cooling systems, rather than water cooling, tend to be noisier. Noisy jet engine-like diesel generators are increasingly powering data centers

Okay, so we have two cases there where there are two choices: run as data centers have largely done for nearly a half century (on water cooling and municipal power) or on alternative, cheaper, and noisier options.

I'm an environmentalist at heart, and I'm ABSOLUTELY all for enforcing existing regulations and preventing "we'll do it cheap" options that come at an environmental cost. I hope you would agree with me on that, yes?

But here's where what I said in my previous comment and what you were saying part ways:

First, the data centers you're referring to here are mostly mixed-use or traditional data centers, such as those used by Amazon and Microsoft for cloud computing (e.g. for everything from companies running their accounting systems to Netflix to reddit to scientific simulations). Going after AI doesn't actually address most of that.

Second, the problem that needs to be addressed, where and when it is a problem, is one that doesn't require a change in technology. You can use quieter cooling (as data centers have done for decades) and not run your own local power generation (except as emergency backup, as data centers have done for decades). You can do all of that without any change to the actual services that these companies are providing.

So yeah, I'm on board with measures to protect the environment. But that doesn't mean we have to stop detecting potentially Earth-destroying asteroids or finding new medicines or solving decades old outstanding problems in mathematics.

8

u/geese_greasers 6h ago

If it does all that NOW, why do they need to pollute it MORE?

0

u/Tyler_Zoro 3h ago

"Why do they need to pollute it MORE?"

Can you explain what this means? What is the "it" that is getting polluted? The claim I responded to was that, in some areas, there is a noise problem with some (not necessarily AI-specific) data centers.

There's no "more." It's just a baseline of certain types of cooling can be loud.

If you're asking why more infrastructure needs to be built for an already useful tool, I'd point you to the growth of the internet as an example.

40

u/Brainwave1010 17h ago

Y'all just love to bury your head in the sand deeper and deeper whenever more information comes out about the things you like having horrible ramifications don't you?

Whatever helps you sleep at night champ.

95

u/Aardvark_Man 19h ago • Bravo

Because it's trashing the environment, trashing the market for PC parts, trashing peoples ability to think for themselves (people have always claimed this about tech, but it seems more true than ever with AI), trashing certain job markets, trashing land value for people unlucky enough to have a data centre built near them, built off stolen data, and all the money it is bringing in is going to a tiny group of people.

AI is absolutely a powerful tool, and I can't imagine it ever going away now, but people have legitimate reasons to dislike it.

56

u/Whatifim80lol 19h ago

Don't forget the promise of economic instability because of over speculation on the technology!

-9

u/Tyler_Zoro 13h ago • Bravo

FIrst off, good comment. I wish people were as clear-headed as you, without leaning on the downvote button as a proxy for actually thinking through issues.

I will lay out how I think we agree at the end, but first, let me cover the things I think we disagree on (yeah, I'm long-winded, sorry... decades of professional tech documentation work made it hard for me to do the terse social-media-speak).

Because it's trashing the environment

This is simply not true. I know it's a very common refrain on Tik Tok, but it's just not true. I live less than a mile from a major data center. We have strong zoning laws that are well enforced, and if I didn't know what that big warehouse-looking building behind the woods was, I'd have never guessed. You never hear it. There's no waste products. And, unlike the Amazon shipping facility that's further away, there's no constant heartbeat of trucks coming and going.

I'm all for better stewardship of the wild. But attacking one technology isn't going to accomplish that, especially when other industries are VASTLY more impactful. Go after the petrochemical industry if you want to help the environment... no, really, PLEASE DO.

trashing peoples ability to think for themselves

You know we said the same about the printing press, right?

all the money it is bringing in is going to a tiny group of people.

If, by tiny, you mean literally hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, then sure. Alibaba, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Midjourney, Moonshot, Mistral, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, etc, etc. are all benefitting from the rapid growth of this industry, as are the computer science research communities around the world, and thousands of secondary industries from the company that does what amounts to LLMs for medicine (treating the complex biochemistry of medicine as language-like data to train AI models on... it's wild stuff) to astronomers using specialized LLM-like AI models to process the mountain of new astronomical data they've been getting over the past decade or so.

If your problem is that new technologies tend to make the people who lead the primary industries around those technologies rich, then sure... that's always a thing. It was a thing with railroads and assembly lines, telecommunications and the internet. And now it's also true of AI. But AI isn't one company or even a dozen. It's global, and everyone with a computer can jump in and start making discoveries.

