“You can spend your scrip at the company store.”
You burn 16 tokens and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
You burn 16 tokens and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in tech debt.
Tell Berners Lee that I can’t go
For the company.
OpenAI exec highlights the rising importance of AI compute in tech job compensation.
In other news, Roblox executive thinks that having companies pay employees partly in Robux would be a great idea.
Yeah, I make 100,000 robux per year, get in bitchesRobux and pedophile-bucks.
It’s a really dumb way to frame what the OpenAI people actually said on this - they are saying that the people applying to them want to know how many tokens they can use as a tool to accomplish the job they are applying for. There’s a fundamental difference to compensation here to compensation, where tokens as compensation would be how many tokens the people applying for the job would be able to utilize for their own purposes, whatever they may be.
To illustrate - I would probably be reluctant to work for a company which would not be willing to spend the amount of money that would get me a more or less top of the line computer with which to perform my job. Not because I consider my company-provided development machine as a part of my compensation - it is merely a tool I use for my job.
The people applying for these jobs are the kinds of people who think that burning an exorbitant amount of tokens will make them quite significantly more productive, so the metaphor of having the best tools available to accomplish the task at hand extends here, in accordance with their belief system.
There’s then the quote from the VC ghouls, but I don’t think anyone could accuse them of being competent to any significant degree, so their quotes are most appropriately used as toilet paper.
“Sorry, my mortgage servicer doesn’t accept AI slop as payment, so I’ll just take the money”
Sorry, Trump just ruled mortgages are illegal.
God this timeline is so fucking dumb
It’s malicious, not dumb. The dumb is a side effect.
I can’t wait till these companies start falling over so I can stop hearing about their ridiculous shit
It starts to sound like the Romans giving out VIP seats for the Colosseum while you see the smoke and the first flames on the horizon.
We’ve had smoke on the horizon for a long time now but the fire never comes. We’ve all learned that smoke and screams is just normal.
I can’t wait till these companies start falling over so I can stop hearing about their ridiculous shit
If you have a 401k, selling “Large-Cap” indexes or “Full market” indexes can help. (and buying something else, don’t leave it uninvested, obviously).
What’s the expression? Markets can stay irrational longer than you can remain sane… or something like that.
or longer than you can remain solvent…
Yeah man, we’re going to have AI everything, we’ll all exist in a metaverse, and everything will be run from tablet computers that we can access from our car as it drives us to and from work, where we will work way fewer hours. Employees will still have to physically show up to work I’m afraid.
Construction companies should pay bricklayers in bricks and mortar
Uber should pay drivers in gas
Restaurants should pay chefs in raw ingredients
This is a radical idea, but maybe employers should be responsible for providing the supplies and tools their employees need to do their jobs? And the employees can just get money in return for their labor?
ceos get paid in empty promises and bad decisions?
Are arse reamings something they buy and sell, or a form of currency for ceo’s? What about female CEOs? (not that its a huge problem-- maybe those few old-guard female ceos just pay you in money).
“People like you aren’t in for the money!” – always and only said by people who are in for the money
employees can just get money
There’s your problem, right there, money is dangerous, can’t let the rabble have money - they might get too much and then they’d have power, power to disrupt the people who have money…
tbh, i always wondered by contruction industry types werent also paid in housing. like build X highrises you get a unit in one of said highrises
AI companies who can’t find anyone to buy their product, swear their employees would rather have their product in exchange for labor rather than money…
Which could easily be used to buy the product no one outside the company is buying.
This is just a way to juice metrics and claim this “compensation” as sales on the books.
And I’m almost positive the “per user growth” they’re talking about is just how brain rot addicts will use chatbots for everything once their brain atrophies from not using it. But just by mentioning that they had to admit that overall use wasn’t a metric they wanted to talk about.
It’s like how a small percentage of drinkers (the alcoholics) buy the vast amount of alcohol. Less people drinking is bad for the company, and a few alcoholics can’t sustain the company without being replaced by new addicts.
Edit:
Also, isn’t this literally a plot point from Silicon Valley?
Like, their desperation move to get funding at some point was handing out compute tokens, but the only people who wanted to buy it was their competitors because non of the companies had customers?
Sort of. It was more of a crypto token and the competitor was buying them all up so they could control over 50% and effectively break Pied Piper’s system.
It’s been a minute, but I thought the tokens represented compute time
But then they realized people valued the idea of compute time more than the compute time.
So it became similar to crypto, where it was just used as a currency.
The part about gaining control I thought was something else, where Pied Piper didn’t have 50% of accounts on an app, just a majority. And due to the decentralized nature of their software, whoever had the majority controlled the code. So the Chinese and Gavin set up a zombie network of bot phones to gain 50% in a hostile takeover once the boys were switched from independent accounts to an organization.
But like I said, it’s been a minute and sometimes I’m wrong.
But I think they were two separate iterations of what the company was at the time
Maybe instead of food we can be paid in ozempic (to reduce appetite) and a very very tiny amount of food. all humanity would become very skinny, and then theres less health care costs due to obesity.
I should really be in charge here.
So that is why people think Grey aliens are just future humans! They took too much Ozempic and now they need to harvest genes from us to fix their own DNA.
Imagine having tech employees beg their employers for a work computer. That’s basically what this article is suggesting.
