Every person I personally know on this list made it their life mission to be on the list. It was lost on them that the whole thing has become a running joke that everyone else thinks is just full of grifters.
I see the string of “30 Under 30” being a statistically valid predictor of future likelihood to go to prison continues. These lists feed on the narcissistic tendencies of grifters who are desperate to get on the list and then tell you about it on LinkedIn.
These lists have such a bad reputation these days that legit top folks are asking their PR people to keep the off!
Impressive round but it seems unlikely this game can go on much longer before something implodes. Given the amount of cash you need to set of fire to stay relevant it’s becoming nearly impossible for all but a few players to stay competitive, but those players have yet to demonstrate a viable business model.
With all these models converging, the big players aren’t demonstrating a real technical innovation moat. Everyone knows how to build these models now, it just takes a ton of cash to do it.
This whole thing is turning into an expensive race to the bottom. Cool tech, but bad business. A lot
of VC folks gonna lose their shirt in this space.
I was convinced of this line of thinking for a while too but lately I'm not so sure. In software in particular, I think it's actually quite relevant what you can do in-house with a SOTA model (especially in the tool calling / fine tuning phase) that you just don't get with the same model via API. Think Cursor vs. Claude Code -- you can use the same model in Cursor, but the experience with CC is far and away better.
I think of it a bit like the Windows vs. macOS comparison. Obviously there will be many players that will build their own scaffolding around open or API-based models. But there is still a significant benefit to a single company being able to build both the model itself as well as the scaffolding and offering it as a unit.
It still doesn't make sense. Cursor undoubtedly has smart engineers who could implement the Anthropic text editing tool interface in their IDE. Why not just do that for one of your most important LLM integrations?
I agree it doesn't make sense. I'd think they could alias their own tools to match Anthropic's, but my guess is they don't want to customize too heavily on any given model.
My gut feeling is that Claude Code being so popular is:
- 60% just having a much better UX and having any amount of "taste", compared to Cursor
- 39,9% being able to subsidize the raw token costs compared to what's being billed to Cursor
- 0,1% some magical advantage by also training the model
Claude Code is just much _pleasant_ to use than most other tools, and I think people are overly discounting that aspect of it.
I'd rather use CC with slightly dumber model, than Cursor with a slightly better one; and I suspect I'm far from being the only one.
I think we underestimate the insane amount of idle cash the rich have. We know that the top 1% owns something like 80% of all resources, so they don't need that money.
They can afford to burn a good chunk of global wealth so that they can have even more global wealth.
Even at the current rates of insanity, the wealthy have spent a tiny fraction of their wealth on AI.
Bezos could put up this $13 billion himself and remain a top five richest man in the world.
(Remember Elon cost himself $40 billion because of a tweet and still was fine!)
This is a technology that could replace a sizable fraction of humamkind as a labor input.
I don't think most folks think very hard about where most wealth comes from but imagine it just sort of exists in a fixed quantity or is pulled from the ground like coal or diamonds - there's a fixed amount of it, and if there are very rich people, it must be because they took the coal/diamonds away from other people who need it. This leads to catchy slogans.
But it's pretty obvious wealth can be created and destroyed. The creation of wealth comes from trade, which generally comes from a vibrant middle class which not only earns a fair bit but also spends it. Wars and revolutions are effective at destroying wealth and (sometimes) equitably redistributing what's left.
Both the modern left and modern right seem to have arrived at a consensus that trade frictions are a good way to generate (or at least preserve) wealth, while the history of economics indicates quite the contrary. This was recently best pilloried by a comic that showed a town under siege and the besieging army commenting that this was likely to make the city residents wealthy by encouraging self-reliance.
We need abundant education and broad prosperity for stability - even (and maybe especially) for the ultra wealthy. Most things we enjoy require absolute and not relative wealth. Would you rather be the richest person in a poor country or the poorest of the upper class in a developed economy?