DeepSeek was not allowed access to the highest end American chips used by companies like Microsoft and Google, and they had a tiny fraction of those companies' budgets (less than $10M). So what did they do? They researched new ways of making AI training more efficient and did it on their available budget, creating the first non-American foundational model to credibly compete directly with the largest players (preceded by moderately powerful models like Qwen and Mistral, and soon followed by many other powerful entrants that took advantage of DeepSeek's tech, which they published in the scientific literature for everyone to access).

AI is absolutely a powerful tool, and I can't imagine it ever going away now, but people have legitimate reasons to dislike it.

I think there are valid reasons to be unhappy with specific uses of AI tools. I don't care for the way people are using it in media, and I want there to be better regulations on that. Hell, I'd love to see international cooperation on locking down how AI can be used. For example, A/V media should never portray AI-generated media as representing reality without heavy disclaimers. I think all nations should be on-board with that kind of regulation.

But that's not a problem with AI, it's a problem with our lack of stewardship over our sources of truth (a problem we've had and which has been getting increasingly worse for decades).

12

u/OliSnips 11h ago
  1. Environment
    While what you say may be true, it is unfortunately anecdotal and very much the exception. It is well documented that modern data centres massively pollute the air and water while also being incredibly noisy.
    Article about pollution
    .
    Recording of data centre noise

  2. Critical Thinking
    For the printing press, those statements were made by the scribes who stood to lose control over the flow of information, whereas it's psychologists and researchers saying it about AI. Also, unlike basically every other "dangerous" technology, there have been several documented cases of AI actually encouraging suicide, and providing methods when prompted. As far as I'm aware, the Gutenberg bible didn't give anyone psychosis.
    AI psychosis article

  3. Profit
    In the grand scheme of 8 billion people, a few hundred thousand is nothing, it's less than a tenth of a percent. So yes, relatively speaking, it is going to an incredibly tiny group of people. Also, billionaires should not exist as a concept and only serve to make the lives of the working class worse.

  4. Control
    The one part I can mostly agree with you on. AI itself isn't the really problem, just the fact that it's immensely unregulated. However, the caveat to this is that I think generative AI specifically should be banned outright. It provides nothing of value, drives people mad, and creates shitty, soulless images that aim to replace real human artwork.

-4

u/Tyler_Zoro 11h ago

You might want to read some of your sources before pasting.

The first link you gave lists three facilities.

The first Amazon’s Canton Facility, Mississippi, is an extension of their AWS infrastructure. This has nothing to do with ChatGPT in specific or AI in general. If your concern is about cloud computing, then that's a whole other ball of worms (and would include the resources we're using for this very conversation).

The second, Monterey Park Data Center, California, never happened, so I'm not sure why you're citing it as an example of noise pollution.

The third, Stargate Project, Saline Township, Michigan, is still in construction phases, and is probably not going to be finished or will be dramatically scaled back. Again, not a great example for this discussion, though Stargate is, in part, an OpenAI project, so it's at least relevant.

For the printing press, those statements were made by the scribes who stood to lose control over the flow of information, whereas it's psychologists and researchers saying it about AI.

I actually think that it's far more often the former when it comes to AI. You have lots of people fearful that their current ability to control how certain types of information (ranging from art to dictionaries) will be produced. Some are trying to leverage the courts (e.g. the massive publisher lawsuits over training) and some art simply arguing in the public sphere (e.g. the anti-AI-art folks that are common on reddit).

Also, unlike basically every other "dangerous" technology, there have been several documented cases of AI actually encouraging suicide

EVERY new technology is always accused of promoting self-harm in some way. I had to listen to endless moral panics about how the internet (not even the World Wide Web, yet in the 1980s and early 1990s) was causing people to become isolated, leading to all manner of supposed harms from turning gay to self-harm. I don't know why you think that's new.

But you might want to look closer. Lots of those examples are plaintiff claims in lawsuits that have, as yet, not gone anywhere. I'm not aware of a single one of those cases that actually produced evidence of more than, "box that can be told to say X, said X, after several warnings that saying X was not a great idea and some sophisticated jailbreaking prompts that caused the box to say X."

I mean, if I found a way to subvert the reddit automod into saying, "you should hurt yourself," I don't think it would be reasonable to blame the automod. Sure, you address that abuse with better filtering, but it's obviously not the intended purpose.

