Thread

1. bunderbunder · 1790711630 · focus · HN ↗

   They talk a bit about where the AI companies are supposed to get their revenue from. I’d like to see these analyses go a step further and talk about how those AI customers are supposed to come up with that money as well.

   For example, the article suggests $1T from enterprise productivity tooling. A quick Google suggests the global enterprise productivity tooling market is only worth about $0.1T right now.

   Do we really expect all the world’s corporations to suddenly up their annual spend by 1,000% on average? Why?

   1. nicce · 1790712741 · focus · HN ↗

      > Do we really expect all the world’s corporations to suddenly up their annual spend by 1,000% on average? Why?

      If they keep replacing employees with AI, that is indeed the direction.

      1. raesene9 · 1790713046 · focus · HN ↗

         But if all those peolple are unemployed will they still be able to buy all the products the corporations sell…..

         1. ben_w · 1790713409 · focus · HN ↗

            The historical precedent is those people get other jobs, and/or everyone else in the economy gets richer faster than they get poorer.

            If this does or doesn't happen with AI kinda depends how fast it makes multiple different sections of the population unemployed, rather than just one group like "software developer" or "vehicle driver".

            1. TheOtherHobbes · 1790714248 · focus · HN ↗

               That's very much not what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Hand weavers were relatively well-paid, and the new factories were more likely to employ the urban poor - including kids - than to give jobs to people who used to be hand weavers.

               It took maybe a century and a half for the modern consumer economy to appear. And it didn't happen until money started being shared into the wider economy for political reasons, not technological ones.

               Meanwhile the enclosure of common land was catastrophic for rural populations. Sources of food and pasture disappeared as the Big Houses took them over and turned them into huge single family estates.

               1. ben_w · 1790751822 · focus · HN ↗

                  Your claims are mostly orthogonal to mine; I'm not saying "this was fun for all involved" or "the specific people who were laid off got better jobs" or anything like that, though with the benefit of hindsight I can see how:

                  > those people get other jobs, and/or everyone else in the economy gets richer faster than they get poorer.

                  Could be read the way you seem to have read it. With this quotation "other jobs" was "a job" rather than "a good job", while "everyone else" was intended to refer to the aggregate economy, not to all other individuals within it personally and individually benefitting. And the "and/or" because this isn't just about the initial phase of the industrial revolution but all technological job displacement that has continued to this day.

                  Not even saying it was fast or error-free; another comment I made around the same time used a colourful metaphor to reference various economic depressions that keep on happening.

            2. yetihehe · 1790714536 · focus · HN ↗

               > The historical precedent is those people get other jobs

               Heh, got fired from my old company for reasons not connected to AI. Then couldn't find job. AI suggested one that is perfect for me, helped me put up webpage (I can do everything from electronics/firmware/backend/iot/cad, but nice webpage is not something I can do easily), then helps me every day to learn new things and make useful products I always wanted to make. And I found something safe for now from AI and big companies - making old equipment work with new systems. No one will touch it, because you have only small projects here and can't extract a lot of value at once, but a single person who can do anything with some help from AI can carve out a whole niche.

               I think such solution - thousands of small niches by small entrepreneurs (1 person companies) who can use AI for some small skill they are lacking - are our future and they will absolutely extract a lot of money from people, who hope to make some more money with small optimisations of already working businesses. One example of such small optimisation - making a slightly better wood drying controller for small woodmill owner. He already put up small cabinet with cheap tuya controllers and needs to control them though atrocious app. Now I can make a small module that will add several more sensors, give him some simple dedicated control panel on webpage. Not even medium company would make such small product, because planning phase alone would cost more than what I can charge for whole system and do it in a week.

               And it all started with one prompt - "Given my CV, what single person job would you recommend?"

         2. sebzim4500 · 1790713779 · focus · HN ↗

            No, so companies will pivot more towards luxury goods affordable only to investors
         3. shimman · 1790715155 · focus · HN ↗

            Well look at how the US treats the bottom 10% of the country, that's potentially your future.

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