The more charitable take is that Big Tech has a track record of branding the 'future' primarily to manufacture FOMO, only for the reality to fall significantly short of the hype.
The author could have made that argument, if she had wanted to, but the actual piece as written does not make it. There’s very little discussion of AI being overhyped in some concrete way, and quite a lot of discussion of various bad deeds committed by “tech” and “tech billionaires”.
The argument is that Metaverse, as presented by its billionaire promoters as a paradigm shift, even though the public hated that vision, was a flop, therefore AI as presented by its billionaire promoters as a paradigm shift will be a flop, because the public hates that vision.
Sure, but the market is often bamboozled in the short term. Hence crypto stocks and Super Bowl ads about nfts. The “market” was 100% wrong about the long term value of the tech.
My point was that what a bunch of people say about tech is forgotten over time and the actual value of the tech emerges. You want to describe that in market valuation terms, fine.
She says something more structural than that: there's a pattern, sold by the same people, with the same contempt to social consequences and democratic rules: GenAI, multiverse, NFTs, cryptos; what else next?
Incidentally, each "wave" justifies massive investment in the same technology: GPUs, for transformations that do not materialise _at scale_.
That raises the questions: why? Who captures the value? Who bears the cost? Why are we always skipping the audit? What happens when the "GPU bubble" bursts?
Anti-tech critics love to cherry-pick overhyped tech from the past and then pretend like it was the only technology investments occurring. It's always the same story about crypto, NFTs, multiverse, then they draw a line to the new thing.
Rewind the clock further and the contrarian play was to talk about how WebVan and Pets.com failed, proving that internet commerce was a fad that was going away. There were so many identical stories about how dumb investors were to be spending money on e-commerce after Pets.com and WebVan proved that nobody wanted to shop online and that delivery was unworkable.
More recently I remember the endless stories about how ride sharing was going to fail and Uber and Lyft were going to disappear after the VC money ran out. There were blogs just like this one predicting that those dumb investors were going to lose all their money on such a stupid idea.
This type of contrarian reporting always operates on a sliding window of recent failures, trying to convince you that the current thing they're on about is identical to past failures
These articles get traction on HN, but when I read them there isn't a coherent argument inside. It's just a collection of different headlines and stories meant to imply that AI is bad across the board and nobody wants it, but there isn't an argument being formed. It's appealing to those who already have the conclusion in mind, but there is no convincing argument in this post
Uber is a very bad argument. In many parts of the world, the only reason they're profitable is because they're breaking the law. There has been much debate about it here in France and quite a few scandals, including how Macron when he was ministry of economy (before he became president) counseled and favored Uber to break labor law [1].
The government and courts are currently arguing whether Uber is legally the employer of the drivers [2], but that's not very debatable to be honest given the very clear subordination of drivers to Uber (one of the many criteria for a contractor to be legally reclassified as an employee).
They have taken all the power and benefits, and discarded all of the responsibilities and risks associated with employment. That's a strategy that only pays off through political corruption, and not a clear example that their profits are somehow unavoidable and that investing in Uber 10 years ago was wise.
Otherwise, investing in the mafia's drug trades might also be a lucrative opportunity. Which does not make it moral, nor a safe bet.
While I agree with you I feel your comment is moving the goalpost. The question was whether an new "disrupting" tech solution was going to be a flop or not. I think the question of whether the new thing is or should be legally constrained is yet another (interesting!) question.
Correct! My whole point was that whether that's a flip or a flop also depends on the legal environment and whether the law is actually enforced. Which is also applicable to AI and its massive copyright/copyleft violations at scale (whether or not that's legitimate or useful is yet another interesting question).
You could subtract out the French market and Uber would still be profitable.
Rebutting anti-tech arguments is hard because there's always another round of whataboutism to move the goalposts a little further.
My argument is that "tech is perfect and completely without fault". I was rebutting the arguments (more accurately, lack of a real argument) in this anti-tech blog post.
E-commerce succeeded, but not in the form Pets and WebVan proposed, and not in the timeline their investors needed.
The question is not: is it useful, but (as any investor asks): does this bet, at this valuation, deliver what it promises, in time? That's the audit we need.
When the bet distorts global semiconductor supply chains, displaces workers, and rides on mass IP infringement... skepticism looks more like due diligence than contrarianism.
A few early companies failing to find product-market fit before the money runs out doesn't prove anything, other than that early stage startup investing is hard.
Webvan and Pets.com were held up as proof that e-commerce couldn't work at all because nobody wanted it. What really happened is that we now have e-commerce at a scale that WebVan and Pets.com couldn't even dream of.
