Old people are very confused about tech. They are singed by the dotcom and Cisco.
To them a dial up phone is sames as an iPhone. A taxi is same as Uber. A book store is same as Amazon. A DVD rental store is same as Netflix. A phone book is same as Google.
Same argument, different day.
Iāve been in tech for 36 years now. Nearly all of that in processor development and sometimes GPUs. System level logic for PCs at Texas Instruments, PowerPC at Motorola, x86 at AMD, mobile GPU at Apple, server-level SPARC at Oracle, Arm at (well,) Arm. Now, Nvidia.
Iām far less confused about tech than you.
You are clearly confused if you think AI is hype.
None of the above you said are irrelevant. What someoneās definition of wildly successful could be very different from yours. I just posted today how VCās view vs an average internet board investor views thingsā¦
For ex: IoT is a revolutionary technology, tat is widely adopted, with over 18 billion connected devices, and if you could not comprehend or accept it that is your own view.
The simple fact is, in 2026 there is going to be $500 B capex on AI from just handful of companies alone. Every country/ major companies are racing to develop/ invest in AI tech, preparing them for the changes. Large number of folks employment is going to be severely affected.
If you want to believe because you have few random, inconsequential, irrelevant example of your perceived past technology failures is so important that therefore you predict AI is not going to matterā¦ fine that is just one personās view.
No one is saying āit wonāt matter.ā What we are saying, and what you refuse to comprehend, is that the level of investment canāt possibly justify āhow much it mattersā - and thatās a different thing.
Suppose someone had invested tens of billions into putting 3D printers in place everywhere. Yes, a few people would have found it convenient, a reasonable number would have used it, but not nearly enough to make and economic case for it. Thatās the distinction.
Thatās why I gave the pet dot com example, how you view the investments vs VC vs someone who allocates capital.
You may think those investments are not required or cannot earn returns. But there are others who think they have to make those investments. All you can do is step aside, if you think there is not a strong business case for the investments.
I remember when people were telling me that there is no āeconomic caseā for EV just 5 years ago. They said, Tesla was destined for bankruptcy.
Wasnāt Amazon too expensive for a book store ? āNo economic caseā they said.
How about $10 Chinese smart phones ? They were going to kill Apple.
Tech has plenty of failures from fire phones to Google glasses to metaverse. It doesnāt matter.
I think weāre talking about different things. A VC investment can be wildly successful regardless if the product is revolutionary or not. Getting in an early round of investment in Roblox and cashing out in their IPO is a massive homerun if youāre a VC, but it doesnāt make for a revolutionary technology.
Except itās generally not revolutionary technology. Manufacturers added the ability to connect massive numbers of devices, so that almost any new appliance you buy today is capable of connecting to the internet. But consumers generally donāt connect them. The value proposition to consumers is low, compared to the āset upā tax of connecting things to their home network.
LG, Whirlpool Target Customers Disconnected From āSmartā Appliances - WSJ
Sure, thatās the plan. The āAI Riskā that titles this thread is that it doesnāt happen. There was āgoing to beā a ton of capex in the Metaverse from a handful of companies aloneā¦.until there wasnāt, and Apple and Facebook changed course. OpenAI is cutting a lot of circular deals with the āhandful of companiesā for chips and compute, on the assumption that theyāll be able to raise the eleven-figure funding levels to pay for all of that capex. The āRiskā is that they wonāt be able to do it.
Can they do it? Maybe! Iām not saying that they absolutely wonāt! Sam Altman is really good at doing deals. He has been able to persuade a ton of people that OpenAI is going to be able to make this happen.
The obstacle is that there isnāt enough VC funding in the world to hit $500 billion, even if you get most of it. To get to that level, theyāll need to access a whole different tier of financing and funding, which tier of funding typically wants to know how the AI Thing thatās going to cost a trillion dollars to build will actually earn enough money to pay for itselfā¦
This clearly shows you have a serious reading comprehension. I am not talking about VC profits, rather how they view investments. Very different.
**Of course it is not revolutionary, just because 18 billion devices are connected, but if you say it is not revolutionary, it has to be, all those manufacturers are idiots, companies redesigning their supply chain just love to burn money, **. Nobody is using it!!! You have no idea about the things you talk.
I donāt know why I am even in this conversationā¦
God punish me if I come back to this discussion againā¦
Well, thatās the best news yet!
JimA
Because despite your stridency, I think you realize the point that Iām trying to make.
There are 18 billion connected devices in the world. Most of those are smartphones, wearables (like smartwatches), and smart TVās. Devices that have always been connected to an external source of data, and require them in order to function.
The āInternet of Thingsā - as a descriptor - was a projection that in the SmartHome future that nearly everything device would be connected to the internet. Not that your cellphone and smartwatch and computer and printer would be connected to your network - that all the other stuff would be. The fridge and the dishwasher and your washing machine and toaster oven and coffee maker and thermostat and everything else. Itās why Google paid so much for Nest - to get a foothold into that Internet of Things, not because they were excited about the fact that in 2014 people would be hooking up their printers to their home networksā¦.which they already were.
That Internet of Things never launched. The SmartHome revolution never happened. Lots of consumer products were made that had internet connectivity, but consumers didnāt really connect them. In my house, for example, Iāve got easily a dozen devices that I could connect to the internet that I simply havenāt bothered to: from my fridge and dishwasher to my meat thermometer, which for some ungodly reason allows me to download an app to talk to it.
EDIT - hereās the data on the above, from the source that I think youāre getting the 18 billion connected devices from, showing that the largest categories that are included in that 18 billion number are phones and wearables and Smart TVās, which is not what people think of IMHO when they are considering the colloquial meaning of the āInternet of Things.ā
Internet of Things Statistics 2025: Devices, Security, and Adoption ā¢ SQ Magazine
And punish me as well.
Some say even reading this thread is a form of Godās punishment.
@Kingran - I donāt get it. What does the Fed balance sheet have to do with margin debt?
Letās get back on track. AI is risky. Andā¦itās making people more stupider!
Thereās the direct financial risk of dumping trillions into AI, and then it underdelivering. Then thereās the indirect financial risk of creating generations of illiterate mouth-breathers.
I remember having a discussion with an old-school surveyor about 20 years ago. He was complaining that the younger surveyors who learned on total stations didnāt have an understanding of the basics. Without that basic understanding, they often couldnāt determine when the information there were given by the machine was wrong.
Also, when the total station broke down, they didnāt know how to use basic tools to get the job done.
Wow folks. Here is my only comment:
a great rendition of an immortal song.
This is amusing view.
600 million+ Alexa devices and many more smart watches, TVs, Lights, Refrigerators.
Some people are just negative.
When I was a kid in the 60ās I went to the The Phone Company exhibit at Chicagoās Museum of Science and Industry. They promised we would all be using videophones any day now. The tech was available but no one wanted it. Eventually, the internet arrived and families used video calls to connect grandparents and grandkids. It took four decades and a global pandemic to make video calling mainstream and everyone I know texts much more than audio call, and audio call more than video call.
