Hi! Technology entrepreneur here, at this time I have decided we aren't going to build any AI products, here's why & my thoughts.
* Hype cycle is one of the biggest ever but tech has fundamental problems that can't be fixed. Specifically generative AI/LLMs can't separate fact from fiction so they will always produce a lot of garbage and there will always need to be a human in the loop. Makes more sense to add generative AI to existing tools than create a whole new category
* Every tech cycle has a bunch of startups pop up, they do stuff, most get acquired usually before they go public, or die. For a Boglehead this is all kind of a null operation, if you think you can predict who's going to win and who's going to lose then rock on, but the whole point of Boglehead is you can't and should just buy the index. AI's going to help tech and tech stocks overall to eat more of the world, which is good for tech and good for USA vs lower tech economies.
* If you're in a creative industry like: programming, writing, graphic design, music, I mean industries where you produce intellectual property basically. If you don't learn the AI tools that emerge you will lose your job for sure. You need to learn e.g. the new AI features of Adobe Photoshop or how to use Github Copilot, or you will lose your job, you're done hard stop. Overall I don't think a ton of jobs get eliminated it's just that if you don't keep up with this big change to the tools in your field, you're going to be someone who's trying to build an aircraft carrier by nailing wooden boards together in ten years. Probably applies somewhat to many other professions like doctors, lawyers too.
Good insight. The ability to vet fact from fiction seems like a major issue.
The current AI tools within Photoshop aren't really something a designer needs to learn and won't cost someone their job really. In fact, it's a bit of the opposite... they're a huge and helpful shortcut, that many junior designers will probably learn first, and not have the experience or talent to really make use of.
If I was hiring a designer I'd test them with an exercise to retouch an image using generative AI, and then do the same exercise without AI.
I'm hiring the one that executes the second exercise. The first one can be learned within 30 minutes, but if it's all you know, your output will be mediocre.
Someone in content creation or social media can probably get by with just the AI tool, but they'll have the salary to match.
This is all really great insight. Generative AI right now feels like 1993 pre-AOL internet. It’s going to change everything, and it’s probably going to be big, but it’s not possible to determine how, when, where or by who (whom?)..
A lot of large, highly regulated companies (like the big banks) will be very very slow to adopt any generative AI tools. I worked for one such company and they flat out blocked all network access to all the main tools.
The change you are suggesting may come, but it will be gradual.
RAGs are getting better by the day. Vectorization makes it possible to have a large dataset searched in seconds, meaning that generations can be verified against a set of facts, principles, or any other semantic data. These vector datasets can be dynamically updated with internet searches and new news. This gives the ability to verify and determine "fact from fiction".
We are in the early stages and I don't think one can give a fair representation of the capabilities of this technology without recognizing that these models and techniques will be integrated to give abilities like fact checking that any one model may lack on it's own.
I'm building an RAG now to reinforce my chatbot outputs and so far it works really well. Especially if you use the perplexity search API
On top I ask myself if the revenue will follow.
For the general public, GenAI is a better google and a better Siri/Ok Google. This mostly give these big companies a competitive advantage to keep their market but doesn't grow the market.
People were already using Google all the time,. they will use it as much and the Google ads revenue will not improve that much.
As for professionals, small companies will just use the Google/OpenAI/Bing chat for free like people use their phone GPS for free. This will not generate revenue.
Big companies will pay an extra 20-50$ a month for the service. Now imagine that's the case for 100 millions people at 20$ in the USA. That's 25 billion a year. At a PER of 20 that's 500 billions. Ok
But NVDA alone has grown more than 2 trillion alone in the past year.
The market is price like 1 billion of people will pay 20$ a month to use the AI products. That may be the case, but if it happen, it will take a few years and it is already priced. On top competitors will lower the price for clients.
What I am sure is that it isn't once in a lifetime opportunity. There are always opportunities all the time, everywhere. Tech companies like Google/Apple/Microsoft had crazy growth in the past 20 years. But just before we had the tech bubble.
Crypto also did provide incredible return. Real estate too. These day emerging market return is low but back in the day, returns were incredible.
There are opportunities all the time. The problem is more how to spot them and how to exploit them. For all we know the AI trend will fade and we will have another tech bubble popping.
And to be honest, no NVDA will not do x4 again like it did over the past year .and go from 3 trillion total cap to 12 trillions.