Pets.com now goes to PetSmart.com which does basically what Pets.com was trying to do and has a successful business out of it.
If your point is "some early investors will lose their money" then I agree wholeheartedly. That's not a novel claim, though. It's also not what the blog post is arguing.
Calling the catastrophic dotcom bust that imploded ~50% of internet companies and caused a ~90% drop in combined market valuation for the remainder and nearly wiped out market leaders like Sun Microsystems and Cisco merely as side effects "A few early companies failing to find product-market fit before the money runs out..." is a very peculiar take.
Right, but PetSmart was an existing retailer that added e-commerce, not a startup burning VC money on an unproven model: the tech worked, the hype-driven bet didn't.
GenAI has its uses. That it will transform everything for everyone, and that this justifies to dump laws and people, that's the part that deserves hard-earned scrutiny.
I don’t think the “GPU bubble” will burst, because linear algebra is widely applicable. It’s no particular mystery that GPUs have found universal applications. I feel sympathetic towards your first paragraph, but there is no conspiracy behind the success of GPUs.
There's a big difference between things like Metaverse, social media and AI. The former are mainly entertainment/communication products that rely on network effects, so if people don't like them they're bust. AI is a capital good so it doesn't need to be popular as long as it does profitable work
"...[the prediction that AI will continue to grow] will be proven wrong because everybody hates it."
I have no love for Zuckerberg or Lucky or Musk or any of those gadooshbags, but I don't hate generative AI. It's a useful tool and I've been using it consistently every day for well over a year. I'm part of "everybody", so that's at least one counterexample.
And although it's a bit ripped out of the context, which is as follows:
> It will be proven wrong because everybody hates it. A decade ago, people saw that photo of Zuckerberg, waltzing past the masked men at MWC and shuddered. "That's dystopian," almost everyone muttered. "That's dystopian," many of us are still saying, but now even more loudly, more fervently. A recent survey by NBC News found Americans rank the favorability of "AI" below every major politician in the country, below ICE.
I think that's either unluckily mistaken wording or simply a bad-faith overstatement. "Everybody hates tech" - if this is about "big tech giants", then although it's not true (because it's not really everybody who hates them, especially if you will ask usual people), but it's closer to the truth. But the original stance - "Everybody hates tech" - in my humble opinion, even regarding the context, reads rather like "Everybody hates technology as a whole" which is simply false.
And, to be honest, in me personally the whole article is provoking some kind of... uncanny feeling. I can't tell if it was generated by AI or something like that, but it just feels unnatural and... strange. Sorry, I don't even know how to express this clearly...
Too many disparate thoughts in this writing but i admire the sentiment. VR was fraught with problems from the get go and even if we imagine a perfect technology, its a solution looking for a problem at best. I don’t know if that is the same necessarily for AI, but I can see futures where it ends up in doom and gloom.
This is a lot of words mixed with ragebait to try to argue that AI is a fad that will go away.
EDIT: This substack is non-stop grievances about AI posted multiple times per week. There's an audience of people who want to be as angry as possible about AI and this Substack is here to sell you subscriptions to that with gems like this designed to make you bristle with anger at the enemy
> They are trained on racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, nationalism, anti-Semitism
> The technology industry sells a story of inevitability. It is, in no small part, a profoundly anti-democratic story, one that dismisses if not denies any attempt at agency, let alone resistance. "There's nothing you can do," investors and CEOs and pundits parrot. "Resistance is futile," they smirk (yet another example of their incredible inability to understand the science fiction they like to reference).
i dont think its crazy to expect a big contraction in AI hype and funding. I dont understand how they will all be profitable when you can run a model on your own computer for free that will do 98% of what you need.
I agree with you on most parts, but first, not everyone can actually run a model on your own computer that will do 98% of what you need - for most people it's rather around 40% of what you need, depending on the exact model and method of usage; and second, there's still these 2% remaining. And don't forget that not everyone (I mean, not every casual user) can do local inference just due to the lack of technical skills.
And by the way, who will produce this "model that you can run on your own computer"? Although, to be honest, right now in most cases that's not Meta or OpenAI anyway, even though they have some (outdated) open-weight models.
> I dont understand how they will all be profitable when you can run a model on your own computer for free that will do 98% of what you need.
For the same reason how movie companies are reaping record profits from streaming services - convenience and fearmongering.
"You wouldn't download an AI, would you?!" or "Think of children and elderly!"
or satanism, or billions of other tricks they already employ to keep you docile.
Also, majority of people do not have hardware to run models that compete with LLM vendors, at this point I'm pretty sure majority of people don't even own a PC anymore.
