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Submission + - The AI Bubble That Isn't There (forbes.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Michael Burry recently said he believes the AI market is in a bubble. Why should anyone listen to him? He's the guy who famously predicted the subprime mortgage crisis and made $100 million for himself, and $725 million for his hedge fund investors, by shorting the mortgage bond market. Will he be right in his most recent prediction? Only time will tell, but according to Jason Alexander at Forbes, Burry, and many others, are looking at AI the wrong way. For him, there is no AI bubble. Instead, AI is following the pattern of the electrical grid, the phone system and yes, the internet, all of which looked irrational at the time. His belief is people are applying outdated models to the AI buildout which makes it seem an irrational bubble. His words:

The irony is that the “AI bubble” narrative is itself a bubble, inflated by people applying outdated analogies to a phenomenon that does not fit them. Critics point to OpenAI’s operating losses, its heavy compute requirements and the fact that its expenses dwarf its revenues.

Under classical software economics, these would indeed be warning signs. But AI is not following the cost structures of apps or social platforms. It is following the cost structures of infrastructure.

The early electrical grid looked irrational. The first telephone networks looked irrational. Railroads looked irrational. In every major infrastructural transition, society endured long periods of heavy spending, imbalance and apparent excess. These were not signs of bubbles. They were signs that the substrate of daily life was being rebuilt.

OpenAI’s spending is no more indicative of a bubble than Edison’s power stations or Bell’s early switchboards. The economics only appear flawed if one assumes the system they are building already exists.

What we are witnessing is not a speculative mania but a structural transformation driven by thermodynamics, power density and a global shift toward energy-based intelligence.

The bubble narrative persists because many observers are diagnosing this moment with the wrong conceptual tools. They are treating an energy-driven transformation as if it were a software upgrade.

Comment Re:way more than some irrationality (Score 1) 56

I think we are going to see a 'correction' we go down 10% or or less from recent highs and trade sideways for a while.

Most of the big guys in AI are already down more than 10% in the past week. Today isn't looking any better. Once Nvidia reports tomorrow after the bell will we see stabilization, assuming they have good news to report.

Comment Re:Canada is Free? (Score 2, Insightful) 12

by smooth wombat (#65800731) Attached to: Global Web Freedoms Tumble
The most liberal, most feminist and atheistic people are *absolutely enamored* with this religion that seemingly is against all of what these individuals espouse.

Nice trolling. Why would an atheist be "enamored" with this religion? Or any religion? They're atheists.

As for the rest, considering Catholicism and Christianity are also religions which are seemingly against all of what "those people" espouse, is it any wonder they "hate" these religions as well.

Comment So it's like humans? (Score 1, Troll) 74

How many times have people been told to use the Oxford comma and still get it wrong?

Even worse, the use of lists without the Oxford comma is showing up more and more in publications who should know better, creating wording or joins the author never intended.

If this software is just now getting punctuation correct after several years of trying, it's doing just as well as humans.

Submission + - Five people plead quilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US companies (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job. The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company, money which goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers.

The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.

These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.

Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.

The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.

Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.

Comment Re:hard to believe (Score 1) 105

by smooth wombat (#65796036) Attached to: Only Half the Homes in America Have Cable TV Anymore

They have an all-in-one package from Verizon. Phone, internet, and tv. It is well over $100/month. Cutting out tv would get them just below that amount.

When I gave up cable well over a decade ago price was the reason. I couldn't justify the yearly cost increases when I was only watching ten or so channels on a regular basis.

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