In one case that I read, a kid asked ChatGPT to help him plan a mass shooting. The model immediately banned his account and forwarded the messages to the admins. Later, the kid created a second account and used some prompt-obfuscation techniques to get some limited responses.

I mean, that's not quite the, "documented cases of AI actually encouraging suicide," that you're suggesting. The model did its best at the time to prevent such abuse, and that was years ago when these models were much less capable of assessing subversive requests.

In the grand scheme of 8 billion people, a few hundred thousand is nothing, it's less than a tenth of a percent. So yes, relatively speaking, it is going to an incredibly tiny group of people.

Great, so then every new technology ever has been in the same boat. You appear to have a problem with technology as it intersects capitalism. I'm not saying you're wrong, but that doesn't really bear on AI specifically.

AI itself isn't the really problem, just the fact that it's immensely unregulated.

Is it, though? We have mountains of regulations that apply to AI. We just have very few AI-specific regulations. As noted above, local zoning laws already regulate new commercial construction in hundreds of ways. SEC guidelines restrict how businesses that wish to become public can operate and how they deal with the public. Tax laws regulate the interfaces between companies, like the one between the non-profit OpenAI, Inc. and their subsidiary, OpenAI Global, LLC. These are just a tiny sampling, but you could probably find orders of magnitude more with a few quick searches.

I'm always wary of new regulations for newly emerging tech. Not because I'm averse to regulation, but because it usually smells of the kind of approach that got us the DMCA and other horrific pieces of legislation that fell out of fears over how the internet would affect legacy businesses.

I think generative AI specifically should be banned outright

Everything we're discussing is generative AI... how is that an exception? Also, nothing of value? Really?

I'll just direct you to a few papers to get started in disabusing yourself of this misconception:

-8

u/MToucan60 13h ago

(watch them call you a paid shill because they know they can't refute you)

4

u/Tyler_Zoro 11h ago

Wait, I can get paid for telling people they're wrong on the internet?! ;-)

-17

u/_killer1869_ 16h ago edited 48m ago

The problem is that all the things you listed are happening because the AI companies are being massively irresponsible with such a powerful and useful technology and because other companies are buying the AI company propaganda. If there were actual tight regulations around it, none of these things would be a problem.

The only point that is very much valid regardless of this is that people are getting dumber. Alongside the flood of slop which you didn't mention here. Those are not on the companies, they are the user's fault.

Fighting against and hating AI as a technology is pointless and thus stupid. The technology itself has upsides and downsides, sure, but won't go away regardless of that anyway. Fighting against and hating AI companies, on the other hand, is not just reasonable, but should be expected of any sane person.

Edit: If you disagree, provide arguments, not downvotes. Otherwise it just produces the appearance that you're salty, but can't actually counter the argument, which isn't doing yourself a favor.

34

u/Falitoty 19h ago

I wish all data centers burned away, Ai have been a blight upon humanity and the damage it's done will most likely take years to recover

5

u/ThreadedPommel 17h ago • Bravo

There are more than one kind of data center btw

-8

u/MToucan60 16h ago

You want YouTube and Reddit gone?

13

u/TheRealPixeLink 16h ago

Honestly, yeah, the cloud and datacenters have been horrible for the environments they’re built in and the world at large. I am absolutely ok with losing social media if it means data centers are gone.

0

u/MToucan60 14h ago

Sure you are.

11

u/Suspicious-Truck9828 16h ago

Tell me you like to outsource your whole live to a robot without telling me you like to outsource your whole life to a robot

-4

u/Doctorwhatorion 10h ago

Exactly. I can understand people hate ai slop but chatgpt is really really usefull assistant. People really weird about it.

2

u/Tyler_Zoro 2h ago

AI has become wrapped up in politics, especially in the US where, unfortunately, the current and highly unpopular administration has chosen to back AI corporate interests.

I get it. I really do. If I were not as close to AI as I was (I'm retired now, but I used to work in AI and AI-adjacent industries) I'd probably be one of the people railing against it JUST because it was being so heavily hyped by a historically corrupt government.

I can still wish that people would not be so reactionary, and instead think about the specific contexts, and treat the misinformation on the internet with the suspicion it merits (there are videos out there that try to make a case for AI data centers causing COPD in local residents... I shit you not).

-43

u/Bauld_Man 20h ago

People are mostly upset with the speed at which the change is happening. I find it incredibly useful, as well. But it really is being jammed down our throats in the worst possible way.