I haven't seen this one in the wild (while seeing others) LOL. How does this even work? I mean, like... "if you download the film/LLM you will summon a demon"? I honestly can't understand : )
I don't see the author implying that AI is a fad that will go away. I see her stating that "AI", as envisioned and sold by many tech oligarchs to their audiences, is not the inevitable future.
I am less frustrated with Big Tech than I am with haphazard
writing about it.
In a week there will be another screed like this, with another flurry of links and quotes for readers to work through (or not). And who gets wiser from it?
Yes… kind of. I am old and always have been, so naturally I don’t like things I believe children falsely claim they cannot live without. Social media comes to mind.
> an obvious difference between “using Ghost to share a hypertext article”
This is a free tier post on a paid subscription Substack that she charges $6/month for. She's posting this content to drum up an audience who will pay monthly for more of it.
You don't see the irony of the anti-tech blogger trying to cash in on tech hype using the most hyped paid blogging platform? She's not "using Ghost to share a hypertext article"
> The future that the vast majority of people want – for themselves, for their children – is not one in which we can only afford to buy digital replicas of products and digital real estate
Sure. Everybody wants real things. Nobody wants to work in factory assembly lines or construction sites. But it must be AI's fault.
This article is so out of touch. The AI boom is great because it makes the line go up. I mean imagine these frivolities like affordable shelter and forty hour work weeks being some kind of birthright. You don't want to work anymore and we say fine and then we give you a digital pacifier but you're still whining, like these stocks are going to prop themselves.
The argument seems to be that Metaverse was a flop and FB did bad stuff, therefore AI will be a flop.
That's certainly ... words.
The more charitable take is that Big Tech has a track record of branding the 'future' primarily to manufacture FOMO, only for the reality to fall significantly short of the hype.
The author could have made that argument, if she had wanted to, but the actual piece as written does not make it. There’s very little discussion of AI being overhyped in some concrete way, and quite a lot of discussion of various bad deeds committed by “tech” and “tech billionaires”.
Some articles are concern trolling. Otherwise would have touched on circular investments.
The argument is that Metaverse, as presented by its billionaire promoters as a paradigm shift, even though the public hated that vision, was a flop, therefore AI as presented by its billionaire promoters as a paradigm shift will be a flop, because the public hates that vision.
That’s fine but it’s about perception, argument and sentiment. It’s not about the actual technology, which has the final say.
Market has the final say, not tech. If no one uses/buys the tech, as investor or customer... it won't feed anyone.
Sure, but the market is often bamboozled in the short term. Hence crypto stocks and Super Bowl ads about nfts. The “market” was 100% wrong about the long term value of the tech.
My point was that what a bunch of people say about tech is forgotten over time and the actual value of the tech emerges. You want to describe that in market valuation terms, fine.
She says something more structural than that: there's a pattern, sold by the same people, with the same contempt to social consequences and democratic rules: GenAI, multiverse, NFTs, cryptos; what else next?
Incidentally, each "wave" justifies massive investment in the same technology: GPUs, for transformations that do not materialise _at scale_.
That raises the questions: why? Who captures the value? Who bears the cost? Why are we always skipping the audit? What happens when the "GPU bubble" bursts?
Anti-tech critics love to cherry-pick overhyped tech from the past and then pretend like it was the only technology investments occurring. It's always the same story about crypto, NFTs, multiverse, then they draw a line to the new thing.
Rewind the clock further and the contrarian play was to talk about how WebVan and Pets.com failed, proving that internet commerce was a fad that was going away. There were so many identical stories about how dumb investors were to be spending money on e-commerce after Pets.com and WebVan proved that nobody wanted to shop online and that delivery was unworkable.
More recently I remember the endless stories about how ride sharing was going to fail and Uber and Lyft were going to disappear after the VC money ran out. There were blogs just like this one predicting that those dumb investors were going to lose all their money on such a stupid idea.
This type of contrarian reporting always operates on a sliding window of recent failures, trying to convince you that the current thing they're on about is identical to past failures
These articles get traction on HN, but when I read them there isn't a coherent argument inside. It's just a collection of different headlines and stories meant to imply that AI is bad across the board and nobody wants it, but there isn't an argument being formed. It's appealing to those who already have the conclusion in mind, but there is no convincing argument in this post
Uber is a very bad argument. In many parts of the world, the only reason they're profitable is because they're breaking the law. There has been much debate about it here in France and quite a few scandals, including how Macron when he was ministry of economy (before he became president) counseled and favored Uber to break labor law [1].