I'm not sure to what extent you meant this, but I don't know that I'd agree with it. Trade allows specialization which does increase wealth massively, no doubt. And because of how useful specialization is, all wealth creation involves trade somewhere. But specialization is just one component of wealth creation. It stands alongside labor, innovation, and probably others.
>> > The creation of wealth comes from trade, [...]
> I'm not sure to what extent you meant this, but I don't know that I'd agree with it.
At a very foundational level, all wealth comes from trade, even when there is no currency involved.
When two parties voluntarily make a trade, each party gets more value out of the trade than they had before, so the sum total of value after the trade is, by definition alone, greater than the sum total of value before the trade.
Small example: I offer to trade you a bag of potatoes for 2 hours of your time to fix my tractor, and you accept.
This trade only happens because:
1. I value a running tractor more than I value my bag of potatoes
2. You value a bag of potatoes more than you value 2 hours of your time.
After the trade is done, I have more value (running tractor) and you have more value (a bag of potatoes), hence the total value after the trade is more than the total value before the trade.
The only thing that creates value is trade. It's the source of value.
Wow, that's a massive blind spot you've got there.
The value comes from doing the thing. Fixing the tractor creates value. Growing and harvesting the potatoes creates value.
Trading the potatoes for something you value more, yes, also creates additional value. But notice that potatoes have value to you even if you don't trade them for anything.
If you choke on a grape and a helpful volunteer saves your life, they create value. Nothing was exchanged, but they sure as hell generated wealth right there.
Labour and voluntary trade both create value. I wonder what sort of mindset one must have to forget that labour exists.
Also wrong. You can always destroy value by making a mistake. Trading and then realizing you made a mistake, just like investing labour and then realizing you made a mistake, does not create value. Trading is not special in this regard.
Value can be created either way: through labour or trade.
Regardless, your statement that all wealth is created by trade is false.
Yes, but people don't always make voluntary trades. Like staying in a job they hate, because they believe they will find it difficult/impossible to find a better option.
> Yes, but people don't always make voluntary trades. Like staying in a job they hate, because they believe they will find it difficult/impossible to find a better option.
That's still a value assignment: they value eating and paying rent more highly than job satisfaction.
Big question is whether it replaces and then doesn't create new opportunity to make up for those casualties. I'm not sold on this, but there's this part of me that actually believes LLM's or perhaps AI more broadly will enable vast numbers of people to do things that were formerly impossible for them to do because the cost was too great, or the thought of doing it too complex. Now those same things are not only accessible, but easy to access. I made a comment earlier today in the thread about Google's antitrust "win" where things I couldn't formerly have done without sizable and costly third-party professional help are now possible for near-zero cost and near-zero time. It really can radically empower folks. Not sure that's going to make up for all the job loss, but there is the possibility of real empowerment.
I'm genuinely curious about how you and other people with similar outlook see this playing out, as it would kind of provide hope.
Scenario: You are a medium level engineer, who got laid off from a company betting on AI to replace a significant portion of their junior/medium level developers. You were also employing a middle-aged woman, to help with the kids after school and around the house, until you and your wife come back from work. She now needed to be let go as well, as you can't afford her anymore. The same thing happened to a large portion of your peers and work in the same industry/profession is practically no longer available. This has ripple effects on your local market (restaurants, caffes, clothing stores etc).
How do you see this as empowering and a net positive thing for these people individually, and for the society? What do they do that replaces their previous income and empowers them to get back to the same level at least?
Well, if everyone is unemployed there won't be much of a market for these newly AI enabled companies to sell into. Also, in the extreme, you'd have deflation such that it's worth hiring again. This would be very painful.
More likely automatic stabilizers and additional stimulative spending would have to happen in order to fully utilize all the new productive capacity (or reduce it, as people start to work less). It's politically hard to sustain double digit unemployment, and ultimately the government can always spend enough or cut enough taxes to get everyone employed or get enough people to leave the labor force.