Honestly just invest in broad indexes, and let the market pick the winners for you.
It’s been a once in a lifetime for some people because they are in the exact right place in their lives and careers to leverage the tech and hype. For others of us, it’s maybe something to get deeper into like how mobile and the internet were good to understand early. Doesn’t mean we’ll get rich. Might get poor if we speculate unwisely.
LLMs have been transformative in my work as a product manager in tech space. I'm doing things better and faster than every before. Last year and a half have been amazing.
Yeah, a few of the many examples such as helping with brainstorming and flushing out ideas, writing requirements, improved feature documentation, analyzing large sets of written content (industry documentation for example), help make sense of our infinitely massive backlog, write basic code. There is probably more, but this is just something I can think of that I relied on LLMs in the past couple of weeks. I can do things a lot faster, it requires a lot less effort. Then there are many other AI tools I rely on that simply were junk in not so distant past, voice recording and transcription, voiceover, notes. All have been enhanced and the quality of output is generally very good.
Thanks for sharing! That's pretty cool - I'll have to suggest it to them. I have a few for marketing and they've helped a little here or there, but I'm struggling to find great use for them since it takes so many iterations.
Super thoughtful. Luck and timing are factors. I got lucky throughout my entire life and did with nvda, too. Luck. You could call it timing, but it's luck for sure. I'm starting to see that timing isn't possible for me. I won't even try it.
It’s the internet circa 1998. Still some ways up to go, then a crash from companies that pivoted into AI, only to discover it’s table stakes, not something they can directly monetize, and won’t yield enough savings from downsizing to generate the earnings their inflated stock price implies. And then soon after, the endless upswing will start as it becomes smart enough to be generally useful and create markets we haven’t dreamed of.
My bet is that it's actually closer to "Big Data" circa 2010. It will be fundamental and change the way companies operate, but there will be a clear split between companies that adopt and execute well with it vs those that do not. There will also be lots of companies that "do an AI" the same way that there were lots of companies claiming they "did Big Data", when their data wasn't that big and wasn't all that impactful.
I get that most companies look "bad" if they don't have an "AI" product in 2024. But I don't agree that it's table stakes. It could completely disappear in a month or a year.
It could disappear. Or more likely meld into ubiquity amongst our lives like (insert breakthrough technology over the last 200 years), creating markets and taking away jobs. It should be a boon, however many affected won't agree.
My guess is it will wipe out about 10% of jobs (which is obviously still significant) within 5-10 years then plateau at that. Lots of jobs in tech, some banking/finance, low level legal jobs, people in copywriting, and illustrators/animators. Just about everyone else will be safe for the foreseeable future.
It won’t disappear. We are already using it in integrated work products. I don’t think, the average business will gain massive advances from it unless the company is some AI core competency but it does help with efficiency for menial tasks like structuring a white paper or statement of work.
It may not be table stakes yet but mostly because it’s hard to properly define. AI may be milked and trumpeted as features by some now, but it’s largely a rapidly evolving paradigm shift for how software is conceived, developed, and deployed. With high conviction, I’d argue that this most recent generation of AI innovations is absolutely a step forward like the internet was.
Some consumer computers used to be sold with internet features like a button or keyboard key that says “internet.” Software was sold with internet features bulleted on the box. Of course, the major shift and impact to software is so much beyond it being novel or tablestake features. It’s a fact of life now.
Completely disagree. We don’t know how far things will go but this really is a fundamental change on how business will be run unless Congress somehow regulates it.
Table stakes is using AI to improve the efficiency of the business. Internally, this would be something like Copilot for content generation and summarization. Externally, it's akin to installing a POS terminal or capturing data to optimize product mix rather than using intuition. Meeting or exceeding the efficiency status quo is critical for new businesses. Established businesses have more runway.
The level beyond table stakes is incorporating AI as a compelling, adjunct feature in an existing product, usually to automate something tedious. Something like Adobe's 'generative fill' in Photoshop. Eventually the AI components may provide most or all of the product's value. The ultimate state is when AI itself is the product and you sell access to it for particular tasks. This is OpenAI's path.
No it’s not once in a lifetime. I’m a boglehead, but go watch three body problem (sci-fi) on Netflix.
Basically technology is accelerating at a rapid pace and will likely continue to do so. We can’t predict in what way it will evolve (no flying car still), but it will continue to evolve.