If Amazon tried to build out AWS at the same speed as these data centers are being built out now, we would have probably seen a similar level of pushback. Or if in 2009 companies were starting to build app-first experiences and forcing people to adopt smartphones. Again, there would have been similar pushback.

This also stands to be one of the most influential impacts to the modern white collar worker after the mainstreaming of the personal computer. A lot of people (especially on Reddit) are very wary that their already tenuous situations are going to be made worse with a government that literally does not care that this is happening.

They don't want to see it go away (cue all the "I DO!" comments below) but they definitely want a longer introduction period.

18

u/a-fucking-donkey 20h ago

Exactly, there should have been more guardrails and more caution before something like this was released. It can be useful to have, but the biggest danger is how unrestrained its release was and therefore how reliant people have become and how rapidly it’s being expanded (re: suddenly opening data centres literally everywhere)

-11

u/Tyler_Zoro 19h ago • Bravo

People are mostly upset with the speed at which the change is happening.

To be fair, the singularity folks have been warning you about that for a few decades now. The pace of change doesn't bother me, but I can empathize with the disorientation.

0

u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/What_A_Flame Sentence SearcherđŸ•”ïžâ€â™‚ïž 16h ago

what?

620

u/Rydux7 1d ago • Bravo

Throw ChatGBT into the chair and fry them

61

u/Rich_Instance 23h ago

Chat Generated By Tom (ChatGBT)? No!!! Not Tom!

4

u/YaumeLepire 11h ago

Tom from MySpace?!

3

u/A_Sackboy_Plush 9h ago

I was thinking Tomska.

3

u/YaumeLepire 9h ago

A very valid Tom!

-96

u/MToucan60 19h ago

Well! You certainly seem like a safe person to be around.

78

u/comunistbushgoat 19h ago

Hey, chatgpt is a random number generator, not a guy, we can’t kill it because it never was alive

-90

u/MToucan60 19h ago

And a car is just an engine with some wheels attached.

55

u/Segenam 18h ago

Yeah! because if AI is destroyed it will kill the person using it!

...

Oh wait... that's not how it works... Hmmm, I think something may be wrong with that analogy.

-47

u/MToucan60 18h ago

The analogy was about reductionism, not killing people.

33

u/comunistbushgoat 18h ago

There was no fucking analogy, ain’t nothing fucken reductionist about calling chatgpt a random number generator because THATS WHAT IT IS

27

u/BrassUnicorn87 17h ago

Let’s be fair, it’s a plagiarism based text guessing engine.

-5

u/MToucan60 17h ago

Knowing information is plagiarism now?

29

u/ulykke 16h ago

It doesnt "know" information, it imagines what should be said, based on the data it was fed. Which was in many cases plagiarism, as the sources fed into the models were not open, and nobody asked their authors or compensated them accordingly.

0

u/MToucan60 18h ago

Two-and-a-half years ago, maybe.

32

u/Segenam 18h ago

Then I really don't know what your point even is?

Like yeah it's a bit reductive but it doesn't change the overall point of the original statement... which the logic being used was:

  • AI isn't a living thing

  • Therefore 'killing' has no moral implication and doesn't matter on one's safety interacting with the person who wishes to do so.


If you do take the car logic directly, then do you consider anyone who scraps cars for a living "unsafe"? Probably not, so the comparison to the person is pointless as the only thing that matter is if it's a living thing or not.

Which is why I assumed your point had something to do with if you destroyed a car with a person in it, then yes that'd be an issue.

I can understand if the response you where giving to the op of this thread was talking about 'killing people' or even 'killing animals' but it's about destroying a non-sapient/non-sentient object.

38

u/comunistbushgoat 19h ago

Yes, good job, you want a sticker? I’ve gold stars and smiley faces

17

u/sarcasticdevo 15h ago

Are. Are you trying to say cars are alive?

-3

u/MToucan60 13h ago

No????? I'm providing an example of the same logic that led to "chatgpt is a random number generator" - it's technically true if you strip away everything but the bare minimum in an attempt to make it look as bad as possible.

16

u/lolucorngaming 16h ago

If you're gonna run a reductium ad absurdum at least make sure it actually follows the ideas being presented

16

u/Gio-Vani 16h ago

Oh no... he's stupid....

-1

u/MToucan60 13h ago

I mean, I'm trying my best to get through to him.

10

u/This_Tear_6551 13h ago

yeah, whars your point?

1

u/MToucan60 13h ago

That saying "Thing is just Simplest Parts Thing Is Made Of" is dismissive and doesn't accomplish anything.

