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Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs

143 points · 150 comments · 6thbit

  1. 2ss · · focus · HN ↗
    2 things can be true:

    -LLMs profoundly change society -The LLM business is mangled in terms of ROIC vs CoC

    Such a business already exists - airlines.

    This nuance is what many here refuse/find difficult to understand.

    1. throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
      > -LLMs profoundly change society -The LLM business is mangled in terms of ROIC vs CoC

      People seem to have forgotten the bust in railroads and Internet (etc), even though those technologies were transformative:

      * <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Technological_Revolutions_and_Financial_Capital" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Technological_Revolutions_and_...

      One thing I&#x27;m wonder about: previous busts left useful infrastructure behind (rail, fibre) that could still be used. If&#x2F;When the AI&#x2F;LLM companies go bust, what will be left over afterwards and how useful will it be?

      1. jedberg · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; previous busts left useful infrastructure behind (rail, fibre) that could still be used. If&#x2F;When the AI&#x2F;LLM companies go bust, what will be left over afterwards and how useful will it be?

        Many many idle GPUs.

        1. throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; Many many idle GPUs.

          Yes, but what use will they have? Rail lines and dark fibre could be used post-bust (and don&#x27;t depreciate all that quickly).

          1. TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
            LLMs as of whatever open models are SOTA when the proprietary bubble bursts, plus... whatever else you can do on GPUs - weather modeling, CFD, genetics research, and so on, and so on.

            And that&#x27;s at day 0. Because LLMs are not going away, thank to open weight models, and the race for capabilities has left so, so many low-hanging fruits unpicked, we&#x27;d have a decade or more of useful R&amp;D to do even if LLM capabilities suddenly plateaued tomorrow and never improved.

            I mean, look at Jev making round in the industry now - this is just a single example of a low-hanging fruit that took many years for someone to bother to pick up and market a bit. There&#x27;s many, many more of these just laying around.

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