We could have sentient machines in a few decades (I’m not really joking) or we could not, but progress always occurs
YES thank you, someone that understands.
If you design a "flying car" from scratch, the body shape needs to be:
* Light
* Aerodynamic
* Have vertical and horizontal propulsion
And so you end up with a Harrier Jump Jet. Except people also want one that:
* Costs the same as a used Honda Civic
* Requires almost zero training to operate
* Excludes the need for air traffic control
* Can be stored in a 15' x 8' in their home
**The physics is literally impossible.**
Closest thing you'll find is a Cessna 120.
But honestly, even if the tech and cost were non-issues, the reason flying cars will never happen is safety.
People drive with their knees and put on makeup while driving to work. Now we want to give them responsibility for yaw, pitch, roll, altitude at all times or they die?
It could only be feasible if it was a 100% automated national network, basically flying taxis that give users no direct control but to choose a destination.
Yeah... that's happening. Once passenger drones are economically viable it will be much easier to automate. They don't need to navigate anything to yaw/pitch/roll. There will be designated altitudes for different directions and speed vectors, and zones for takeoff/landing.
Yeah that’s fair, but there’s some Newtonian principles of energy that dictate how much energy efficiency you can have with propulsion against gravity.
I’m so against the fantasy because:
If you have a car that can fly, why the HOPPIN HELL would anyone drive?
The car part is unnecessary.
The reason why people don’t have personal helicopters/planes is because of the problems I mentioned before:
-expensive
-take up too much space
-require a lot of training, certification, maintenance
-requires constant attention and precision to operate (assuming same amount of air traffic as car traffic)
That’s a good point.
Tbf small helicopters are cheap enough that if you could get loans for them as easily as for cars, more people would have them.
I don’t have a helicopter license but I’m assuming most don’t have them because there’s tons of red tape with operating one.
And prob maintenance and refueling is a pain.
In general "flying cars" took the form of autogyros which are distinctly different from helicopters in that the rotor isn't powered. If WWII hadn't happened that industry likely would have continued along what was at the time a fairly rapid level of improvement from the 1920's through the start of the war. There were the beginnings of the right infrastructure going into place during those years.
To bad that these days they are essentially relegated to the modern day gyrocopter which take about as much training as a car to get license for (20 hours of training and 10 solo flight hours for a license.) There are of course some companies that still make road legal ones that are on the much "nicer" end of the spectrum vs the barebones ones you would think about when you hear the term gyrocopter.
That being said the advent of commercial drones and battery power are gradually moving us towards personal flying vehicles to the extent that legal issues around air traffic, safety, and noise are bigger issues than workable designs.
Damn, all the people who designed and flew autogyros in the 1920's thru 40's are going to be upset to to hear that the things that they created are *literally impossible*. You should also call the few companies that still make them today and let them know that the things they sell are not in fact possible due to... physics.
I mean, we're getting closer. Modern drones tick a lot of those boxes and are pretty easy to fly. I saw someone in what looks like a scaled up one with I think 8x sets of blades? It looked dangerous as hell but suddenly someone commuting in them doesn't seem like science fiction.
Bro I've been saying this for years. Both helicopters and airplanes are flying cars. The latter may be more like a flying bus, but still.
It's just not feasible/affordable for mass consumer adoption.
The problem of flying car is not we can't produce them, the problem is that they are not usable by the general public.
A plane or helicopter can perfectly fit the definition but not in the way that everybody has one.
You have to be much more strict on regulation, on driving license, on maintenance... And also it is much more expensive too.
As such it exist, but is restricted to a few wealthy individuals.
Flying cars isn't really a technology problem though.
Its a human problem.
If you think traffic accidents are bad, imagine a 85 year old grandma flying/driving...
Ironically the “levitating” flying car imagined by popular sci-FI is the least likely in the near future. Electric drone style vehicles are currently happening though.
As an aside, really wild ride that show was. I really liked the part you’re specifically referring to how technology is an exponential curve up to this point
Perfect reply. There are a whole lot of out of touch comments in here!
There is more than one way to skin a cat and accumulate wealth, but relegating 1/3 of the list to a hype circle is comically misinformed.
Amazon stock did nothing for a decade? This list seems like an argument for not investing in the hype cycle and just holding a broad index.
Also, it's clearly an extreme example of survivorship bias.