The government and courts are currently arguing whether Uber is legally the employer of the drivers [2], but that's not very debatable to be honest given the very clear subordination of drivers to Uber (one of the many criteria for a contractor to be legally reclassified as an employee).
They have taken all the power and benefits, and discarded all of the responsibilities and risks associated with employment. That's a strategy that only pays off through political corruption, and not a clear example that their profits are somehow unavoidable and that investing in Uber 10 years ago was wise.
Otherwise, investing in the mafia's drug trades might also be a lucrative opportunity. Which does not make it moral, nor a safe bet.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62057321
[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/02/02/france-d...
While I agree with you I feel your comment is moving the goalpost. The question was whether an new "disrupting" tech solution was going to be a flop or not. I think the question of whether the new thing is or should be legally constrained is yet another (interesting!) question.
Correct! My whole point was that whether that's a flip or a flop also depends on the legal environment and whether the law is actually enforced. Which is also applicable to AI and its massive copyright/copyleft violations at scale (whether or not that's legitimate or useful is yet another interesting question).
You could subtract out the French market and Uber would still be profitable.
Rebutting anti-tech arguments is hard because there's always another round of whataboutism to move the goalposts a little further.
My argument is that "tech is perfect and completely without fault". I was rebutting the arguments (more accurately, lack of a real argument) in this anti-tech blog post.
That's kind of proving my point here.
E-commerce succeeded, but not in the form Pets and WebVan proposed, and not in the timeline their investors needed.
The question is not: is it useful, but (as any investor asks): does this bet, at this valuation, deliver what it promises, in time? That's the audit we need.
When the bet distorts global semiconductor supply chains, displaces workers, and rides on mass IP infringement... skepticism looks more like due diligence than contrarianism.
A few early companies failing to find product-market fit before the money runs out doesn't prove anything, other than that early stage startup investing is hard.
Webvan and Pets.com were held up as proof that e-commerce couldn't work at all because nobody wanted it. What really happened is that we now have e-commerce at a scale that WebVan and Pets.com couldn't even dream of.
Pets.com now goes to PetSmart.com which does basically what Pets.com was trying to do and has a successful business out of it.
If your point is "some early investors will lose their money" then I agree wholeheartedly. That's not a novel claim, though. It's also not what the blog post is arguing.
Calling the catastrophic dotcom bust that imploded ~50% of internet companies and caused a ~90% drop in combined market valuation for the remainder and nearly wiped out market leaders like Sun Microsystems and Cisco merely as side effects "A few early companies failing to find product-market fit before the money runs out..." is a very peculiar take.
Right, but PetSmart was an existing retailer that added e-commerce, not a startup burning VC money on an unproven model: the tech worked, the hype-driven bet didn't.
GenAI has its uses. That it will transform everything for everyone, and that this justifies to dump laws and people, that's the part that deserves hard-earned scrutiny.
I don’t think the “GPU bubble” will burst, because linear algebra is widely applicable. It’s no particular mystery that GPUs have found universal applications. I feel sympathetic towards your first paragraph, but there is no conspiracy behind the success of GPUs.
I don't mean burst like that (neither a conspiracy), rather a striking coincidence: there are huge applications for GPUs, true.
But the inflation of expectations and investments in them because of GenAI, when this inflation bursts may impact everything and everyone.
There's a big difference between things like Metaverse, social media and AI. The former are mainly entertainment/communication products that rely on network effects, so if people don't like them they're bust. AI is a capital good so it doesn't need to be popular as long as it does profitable work
"...[the prediction that AI will continue to grow] will be proven wrong because everybody hates it."
I have no love for Zuckerberg or Lucky or Musk or any of those gadooshbags, but I don't hate generative AI. It's a useful tool and I've been using it consistently every day for well over a year. I'm part of "everybody", so that's at least one counterexample.
This article also tells that:
> Everybody hates tech.
And although it's a bit ripped out of the context, which is as follows:
> It will be proven wrong because everybody hates it. A decade ago, people saw that photo of Zuckerberg, waltzing past the masked men at MWC and shuddered. "That's dystopian," almost everyone muttered. "That's dystopian," many of us are still saying, but now even more loudly, more fervently. A recent survey by NBC News found Americans rank the favorability of "AI" below every major politician in the country, below ICE.
> Everybody hates tech. Everybody hates tech billionaires. Nobody wants their bullshit.
I think that's either unluckily mistaken wording or simply a bad-faith overstatement. "Everybody hates tech" - if this is about "big tech giants", then although it's not true (because it's not really everybody who hates them, especially if you will ask usual people), but it's closer to the truth. But the original stance - "Everybody hates tech" - in my humble opinion, even regarding the context, reads rather like "Everybody hates technology as a whole" which is simply false.