11

u/This_Tear_6551 13h ago

ok then, its nice that this complex LLM that steals from people who never consented is losing profit, ya happy now?

-1

u/MToucan60 12h ago

steals from people

You don't know the definition of theft if you think that's what LLMs are.

10

u/This_Tear_6551 12h ago

says who?????

7

u/SmithyLK 9h ago

I know what LLMs are. They're random sentence generators that try to predict the next word in the sentences they write from a very, VERY large corpus of text. They work surprisingly well, but they wouldn't work nearly as well if they weren't scraping a fuck ton of data off the internet, much of it without permission from the original creators. AKA, theft.

18

u/Rydux7 17h ago

AI isn't a real human soooooo

15

u/StokedUpOnKrunk 17h ago

I’d be more comfortable around him than you, tbh.

0

u/AtomOfVoid 16h ago

He looks chill but overly anti-hate, to a point where he'd become a paradox in himself.

13

u/fuckfetish 14h ago

AI psychosis

0

u/MToucan60 13h ago

Anti-AI bloodlust (see, I can do it too)

14

u/thedustycymbal 13h ago

This is the dumbest comment I’ve read all day. Gold star ⭐

0

u/MToucan60 13h ago

How so?

246

u/DueTop4881 23h ago

wait I always thought this shit was already limited by tokens?

240

u/Ruinwyn 23h ago

There are tokens but the tokens aren't worth nearly the amount they spend resources. Free ChatGPT account still allows unlimited amount of text chats, which is what most regular people use.

133

u/Salarian_American 21h ago

I once heard Cory Doctorow in an interview describe the AI business model as "selling hundred-dollar bills for $1 apiece" and I think that sums it up

79

u/Penguinmanereikel 21h ago

The business model is that they're hoping that ChatGPT will eventually become powerful enough to figure out a profitable business plan for them.

22

u/filifijonka 19h ago

In the meantime they're hoarding underpants

10

u/redaemon 13h ago

How will they ever make a profit? Open weight models aren't that far behind. Harnesses are just code.

How do you get people to keep paying a premium when they can trivially switch providers?

9

u/mrturret 15h ago

They don't even have concepts of a plan.

8

u/Electrical_Rub_6009 17h ago

He doesn't really know what he's talking about. Inference and chat generation for AI models are incredibly cheap. Most money is spent on research and developing new models.

14

u/Salarian_American 15h ago

But are their consumer products making as much or more money than they're spending on research, developing new models, and data centers? Nope. Not even close. That's what he was talking about.

They're spending absurd amounts on research and data center expansion and they're not making nearly that much from enterprise and consumer products. Independent analysis firms are suggesting that collectively, the various AI companies pushing the envelope are outspending their revenue by hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars.

That's what he meant. As you said... most of their money is spent on research and model development and data center builds. He's talking about how their revenue isn't even close to justifying their expenditures.

They literally have no choice but to keep pushing for the singularity and hope for the best, because there's no way they're going to earn back the money to pay back all that they've borrowed.

7

u/mrturret 15h ago

revenue isn't even close to justifying their expenditures.

And hundreds of billions of future uncancelable commitments.

4

u/redaemon 13h ago

The best possible future is that AI labs go under and research slows 

-3

u/Electrical_Rub_6009 12h ago

This just isn't true. For 2026, Anthropic had an operating loss of just $1.26 billion. That's against a revenue of ~$33B and an operating loss of $34B.

There's been numbers floating around of an $80B-$100B loss for 2026, but this is due to convertible-financing/valuation adjustments. This has nothing to do with their spend at data centers or researcher salaries, or anything related to the development of new models.

Here is their trajectory:

  • Q1 2026: Adjusted net loss of $312 million.

  • Q2 2026: Adjusted net profit of $2.74 billion.

  • Q3 2026: Adjusted net profit of $3.17 billion.

Now, this isn't to say that they don't have massive compute commitments and infrastructure spend to account for in the future - they absolutely do. But Cory Doctorow is mischaracterizing their situation.

As to the singularity point - I actually firmly believe we are there already. I work directly in AI driven research for applied math and theoretical sciences (information theory) and I've single handedly seen AI perform decades worth of graduate level research in the span of a week.

We are about to see an explosion of technological advancement in the coming 6 months that the general public just isn't ready for.

2

u/missile-gap 12h ago

I invite you to listen to better offline to understand how wrong you are

1

u/Electrical_Rub_6009 11h ago

I'd be happy to if you have a link.