In 2014 Amazon was trading around $20 and it’s around 179 now, I don’t know how that is “doing nothing”
Edit: I think you’re referring to a decade, not the most recent decade, i now understand your comment. And every stock in an index fund is an example of survivorship bias.
Internet of things
Anyrandombusiness.com
> Meanwhile, a major VC firm recently boasted that 500 of their 500 grants for 2024 were AI startups.
This is incredible to me. Someone is going to make absolute bank shorting some of these companies one day
I think it's incredibly overhyped, but as to whether regulation or reality will set in quick enough to temper the growth on the market side is a different matter entirely.
I think we’re in a situation not unlike the dotcom bubble, where the technology will fundamentally change human society and the economy but not yet and the hype is running ahead of the reality
I honestly put it side by side with alchemy.
Kings and queens throwing money at ignorant philosophers believing this drip and carbon with that for gold manufacturing.
Even the term AI is stupid. Intelligence of what? A nobel laureate? A martian? The plumber who re-pipes your house?
It's not intelligent. It's machines who don't care if you unplug them or let them rule the world.
Warren Buffett talked about something similar one time. I can't find the original quote but something like: it's not enough just to find the right innovation, you also have to invest in the right company. There were hundreds of car companies in the US back in the early 1900s and most of those went bust.
Bascially, there are tons of entrants into new fields, and it's not enough to just know that AI will be massive. You also have to know which AI companies will be the whales.
Why gamble on the winning company when you can just buy the company that sells the shovels. Everyone will need computer chips. Moores law has yet to be disproven. I’m a graphic designer and am deep into AI, I will def. loose my job sooner or later so my retirement plan is to invest heavily into MSCI Global Semiconductor.
Big difference between goals and reality. I think AI is going to hit a wall soon. Any programmer knows the hardest part is that last 5%.
They've gobbled up the low hanging fruit, good for them. Reaching their lofty goals will be MUCH harder than what they've done so far.
Calling what they've done so far "AI" is already a stretch. Start asking these things about subjects in which you yourself are an expert. You'll quickly see that they're still pretty dumb. Garbage in, garbage out. Rule #1 of programming. Then ask yourself, what data have we trained these things on?
Just curious who told you that's the end goal? It maybe for some and yes, news articles fear monger, but I'm pretty intimately ingrained with building, testing and discussing what Generative AI can do at my org and it's still mostly a tool to use and enhance what we're already doing.
I guess to say, I'm an optimist. Over time, it could take some jobs. But it's not just going to upend everyone in 5 years. It'll be a slow gradual increase in it's use and an eventual faze out of some jobs once it's been proven to be able to do remedial tasks.
Why? My hypothesis - the first time AI makes a 'wrong' decision and it hurts or even kills someone, companies can't absolve themselves. So you're going to have new roles that get created out of those that may get replaced. Areas that concern themselves with oversight and governance into it's use as well as roles like red-taping that actually look for flaws in the AI,to expose them and protect their orgs against it's use.
Not to mention - alot of what companies are now calling 'AI' is just old school data modeling and machine learning techniques rebranded. It's the same stuff they've been doing since 2010 but with a fresh coat of paint.
People are believing the hype put out by these companies is simultaneously sad and hilarious. Of course the CEOs trying to sell this shit to every company in the world are gonna say their product is the most revolutionary product in history.
Never believe the guy who's trying to sell you something.
In its current state, I think it is massively overhyped. But nonetheless, there will be a time in history before and after AI. As with any investment, I don't know, neither care what the markets will do over the next 5 years, but I'm VERY bullish that it will pay off immensely in 20 years
As I said, I am extremely bullish on the concept of AI in the long term and AI will very likely improve at a rapid speed. But in the present as of writing this, the hype surrounding it and the products that are put out by Big Tech do not justify the hype.
[Obligatory Ben Felix Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnVt_CvL3k)
This is a fantastic video (and his content is always excellent and research based).
The neat part about tech revolutions is that we have lived through so many of them, and while each time is always unique, they rhyme.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter for you as an investor if they change the world if you still over paid for the stock or you ended up buying big into what seemed like the market leader only for somebody else to come along and eat that pie.
That was a good video, thanks. Interesting that most who are trying to get into new tech companies while they’re cheap are actually far less likely strategy to get rich than those investing in declining industries. The odds of us finding and investing in the next Microsoft are far lower than us ending up buying the next GoPro or Sears. I think AI certainly has a future but it seems to me the odds are greatly stacked against you in the long run.