I see a big silver lining on this cloud though: unlike a work computer, apparently AI subscriptions are not self-evidently worth having:
“It is starting to happen,” Tunguz told me, as employee use of AI increasingly contributes to total cash burn. “It is a consideration for the Office of the CFO.”
unlike a work computer, apparently AI subscriptions are not self-evidently worth having
Back in the 1980s it was highly debatable if there was value in desktop PCs beyond playing Solitare.
1981 was the year of the IBM PC, which was produced for 6 years and became a staple in the business world. Third-party software became widely available within a year. They were famous for the quality of the documentation.
Basically the opposite is true for AI’s flagship LLMs, for every one of rise things. The creators are unable to make money, investors are getting nervous, their functionality is poorly explained to businesses, the list goes on.
was produced for 6 years and became a staple in the business world.
Because it was so easily reproduced, well documented, and open to all vendors to build accessories for or clones of.
Third-party software became widely available within a year.
And, yet, for the first 10+ years of PCs and clones on the market, many were sitting idle on workers’ desks because the workers didn’t know how to do anything productive with them, beyond playing solitare.
Basically the opposite is true for AI’s flagship LLMs, for every one of rise things
Starting with the fact that AI’s LLMs are mostly being produced / consumed as cloud services rather than a chunk of capital equipment taking up a big part of people’s desks.
The creators are unable to make money
IBM marketed thier PCs very effectively and launched with a Billion dollar boom, but then lost market share and ultimately lost their ability to sell PCs and/or accessories profitably.
However, IBM’s entry to the market with a billion dollar bang later went on to inspire the .com bubble, which started with absurdity of valuations and eventually corrected into the more realistic world dominating market that it is today.
Will AI / LLMs reproduce this? The market (bubble) thinks they will - I’m not as optimistic as the market, but I do believe they are fullfilling the promise of a significant advancement in “machine intelligence” that has been “5 years away” since 1980.
the first 10+ years of PCs and clones on the market, many were sitting idle on workers’ desks…
No. Literally from Wikipedia: “Third-party software support grew extremely quickly, and within a year the PC platform was supplied with a vast array of titles for any conceivable purpose.”
Not a million chatbots with flaky guardrails and dubious value, getting pushed on random people. The value of a PC program was explicit and understandable.
IBM marketed thier PCs very effectively and launched with a Billion dollar boom, but then lost market share and ultimately lost their ability to sell PCs…
… Because the PC Compatible emerged? Yeah I know. That’s evidence of success.
Moving goalposts to a different metaphor (the dot-com bubble) makes me think you realized your first attempt at a metaphor sucked
No. Literally from Wikipedia: “Third-party software support grew extremely quickly, and within a year the PC platform was supplied with a vast array of titles for any conceivable purpose.”
Who wrote your Wikipedia article, and what’s their source on the uptake of this vast array of titles by actual human beings with PCs supplied to them?
In 1985 I visited a rather highly ranked Nurse in a hospital saddled with one of those new miracle boat-anchors and despite the vast array of titles for any conceivable purpose, her management had supplied her with nada, zip, zilch, the bare OS with no specialty software and no peripherals like a printer. I showed her how to use the - very user UNfriendly - edlin program to be able to type text in and save it, and retrieve it later. That was a huge breakthrough for her since the thing had literally been a chunk of wasted space on her desk capable of absolutely no demonstrable utility for months, despite her asking for help from her management in using it.
Her story was not unique - that Billion $+ surge of successful sales was not driven by people clamoring for things they could use, it was driven by management wanting to get a jump on “the next big thing” - pushing their employees in the deep end with no clue how to swim and no instruction. Uptake took a lot of time, more in some areas than others, but the early 80s in particular had a lot of unused hardware sitting around doing nothing of value.
The value of a PC program was explicit and understandable.
To a small minority of the population - not just the population in general - the specific population with PC access also.
Moving goalposts to a different metaphor
And imagining a past that didn’t happen is all too easy if you only read company approved histories.
The Wikipedia article is yours to peruse and fix if you think it’s wrong. It has examples. I just quoted something that was particularly funny given your insistence that AI is literally the PC and clones.
The Wikipedia article is yours to peruse and fix if you think it’s wrong.
Not my game, I have better things to do with my time and life than fight with a bunch of people editing articles that clearly conflict with the history I lived, for their own reasons.
40 years from now, AI, ML, LLMs and whatever comes after, are going to have significant roles in society - probably very different than they’re being hyped for right now.
Leaping at new technology, pouring tons of money into it, and getting little in return at first is nothing new for businesses.
Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: Slavery
FIFY
It’s slavery but with AI. (Silicon Valley execs foaming at the mouth from excitement)
Corporate owned media promoting a story about making you rely on tokens to outwork your coworkers so you don’t lose your job is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read.
Hey you know what I could use to buy compute or literally anything else
These dudes seriously seem to have zero clue about being a human being.
The concept of acting like a human being is for the peasants to worry about.
So let me get this straight. Companies were like “instead of paying one senior dev 300k and 5 junior devs 150k, we can get rid of all the junior devs and give the senior dev AI to do all of the legwork thus saving us 750k.”
And then they found out that AI costs money. So instead of ponying up the 100k in tokens for the senior dev to to their job, they are saying “Hey senior dev, we are taking away your bonus and replacing it with tokens! You can take it or be out of a job, because we refuse to keep anybody on board who doesn’t use AI to replace 5 junior devs”
So these cheap fucks saved 750k, and are upset with the fact that they might only save 650k?
While also destroying the planet to generate shitty code.
I fucking hate this time line.
They are going full panic mode now. The crash has already begun.
Trump bombed the bubble.
