Comment by infecto
19 days ago
Saying “AI has no economic impact” ignores reality. The financials of major players clearly show otherwise—both B2C and B2B applications are already profitable and proven. While APIs are still more experimental, and it’s unclear how much value businesses can ultimately extract from them, to claim there’s no economic impact is willful blindness. AGI may be far off, but companies are already figuring out value from both the consumer side and slowly API.
The financials are all inflated by perception of future impact. This includes the current subscriptions as businesses are attempting to use AI to some economic benefit, but it's not all going to work out to be useful.
It will take some time for whatever reality is to actually show truthfully in the financials. When VC money stops subsidising datacentre costs, and businesses have to weigh the full price against real value provided, that is when we will see the reality of the situation.
I am content to be wrong either way, but my personal prediction is if model competence slows down around now, businesses will not be replacing humans en-mass, and the value provided will be notable but not world changing like expected.