Recent searches
Search options
Half-formed thought: partially unseated from centralized, highly visible, near-monopoly market dominance of end user computing; made successful transition to less visible but equally pervasive tentacles-everywhere dominance of computational plumbing + services; now making a killing on rent-seeking from biz clients
⇒ Microsoft is the new IBM
https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-has-a-microsoft-problem/
Really good point, and I wish I remembered who made it:
Microsoft’s OpenAI gambit looks like a “head I win, tails I win” play: If OpenAI is renting computing power from MS — and LLMs sure do need gob tons of it — then it’s •already• profitable for MS. This whole AI bubble is pumping money from a sea of revved-up VCs and FOMO-addled CEOs straight into Microsoft’s pockets.
Even if there’s nothing but wreckage when the AI bubble bursts, even if none of the hype pans out, MS still makes bank.
There’s so much hype, it’s easy to miss:
Most AI ventures are money losers right now, and most always will be.
Who’s pocketing cash right now from the AI bubble? Not end users. Not the companies who are buying AI services (except for the sugar rush of premature cost-cutting that will quickly go sour). And not even the AI vendors! No, the cash is ending up in the pockets of the cloud computing vendors who sell to the AI companies: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/stability-ai-reportedly-ran-out-of-cash-to-pay-its-bills-for-rented-cloudy-gpus/ar-BB1kYeBD
@inthehands Ed Zitron made a pretty good case on tech won’t save us that some companies, like Microsoft, appear to be sort of just creating money right now by throwing money at open AI as cloud computing credits, then receiving it and could be reporting it as revenue sort of? Honestly don’t seem legal but I’ll leave that for Lina Khan.
https://overcast.fm/+ZpQDXOsjk
@cam The financial side of stuff like this is utterly bollixing to me; I don’t even begin to understand the accounting involved, much less the legality. But the strategic side makes sense to me: if the money flows downhill to you in the end, all you need to do is get people with deep pockets whipped up.