cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21121074
OpenAI, a non-profit AI company that will lose anywhere from $4 billion to $5 billion this year, will at some point in the next six or so months convert into a for-profit AI company, at which point it will continue to lose money in exactly the same way. Shortly after this news broke, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati resigned, followed by Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and VP of Research, Post Training Barret Zoph, leaving OpenAI with exactly three of its eleven cofounders remaining.
This coincides suspiciously with OpenAI’s increasingly-absurd fundraising efforts, where (as I predicted in late July) OpenAI has raised the largest venture-backed fundraise of all time $6.6 billion— at a valuation of $157 billion.
I am in fact developing a distinct feeling that if it pops hard enough it will be the final crisis. AI is really the last gasp of the USA in terms of trying to outpace the crisis of capitalism, they have nothing else and will have nothing else.
People said this in 2020 during COVID and 2008 with the housing bust.
The US can outpace the collapse because it controls an international currency that commands trade markets. That’s why we can just keep buying more widgets forever, for the next widget milling project to make fake economic activity.
The real thing that will kill the American economy is a collapse in the price of fossil fuels. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.
I have a more rigorous analysis than this but it probably needs to be its own effort post.
Obviously this alone won’t bring things down. But it is the last gasp of capitalism in its attempt to expand accumulation. Without “innovation” (ie. New openings for exploitation) the iron laws of the falling rate of profit begin to really bite
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I think the broader tech market can escape the AI crash if it abandons or significantly scales back on its investments in this garbage. If they continue on the road they’re on, I can see a tech stock crash on par with the dotcom bubble popping in the early 2000s.
If the tech stocks crash like they did back then, it will cause a lot more damage to the whole economy, though. Tech companies are seen as a whole lot less speculative than they were back then, a lot more “safe” investment money is tied up in companies like Amazon and Google.
Unfortunately, I think these companies are pretty incompetent and desperate to get back that exponential growth. I think it’s more likely than not that they’ll try to ride AI off the cliff.