I totally share your concern, but I think there's reason for hope assuming it's not Terminator-style AGI that destroys the world (bigger problems than unemployment in that case). Specific to your scenario, it seems like companies are laying people off today in the name of AI efficiency gains (that in itself is debatable, but let's assume that is why they're doing it--they think they can do the same if not more with less). But if you play out those same efficiency gains companies that are in growth mode ought to be able to use those efficiency gains to accelerate product development. So instead of laying people off, companies will be able to build product that much faster because their employees, and engineers in particular, can move so much more quickly. We're so early, though, and c-suite folks are so myopic that the troops haven't yet had time to show them that revenue growth is the real prize of AI/LLM's (and believe me it's always the some troops that show them the way).
On a larger level, I would just ask your fictitious medium-level engineer what are they able to do today, with an AI/LLM, that they were unable to do before? As a very basic example, and one that is already true with existing LLM's, a mid-level engineer who wanted to build an app might've formerly struggled with building a UI for their app. Now, sans designer, a mid-level engineer can spin up an app UI much more quickly, and without the labor of finding and actually paying a designer. That's not to say there's no value left in design, but if you're starting out it's similar to how bootstrap (dating myself here) was an enabler because you were no longer in need of a designer to build a website (was still a huge time suck and pain in the ass though). You can multiple that by a bunch of roles and tasks today because LLM's make it possible to do things you just formerly wouldn't have been able to do on your own.
Last thing is the much more high level. Every time some new tech is introduced there's a lot of concern about displacement. I think, again, that's valid and perhaps moreso with AI. But it does seem to me like major new tech always seems to create a lot of opportunity. It might not be for the exact same people like your mid-level engineer (although I think it might for him/her), but I stay hopeful that the amount of opportunity created will offset the amount of suffering it will cause. And I don't say that in some kind of "suffering is ok" way, but just like revenue growth is the be all end all for so many companies, tech brings change and some suffering is a part of that. Prior skills become less important, new skills are preferred. Some folks adapt. Others thrive. Some are left behind.
If you're still checking in on this thread, and you actually read my diatribe, do you think I'm totally full of it? Again, I don't know that I would bet it would work out this way. Actually I probably would bet on that. But I'm definitely hopeful it will.
But in the consumer market segment, for most cases, its all about who is cheapest (free preferably) - aside from the few loonies who care about personality.
The true lasting economic benefits within enterprise are yet to play out. The trade off between faster code production vs poorer maintained code is yet to play out.
> But in the consumer market segment, for most cases, its all about who is cheapest (free preferably) - aside from the few loonies who care about personality.
On what basis do you know this? Or more like your personal impression — based on asking how many people? Your friends?
Just informal conversations? Or surveys of some kind? I’m genuinely curious. After studying statistics and research design, I have learned to be very cautious at what I conclude.
I often talk with various people outside of my usual peer and work groups, but I wouldn’t know how to get anything close to an unbiased take given the social constraints. Maybe I would notice large shifts over time.
Observation: LLMs are pretty new in the scheme of things and information diffusion seems pretty different across age groups, geographies, and professions. This makes it pretty hard to even be confident that one knows how to collect good data.
And unfortunately, the amount of money being thrown around means that when the bottom falls out and its revealed that the emperor has no clothes, the implosion is going to impact all of us.
It's going to rock the market like we've never seen before.
Hope it stays long enough to build up serious electricity generation, storage and distribution. Cause that has a lot of productive uses, and has historically been underdeveloped (in favor of fossile fuels). Though there will likely be a squeeze before we get there...
Why is this downvoted when it's spot on.. if reality < expectations so much money is sitting on extremely quickly depreciating assets. It will be bad. Risk is to the downside.
Being critical of AI companies on Hacker News is pretty tough these days. Either the majority of people are all-in and want to bury their heads in the sand to the real dangers and risks (economical, psychological, etc) or there's just lots of astroturfing going on.
All of the top upvoted comments are calling or implying this is a bubble. It seems to me the majority loves to imagine themselves persecuted in their home turf.
I'm not so confident in that yet. If you look at the inference prices Anthropic charges (on the API) it's not a race to the bottom - they are asking for what I feel is a lot of money - yet people keep paying that.