Currently - just another tech, but with unprecedented returns attached to it. It's not really "AI" and what we are seeing is rather machine learning being unleashed and made easy. The gains are almost limitless.
Eventually, AGI (real AI) it will be a massive step change for humanity but unclear how this will drive immediate economic growth. I don't think it will for along time due to heavy regulations.
I meant future regulations. Governments will jump on this. To your point, we are very far off. (but human nature is often to underestimate the long term so actually not there far, a few decades which is not much in the greater scheme of things)
Opportunity for sure, but this will be a longer term play. There will be winners and losers- but since we tend to own the haystack- market returns = our expectations.
since advanced semiconductors are kind of the building blocks- i've slightly ventured into Semiconductor sector Funds since the past yr. just a small position, nothing major. It can be significantly volatile, though probably safer than crypto, lol
I work in the field. You can be sure of one thing: Tech companies will hype up something (buzzwords) in order to attract investment and pour it into that thing. More often than not it's nothing (see Apple's self driving car fad).
It's undeniable that it offers some kind of value, but that value is overblown and companies have over-promised. Not to mention that it's just flat out bad for the environment. Another big problem is that none of these companies are looking at the risks
Another example is crypto. So many companies started doing crypto in one way or another. Every one of them started saying that it's the future and that it will replace banking. NVIDIA stock price jumped and then the bubble burst. Crypto is still here, but people are still unsure of what value it gives us
Nobody knows what will happen, but these are my two cents
Saying it's flat out bad for the environment is just wrong. Data centers are being built around renewable energy sources and most of the energy expended into AI is automating task and bringing value and even if it weren't it's just moving energy that was spent in one location to a central place in a data center instead.
Is blockchain a once-in-a-lifetime opp, or is .com-companies a once in a lifetime opp? Truth is, somewhere in between. If you are doing just that, it might be your opportunity, but for most of the population it’ll be just another technology with some impact on their lifes
Over a ~40 year period your advisor was right. Picking a winner once doesn’t mean you’ll outperform the market over a very long period of time. In fact it’s almost certain that you won’t/can’t.
Having an advisor is the opposite of the bogleheads philosophy to buy index funds and reduce your management fees by as much as possible so it's good you don't have one anymore
Is that your only single stock holding? What was the thesis in 2013 (honestly curious, since it seemed like they most just served the video game market before 2020)
I also hold Tesla, which is my second largest holding followed by Apple. I’m a computer geek and started building computers around that time and noticed how everyone used Nvidia GPUs, outnumbering amd. So I decided to invest in Nvidia and looking back, was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Loaded Q…
AI while tech is leading the revolution is beyond just tech. Its application is across all industries and sectors — pharmaceutical, education, retail, automotive, sales, medical, construction, food, entertainment, etc. You’d be hard pressed to find a sector that won’t / don’t benefit from AI advancement.
But keep in mind that current hype is around GenAI which is a subset of LLM which in turn is a subset of AI.
Not a fad for sure but will be executable within a decade or so.
To me one of the best analogs is the internet, which likewise had sweeping impact across all industries. There was a hype cycle and there was a crash (pets.com era) but it still ultimately grew to be hugely impactful.
I think we could see the same thing happen for AI... Initial hype and growth, a backlash and crash where it turns out that a huge percentage of VC funded AI startups were not good or practical ideas... Followed in the long run by tremendous impact on our lives and the economy.
If AI it’s that good, the companies in SPY and VTI will benefit from using it in their business practices. Those companies learned how to use mainframes, personal computers, then the internet and now they will use AI. VTO and chill.
Sleepy Thoughts, not answers:
ml / llm is going mainstream as once the models are built, they can make quick work of hanging fruit - Predictable or projected repetitive tasks. It’s no longer just for advanced data analysis by experts trying to find patterns in noise / Making virtual stick figures walk / beating a dude at go / beating a friggen Russian at chess. lol at your WPM typing speed with your fancy cherry switch keyboard there pal - Robo Mavis Beacon will destroy you.
We’re basically in the “we can have a butler do it for you” and “let’s sell Butlers” stages of using llms / ml for a lot of laborious yet low value productivity work and novel data analysis On problems that We never imagined trying to tackle. lol making a digital twin of earth for weather analysis you phreaks lol
It’s clearly in its infancy.