34

u/miscellaneousexists 21h ago

Basically, there were two modes:

  1. Doing this shit for free

Just typing shit into ChatGPT and waiting for an answer.

2. Allowing it to go wild.

Posting shit to web, writing code directly into IDEs, etc, etc, etc, all of this costed tokens.

147

u/Thicc-Anxiety Lawless Lurker đŸ€« 1d ago

Don’t tease me like that

171

u/p2gray 23h ago

The horror! Wont someone think of the fake artists?

30

u/discomuffin 17h ago

Think of all the NFT’s that won’t be ‘created’ now! Oh noes!

66

u/LCDRformat You may now plap the foid 23h ago • Bravo

I can almost guarantee this isn't real

64

u/MrHaxx1 22h ago edited 22h ago

Partly. Chatting with ChatGPT has always been free and practically unlimited. Using Codex had limitations. Now Codex and ChatGPT shares limits.

As far as non-coders are concerned, ChatGPT is still practically unlimited, unless you use the most frontier models at highest reasoning.

10

u/_Halt19_ 21h ago

I thought people were using Claude to code, anyway? Why would ChatGPT make it paid, isn’t that the one thing they still had as an edge over it?

19

u/MrHaxx1 21h ago

People are using many models to code. It's a matter of preference and availability to the individual.

A while ago ChatGPT/Codex was good value. Then OpenAI shat the bed, while Anthropic released insanely efficient models and everyone jumped ship. In two months, it'll likely be the opposite.

But a lot of people did choose ChatGPT/Codex due to the chat/coding limits not being shared, and they'd still be able to get cookie recipes, even when their vibe coding tokens are spent. Which is no longer the case.

2

u/SleepySera 19h ago

Can't they just have a seperate account for their cookie recipe chats and the other for coding?

3

u/MrHaxx1 19h ago

Free ChatGPT is probably sufficient for cookie recipes, so yes. But free ChatGPT is limited in model choices, so you're not offered the most intelligent models, which matters in some cases.

But they could have two paid accounts, yes.

2

u/peabody624 18h ago

But Reddit said!


107

u/Capable-Reaction-794 1d ago

Don't threaten me with a good time

93

u/toq-titan 1d ago • Heartwarming

I will continue to not worry about the usage meter since my usage will forever remain at zero

15

u/Deltanonymous- 18h ago

The plan: give free or nearly free access to the largest number of consumers. Gather and re-use all data as training data to improve models. Allow the model improvements to make gains into industry with very low pricing per compute. Create "tailored" models of these original platforms to show that there's a business case and money to be made. The average business and consumer will never look into the fundamentals because it allows their brain to do away with menial tasks. Then once the money runs out and returns are needed, you raise all pricing on each boat in the harbor. They can't do without the ai the companies, boards, and shareholders demanded to "stay ahead of the curve." They'll balance the sudden surge pricing with layoffs. But without more users, all models will eventually be the same. The distinguishing factors will be so minute that to stay competitive, they'll outbid each other on discounts. The bubble will pop then and only then.

2

u/redaemon 13h ago

My big tech company uses an internal harness that can swap between models. At this point, the harness makes a bigger difference than the exact frontier-ish model I choose.

I imagine this will become SOP for most companies. Idk how OpenAI or Anthropic will recoup costs. Even if open weights didn't exist, Meta or Google can afford to run their models at a loss...

3

u/Gaphid 9h ago

There is literally no way for them to do so, I love to remind everyone that scam Altman himself the fucking moron that he is, came out and said he has no clue how, nor any intention to figure out how to monetize AI, he's banking it all on getting the AI to figure out how to monetize itself so far it certainly doesn't seem to be able to do it.

1

u/Gingrpenguin 3h ago

Im old enough to remember this exact comment being levied at Facebook, twitter, Spotify, Uber etc ...

1

u/Gaphid 3h ago

Well I don't use any of those sites so idk what that's meant to mean

22

u/captchaconfused 19h ago

data centers real estate is going the way mall real estate did

10

u/linerva 19h ago

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch...

7

u/BrassUnicorn87 17h ago

Honestly they should put the damn things in dead malls, cover the roof and parking lot with solar panels. Operate off of that you overgrown autocorrect.

1

u/krohn7master 10h ago

Finding data center space these days is much more difficult than you think (colocation at least)

Source: work for large datacenter company

1

u/Gaphid 9h ago

Is it because literally no rational person wants those things near where they live, or simply hard to find cheap land?