This is a pointless feature that’s easily bypassed if you know what you’re doing. It’s there so someone can check a compliance box to make an auditor that doesn’t know much about tech feel better. That’s it.
Possibly upto a point, if you factor in that the physician has to contend with paying back $400K in loans and $1M+ in lost income from not working during earlier years in life.
Summary: This is concerning because it may mean that people who were previously immune (had COVID) are no longer immune or a new strain is infecting people even though they had immunity to the original strain. Either of which, if true, would be bad.
Data is preliminary but based on previous metrics on exposure and “immunity” we shouldn’t see so many people getting sick. Also possible this is another “super contagious” strain and it is ripping its way across the remaining population that’s not immune. Also possible they just overestimated the number of people that should be immune (obviously this would be the ideal answer).
Everyone is sort of holding their breath that the vaccines will maintain immunity until “herd immunity” can be established. If the virus mutates so existing immunity no longer protects you then we’re sort of back to square one and this will be like fighting the flu where it never “goes away.”
It’s based on a sample and extrapolated out so it’s entirely possible initial immunity was overestimated. Possibility for bias in the sampling of who was tested and such. Hopefully it’s just a statistical fluke but everyone is sort of on edge at this point watching for this starting to happen.
It’s not really a question of if the virus will mutate to reinfect people again (or infect those vaccinated) but more of when and if we can get to herd immunity before that happens.
Umm, so there are current news reports that poorer countries won't be able to get vaccinated until 2024. If the number of mutations is proportional to the number of people infected then even if the entire populations of wealthy countries are vaccinated, it seems like the chance of variants that evade the vaccines arising in outside populations is high. Herd immunity in wealthier countries would not protect them in that case.
That’s the doomsday scenario and thankfully “completely useless” is quite unlikely. However all viruses mutate and so it’s only a matter of time before the current vaccines become gradually less effective. We give people 3-4 new vaccines a year (usually in one “flu shot”) in the never ending battle against the mutating influenza virus. So it’s really important we get as many people vaccinated ASAP. Every new person infected makes millions upon millions of copies of the virus, each one being a new opportunity for mutations to develop. Stopping infections exponentially slows down the rate at which the virus can mutate simply because it’s being “photocopied” fewer and fewer times.
No, looks like it is easy to modify existing mRNA vaccines slightly and give booster shots
>“Every time a new variant comes up we should be able to test whether or not [our vaccine] is effective,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told Bloomberg news. “Once we discover something that is not as effective, we will very, very quickly be able to produce a booster dose that will be a small variation to the current vaccine.”
I remember reading somewhere a claim that the initial development of the (a?) mRNA vaccine was basically over a weekend; the testing and scaling to manufacture took the rest of the time.
True; it was ready in January. Proving it is safe definitely takes times.
> By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial.
A big part of the safety concerns were about the lipid layer outside the mRNA triggering autoimmune reaction, which doesn't need to change, so changing only the mRNA data should be relatively safe.
Tack-on question: Even if a mutation can (re)infect people who have been vaccinated or previously had COVID, can we assume their immune response would at least be improved?
This comes up every time Assange comes up. He’s not being prosecuted for being a journalist. The US has very strong protections for journalism that stand up to just about anywhere—-and honestly look great compared to things that have happened in the UK. Assange is charged with actively working to steal classified information.
There’s a huge difference between A) someone gets classified information through nefarious means and shares that with a journalist, and B) “journalist” actively works to steal said classified documents. This case is about “B” not “A” but yet we keep seeing people trying to make the argument that this is some sort of attack on journalism. That’s a gross misrepresentation of the basic facts in this case.
Very little in this post is true and highlights the sort of false image people paint of the US:
- Most people work multiple jobs to make ends meet: False
- Low income people don’t have health coverage: False
- The US doesn’t have any form of government safety net health coverage for its people: False. Medicaid covers low income population and Medicare covers the older population.
Not saying any of the above is perfect but these false pictures people paint of the US deserve to be called out.