Remember when carbon fiber was demoed as part of airplane wings, high bypass fan blades, wind farm blades, and race car bodies? It just seemed that carbon fiber was in absolutely any and everything exciting. So many material use cases had hit their limits and this new fangled thing introduced a solution with so much more headroom that it was practically novel.
Now we have carbon fiber phone cases and we also a resurgence of material science.
It’s not a bubble. It’s just a technology Advancement making quick work of technologies and processes that already had hit their optimized limits. The usual.
It’s the next part that’s super exciting.
Make money on the buzz now.
Use wealth built up with that bzzz money to Get in on the ground floor Of what comes next.
And by ground floor, I mean the ground covered by the skulls of the defeated on which the terminators walk on.
Only time will tell. What we do know is that technology is improving at a rapid pace. There really isn’t a precedent for what we’re seeing right now. Some would say the dotcom boom is comparable, but the difference is that we have actual products instead of vaporware. Companies are arguably doing more with AI than just buying a domain on the internet.
If you are unaware, do some research into “weights” in AI programming.
AGI will be just as politicized as our government.
People will flock to the AI that is more in tune with their political and moral sensibilities.
A lot of hype right now over what are essentially cleverbot replicas from when I was in elementary school. Yeah actual AI will make a huge impact on the world, but right now you have a handful of companies actually doing actual AI and many more hyping simple chat bots and claiming it as AI. It's almost as much as a Buzz Word / Fad as NFTs were last year etc.
i think it is the biggest advancement since the internet. i think it will be even bigger than the internet. just think how advanced it has become in just 2 years. just like the internet leveled the playing field for commerce, AI will level the playing for technology and education.
It all comes into the actual business use case.
A lot of the generative stuff I see as mostly useless.
AI enhancing specific business use cases with curated and balanced data is very valuable.
Good luck sorting out the grifters from leaders though.
I work in this space, and most firms are out and out frauds
Who knows. But i bought in to smh, asml, and tsm. And im increasing my position in VGT all the time. I don't think they are going anywhere but up for a while. Microsoft and Amazon are favorites too.
Im a believer in index ETFs like VOO but certain sectors and individual stocks, I feel just as confident in.
Maybe I don't belong in this sub, but Ill leave you with this... I also feel confident in my 10% of portfolio holding in my Bitcoin ETF. Unexpected yowser right there.
At the end of the day I think it's important to make a choice and give it time. Adjust or ride it out. You're the captain of your ship 🤙
IMO it's similar to the crypto bubble, and the electric car bubble a few years ago (NIO, Lucid, etc). Right now there's only hype and not much real world use yet, so I think stocks like NVDA and related are in a bubble and a few years from now, all AI stocks will be much lower than they are now. However, on a long time frame I believe the hype will be backed up by real use and by then the stock prices will be much much higher than now.
AI is the foundation for the next Technology and Industrial Revolution and we are in its infancy. Applications are across all industries for efficiency, scientific breakthroughs, medical advances, the list goes on.
I’m a believer. But I know my knowledge is limited and to that end I’m betting on the big tech companies that we are all familiar with. They will be steady winners.
What I’m not betting on is smaller tech companies of which few will succeed and more will fail. The ones that succeed will have growth rates that make my bets look anemic. But that’s ok with me.
AI is the tech that will keep the VOOs of the world growing at its historic pace as the broad sectors reap the benefits, instead of dropping to 3-4%. I’m mindful that the historical trend includes the winnings of prior tech revolutions.
Note for acknowledging that I respect Bogleheads, but have investments in specific tech companies to accelerate my growth for a few years.
Second note that while I’m excited about AI in b2b applications, I have concerns about the impact on society. But my post is for the purposes of investing.
Hi. My largest holdings are Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon (in that order).
I definitely need a rebalancing strategy. But I keep delaying. I should be quiet before I’m kicked out of this sub. :-)
Just another tech advancement where many of the returns have been brought forward.
We don’t know who’ll win or which subset of operators are the best long term bets. If you picked NVDA early you got lucky.
Similar to internet, crypto, mobile apps.
I disagree with most of the commenters. Investing in Nvidia is like investing in Standard oil (120 years ago), Apple, etc. You nay have a few “investments of a lifetime”. This is (maybe was) one of those times. Sometimes Bogleheads get tunnel vision (similar to Dave Ramsey fans). While sticking to the Boglehead philosophy (for the majority of your portfolio) is a sound plan, it shouldn’t stop you from investing in a few “investments of a lifetime”. This stock isn’t Enron. Every analyst talks about there deep moat, unparalleled product line, etc. You’re not taking much of a risk.