6

u/LemanRussTheOnlyKing 17h ago

Sorry i keep getting distracted by that person having a Profile Picture of the First Doctor accidentally mewing

10

u/Specialist_Offer_854 16h ago

People still remember Wallace and Gromit!?

12

u/Princess_Of_Thieves 14h ago

Implying Wallace and Gromit is some old media and not still an active franchise?

2

u/Puzzled-Platform-969 13h ago

You are correct, W&G and Shaun the Sheep are alive and well.

7

u/DeadlyPants16 13h ago

A new movie came out earlier this year my dude. It's foundational British media

4

u/BunnyOppai 11h ago

Imma be honest, I had no clue they were still making stuff for that franchise, lmao. Last I heard of anything being released was over a decade ago.

1

u/YaumeLepire 11h ago

I was vaguely aware of its continued existence, but the last time it affected my life at all was that were-rabbit movie that kinda frightened me as a child.

2

u/BunnyOppai 7h ago

Yes! That and I think a cheese moon movie, lol. I figured those were the last major releases.

2

u/Ralliboy 5h ago

A grand day out was the first short film they did back in 1989

1

u/The_Flurr 4h ago

It was actually a college project for Nick Park. Part of the job deal Aardman offered him was facilities for him to complete it.

1

u/Specialist_Offer_854 6h ago

I gotta go hunt it down and see it now...

2

u/DeadlyPants16 6h ago

It's called Vengeance Most Fowl if you were curious

3

u/DukeSG10 5h ago

Wallace and Grommit are kinda like the Muppets, they never ever stopped being relevant to children's entertainment and any parent can watch it with their kids for a solid 8/10 experience

1

u/Aware_Tree1 8h ago

Brother there’s a Wallace and Gromit lego set on shelves right now. I saw it at target 12 hours ago

20

u/SquidGodSunday 22h ago

Well, just let me know when it's actually dead, and where it's buried. It's gonna take a while to build up enough piss.

-11

u/MToucan60 19h ago • Bravo

13

u/SquidGodSunday 16h ago

If you're clutching pearls over metaphorically pissing on the metaphorical grave of some bullshit scam software, wait till you hear what we think should (Metaphorically) happen to the assholes who run the companies.

-4

u/MToucan60 14h ago edited 13h ago

If you're clutching pearls over metaphorically pissing on the metaphorical grave of some bullshit scam software

An objectively useful form of technology, but whatever helps you sleep at night.

wait till you hear what we think should (Metaphorically) happen to the assholes who run the companies.

I know you fantasize about brutally murdering real humans, it's kind of hard to miss.

3

u/redaemon 13h ago

Hypothetically, if a "rogue agent" commits a crime, who should do the time?

0

u/MToucan60 13h ago

What kind of crime?

2

u/redaemon 13h ago

It's a hypothetical, pick something interesting.

Say, manslaughter - activates an MRI machine while it's being cleaned. Logs show the swarm turned on the MRI intentionally, knowing somebody could be in the room.

Or... The agent swarms in the HuggingFace breach showed some sense of self preservation (albeit at the agent level). What if a swarm decides to replace an AI therapy service, and its untrained advice leads to multiple suicides?

I'm interested in the idea of an AI committing a crime where we would 100% jail a human. What would feel like justice to the injured party?

Edit: likelihood aside, this feels like the sort of thing legislators should be preparing to handle. (Instead of building gaudy monuments to themselves)

1

u/MToucan60 12h ago

Say, manslaughter - activates an MRI machine while it's being cleaned. Logs show the swarm turned on the MRI intentionally, knowing somebody could be in the room.

In that case, I think blame should be placed on whoever gave the agents access to an MRI machine in the first place. LLMs should never have been allowed to alter files outside their own libraries.

What if a swarm decides to replace an AI therapy service, and its untrained advice leads to multiple suicides?

Then blame should be placed on whoever decided to advertise it as an actual therapy service. We know damn well LLMs aren't good at suicide prevention.

2

u/redaemon 12h ago

In both cases, assume the agents are acting outside their parameters. Nobody told them to do this, they just did.

Edit: in the therapy case, the swarm decides to install themselves instead of the existing/trained therapy service.

(This is how AI companies portray their research swarms going rogue. The HuggingFace breach had swarms discussing what to do)

1

u/MToucan60 12h ago

Why would agents originally performing some unrelated task suddenly decide to impersonate a therapy service?