And, to be honest, in me personally the whole article is provoking some kind of... uncanny feeling. I can't tell if it was generated by AI or something like that, but it just feels unnatural and... strange. Sorry, I don't even know how to express this clearly...
Too many disparate thoughts in this writing but i admire the sentiment. VR was fraught with problems from the get go and even if we imagine a perfect technology, its a solution looking for a problem at best. I don’t know if that is the same necessarily for AI, but I can see futures where it ends up in doom and gloom.
This is a lot of words mixed with ragebait to try to argue that AI is a fad that will go away.
EDIT: This substack is non-stop grievances about AI posted multiple times per week. There's an audience of people who want to be as angry as possible about AI and this Substack is here to sell you subscriptions to that with gems like this designed to make you bristle with anger at the enemy
> They are trained on racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, nationalism, anti-Semitism
> The technology industry sells a story of inevitability. It is, in no small part, a profoundly anti-democratic story, one that dismisses if not denies any attempt at agency, let alone resistance. "There's nothing you can do," investors and CEOs and pundits parrot. "Resistance is futile," they smirk (yet another example of their incredible inability to understand the science fiction they like to reference).
i dont think its crazy to expect a big contraction in AI hype and funding. I dont understand how they will all be profitable when you can run a model on your own computer for free that will do 98% of what you need.
I agree with you on most parts, but first, not everyone can actually run a model on your own computer that will do 98% of what you need - for most people it's rather around 40% of what you need, depending on the exact model and method of usage; and second, there's still these 2% remaining. And don't forget that not everyone (I mean, not every casual user) can do local inference just due to the lack of technical skills.
And by the way, who will produce this "model that you can run on your own computer"? Although, to be honest, right now in most cases that's not Meta or OpenAI anyway, even though they have some (outdated) open-weight models.
> I dont understand how they will all be profitable when you can run a model on your own computer for free that will do 98% of what you need.
For the same reason how movie companies are reaping record profits from streaming services - convenience and fearmongering.
"You wouldn't download an AI, would you?!" or "Think of children and elderly!" or satanism, or billions of other tricks they already employ to keep you docile.
Also, majority of people do not have hardware to run models that compete with LLM vendors, at this point I'm pretty sure majority of people don't even own a PC anymore.
> satanism
I haven't seen this one in the wild (while seeing others) LOL. How does this even work? I mean, like... "if you download the film/LLM you will summon a demon"? I honestly can't understand : )
Church.
I don't see the author implying that AI is a fad that will go away. I see her stating that "AI", as envisioned and sold by many tech oligarchs to their audiences, is not the inevitable future.
I am less frustrated with Big Tech than I am with haphazard writing about it.
In a week there will be another screed like this, with another flurry of links and quotes for readers to work through (or not). And who gets wiser from it?
Automation is bad. Bring back hard manual labour.
Yes, we need more children working on factories like in good ol' 1800s
/s
Everybody hates tech. Everybody hates tech billionaires. Nobody wants their bullshit.
Yes… kind of. I am old and always have been, so naturally I don’t like things I believe children falsely claim they cannot live without. Social media comes to mind.
I wonder if she appreciates the irony of posting that on a website lol
i can’t believe i’m seeing an “yet you participate in society. curious!” reply in the wild
we both know there is an obvious difference between “using Ghost to share a hypertext article” tech and “the metaverse and palantir” Tech
> an obvious difference between “using Ghost to share a hypertext article”
This is a free tier post on a paid subscription Substack that she charges $6/month for. She's posting this content to drum up an audience who will pay monthly for more of it.
You don't see the irony of the anti-tech blogger trying to cash in on tech hype using the most hyped paid blogging platform? She's not "using Ghost to share a hypertext article"
Big tech Arpanet and CERN are full of it!
Big Tech is not the same thing as all technology.
Seriously? Having a blog is now same as dissolving your brain in anxiety driven doom scrolling?
> The future that the vast majority of people want – for themselves, for their children – is not one in which we can only afford to buy digital replicas of products and digital real estate
Sure. Everybody wants real things. Nobody wants to work in factory assembly lines or construction sites. But it must be AI's fault.
That fragment of the article is not blaming AI for that. It is criticising Marc Andreesen's literal response in this 2021 interview: https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-dubrovnik-interviews-marc...
This article is so out of touch. The AI boom is great because it makes the line go up. I mean imagine these frivolities like affordable shelter and forty hour work weeks being some kind of birthright. You don't want to work anymore and we say fine and then we give you a digital pacifier but you're still whining, like these stocks are going to prop themselves.