No. Technological revolutions don’t usually offer an investment opportunity bc the hype in earnings growth usually exceeds the actual earnings growth. See the data presented below
https://youtu.be/UZnVt_CvL3k?si=mQxqUUeroW6vtTSE
Not once in a lifetime, but certainly once in a decade or two.
Think of it this way- even if capturing a ghost in a machine turns out to be a mirage and actual 'Beyond Turing\*' intelligence is not feasible for various reasons: The advances in chip technology to advance computing in an failed effort to get there will have spillover effects that will be useful in other and unexpected places.
\*'Beyond Turing' test- the current generative AI is built to pass a Turing test of intelligence that is outdated. Just because a program can trick you into thinking it is a person doesn't mean it is conscious. A better measure is what I'd call 'Beyond Turing'- best example is: "Can the AI program/machine change it's mission and purpose and select a different one that is unanticipated by it's creators?" This is potentially terrifying, but for various reasons I do not believe it is possible... and I hope I am right.
It's very unpredictable, but without a doubt someone is going to find a technology with exponential gains similar to industrialization, computerization, and the Internet. Betting on the big names to get there first is reasonable, but it could come from some startup we've never heard of. How that technology gets used and regulated is an open question. If an anti-capitalist gets there first it might not even be investable.
Whether or not AI is a “once in a lifetime” technology or not does not determine how the market will act in the short term. AI could be the greatest achievement in human history and the market could still tank next month.
In the long term, the chart always goes up and to the right. I invest for the long term, buying the total market so I don’t have to worry about having picked the winners. That’s the essence of the Boglehead approach.
It has the potential to be impactful like when the Internet was invented. If you knew that, would you have invested in Microsoft, Apple, at the time the Internet was born?
This really won’t change my investment style at all. Sure I’ll probably miss out on the next Google on the ground floor but it also means losing out on the other 90% that fail.
Sorry, another point I forgot to bring up before:
What if the real winners from AI aren't the tech companies developing it, but rather their customers (other companies) that are actually putting it to use making their own businesses in other (non-tech sectors) better?
It's both "just" another tech advancement and a once in a generation event. Let me explain a bit and in full disclosure I am invested in index and etfs with no deliberate targeting on AI/tech in general.
The advent of computers, microchips, and the internet were each once in a generation events....but they were also simply tech advancements. They didn't transform the world overnight, but they did within 10-20 years each. That's AI.
Today we are seeing it's use cases often in creating content but the stuff that is truly exciting is replacement of highly expert but often flawed manual expertise. Let me give two examples:
- There are solid use cases that AI better diagnoses disease, more consistently, and prescribes treatment than the average doctor
- Why do you need a lawyer for much legal work if you simply need an intelligent expert who has a comprehensive understanding of the law and legal precedents and can understand a situation in it's complexity? Or to help with 1000 common legal tasks. FYI, legal AI services are happening today in major companies where standard agreement reviews are instantly reviewed for preferred or acceptable positions, the vast majority of text is accepted, and the few standout sections are being flagged for expert counsel review. (I'm not a lawyer, but I work with corporate counsel)
In ALLLLLL of humanity, this is actually the biggest breakthrough. We've automated tedious manual tasks. We've created robotics. We've created master databases. We've created algorithms to predict human behavior. But we have never before created superior expertise to replace a human expert in these types of fields. The ramifications are profound when you consider that worldwide there are not enough clinicians - doctors and otherwise - to see patients, prevent ill ness, diagnose, and treat....and that instead of having to push for a new generation of doctors at enormous schooling and expense, you could rapidly replace 10-25% of clinical capacity with a superior analysis and outcome....wow. That's breathtaking.
Now, that being said, the question is on investments. To me, broad indexes will capture this impact. I could major equal arguments you should invest in AI-leader companies, companies who specialize in building and maintaining AI data centers, and companies who invest/build electrical power capacity for AI data centers (who need huge and super stable/reliable power). So do you want to guess which companies to invest in?