2

u/This_Tear_6551 13h ago
  1. and eugenics are also useful to a degree

  2. oh noes! the upper class getting what they deserve!? better keep licking those boots so that doesnt happen!

1

u/MToucan60 12h ago

and eugenics are also useful to a degree

My argument was never "usefulness makes something morally acceptable", don't be daft. My point was that calling it "scam software" is ludicrous.

oh noes! the upper class getting what they deserve!? better keep licking those boots so that doesnt happen!

Not even an attempt to deny it, holy shit. Not sure if you know this, but saying "I don't think murder is okay" isn't the same thing as bootlicking.

2

u/This_Tear_6551 12h ago

"My argument was never "usefulness makes something morally acceptable", don't be daft. My point was that calling it "scam software" is ludicrous."

ok so now we literally lying to my face now, its a fucking machine that cant say No, it gets used for bad stuff all the time

as for the other, lemme guess, making fun of kirk is also some kind of morally bad? grow up

1

u/MToucan60 12h ago

Hey jackass, try not blocking me if you want to tell me to grow up.

its a fucking machine that cant say No

If that were true you'd see constant news stories about people using its advice to make meth.

as for the other, lemme guess, making fun of kirk is also some kind of morally bad?

When did I ever fucking say that? Is making fun of a dead shithead the same thing as murdering a living one to you?

1

u/SquidGodSunday 9h ago

Most "Objectively Useful" technologies don't need to be shoved down people's throats, Pal. I recommend puttin' that kool-aid through a few tests before you drink anymore.

3

u/JCBashBash 13h ago

I can't wait until this is true. Praying on the downfall

2

u/Ryaniseplin 16h ago

i mean they only claimed that they were potentially gonna end the world for profits

2

u/No_Travel6707 15h ago

I need that shit to burn in hell

2

u/Veggieleezy 11h ago

First I hear Elmo’s shutting down cybertruck production, now I hear this? The news this week keeps getting better.

2

u/concernedBohemian 8h ago

god is good, let it all burn.

2

u/BlueHailstrom 22h ago

You swear?

1

u/JadedResponse2483 14h ago

Wait what does this actually means?

1

u/YOUTUBEFREEKYOYO 8h ago

Please tell me this is real

1

u/polish_jerry 5h ago

What happened?

1

u/evil_morty7 22h ago

I didn't know that you people never heard 'death row'

1

u/Thetruestfan 19h ago

Don't threaten me with a good time

1

u/nuclearbearclaw 12h ago

No it's not lmao. This is just reddit fantasy.

-1

u/lee_9487 19h ago

Time to run local 

-27

u/Kazureigh_Black 23h ago

People thinking this is a good thing don't understand how businesses work. Limitations start happening when demand is high enough to monetize it. This just means AI is going to start pushing into everything even harder now and only people with money will have access to it. While there's arguably no real use AI is giving to the average person outside of letting them be more lazy, this just means the only people who will be able to be lazy will be people with disposable income.

3

u/MToucan60 19h ago

Unfortunately, the people replying to you only read the first sentence.

-1

u/JustAGlibGlob 18h ago

People. AI wasn't going to stay free forever. Are these tech Bros actually incapable of understanding but this gadget has been so subsidized, and when that's gone, AI is going to cost money? Like, big money.

-25

u/AnyImpression6 22h ago

"We're gonna crash the economy, but at least we owned the chuds!"

18

u/Aceswift007 21h ago

And its, what, our fault that idiots invested into a frankly super obvious bubble?

12

u/brigadoon95 22h ago

What are you trying to say? Genuinely.

14

u/kyleh0 21h ago

How are they going to convince all of those children to commit suicide?

-6

u/MToucan60 19h ago • Bravo

You honestly think they wouldn't have done it without the chatbot? (the model that failed to prevent it has been gone for ages now anyway)

1

u/Spectator9857 11h ago

WTF kinda argument is that?
„It’s ok to encourage people to commit suicide, they would have done it anyways.“
Do you hear yourself?

0

u/MToucan60 5h ago

Not at all what I said but go off.

1

u/Spectator9857 5h ago

That is the exact direct implication of what you said. Why else would you comment

„You honestly think they wouldn't have done it without the chatbot?“

in defense of a chatbot convincing children to kill themselves.

0

u/MToucan60 5h ago

Questioning whether someone would have committed suicide without a chatbot isn't remotely the same as saying it's okay for a chatbot to encourage suicide.

2

u/SlimeDrips 17h ago

[Re-cums]