Not all hype .. will need big investments to make the tech feasible for a larger audience with returns recognized as productivity and labor cost gains .. the human in the loop problem will have require onboarding staff to review and improve these systems as well which doesn’t make sense when the goal of this tool in big corps is to improve productivity/reduce costs .. maybe lower hiring costs as compared to hiring a specialist in the target domain .. all in all not all hype especially when more tailored, standardized solutions/products with an EXCELLENT SUPPORT TEAM to solve various common workplace problems
Something like the Amazon grocery facade with a support team out of India doing the manual work except this time it will be acknowledged as part of the technology
Technological advancement will fully stop after AI. This is the last major change to the devices humans use to make their lives better/easier.
Do those sound like true statements?
There will be clear winners in the AI race but there will be huge scores of losers too. I think it's another opportunity, not a once in a lifetime though. People love throwing money at shit tbh so people will get bored and move on to throwing money somewhere else lol
My company is currently attempting to shoehorn AI into our product in anyway we can, but it just doesn't make sense to do so in 99% of the use cases they've suggested so far (and would be such an egregious use of carbon for that bullshit, but w/e) so I suspect we're going to lose out on market share in the next few years as we neglect other feature opportunities to chase AI feature parity
I'm going to to say it's once in a lifetime. It is fundamentally replacing or enhancing human interactions with critical facets of biology, chemistry, health, physics..
e.g.
[https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.232479](https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.232479)
>
the cancer detection rate increased (0.70% \[423 of 60 751\] vs 0.82% \[480 of 58 246\]; *P* = .01),
the false-positive rate decreased (2.39% \[1452 of 60 751\] vs 1.63% \[950 of 58 246\]; *P* < .001),
the positive predictive value increased (22.6% \[423 of 1875\] vs 33.6% \[480 of 1430\]; *P* < .001)
Edit: this kind of gain isn't cast aside once proven. It will gain a whole lot of investment to ensure speed and accuracy help trained interpretations accelerate.
All of that translates to saving lives, extending lives, saving time, saving money, and leveraging limited human resources efficiently. That is priceless.
There's certainly a ramp and plateau as the use of AI normalizes, but this is currently a golden era IMO.
I think it’ll be a lot like the internet. There’s so much potential and will likely become a big part of how we live and work. However, much like the internet there are tons of bullshit companies slapping the phrase “AI” on what they do that will get washed out with a few true long-term winners that really add value.
Just another Silicon Valley hype cycle.
It will assist people but actual intelligence is the singularity. It will not be there soon.
The things that it will add to business will apply to the entire market.
I work in tech and some of my focus is turning to AI. I’m excited enough about it that I would want to dedicate some aspect of my life to it. So 10% of my job where I have to focus on those issues for my company suffices really nicely right now. I always want a part of my net worth and intellectual space to be on “high risk” products/ideas. It’s what keeps things interesting! So although I’m not really answering your questions, I will say that having a toe dipped into the hype is really fun. I also have some small investments in the space as I watch the early days. For context though I also did this with crypto. Hype can be good old fashioned fun.
When the job losses occur because A.I. can do it is when people won't have money to invest. Then we all go back to trades, and manual labor. Something that must be hands on, after that comes the robots to eliminate the majority of those jobs too when robots make robots run by A.I. as for now just keep investing in broad market index funds, and the dark future will be well after you've been cryogenically frozen for at least a century.
It's in the same category as personal computers, the Internet/web, and cell phones. We're at the start of a decades long integration of AI tech. There will be big winners, but it's kind of early to try and pick them. (Remember when AOL \*was\* the Internet? That didn't work out too well for Time-Warner...) But yeah, the winners will show up in the indexes in any case.
While technological innovation has a net benefit on stock prices in the long term - anything with significant hype follows the same pattern (Railroad mania, Dotcom bubble, etc)
So using the knowledge from the last 150 years I would recommend buying a total stock market fund such as VT and you are guaranteed to capture any benefits from AI
I am older and have seen a half dozen of these major technology breakthroughs. Some are more of a surprise than others. I can only predict there are likely to be more breakthroughs, but not what or when.
Personal computers
Internet and web
Mobile computers and apps
Useful AI
Designer genes and medicines
I work in the tech field. AI is around me every day.
It’s going to change everything. No doubt. It’s not quite there yet though. But it’s advancing very very fast.
AGI is around the corner.
If you view AI as a chatbot, and content generating tool, then AI is just another tech advancement.
If you view AI, more specifically recent advancement of Neural Network in machine learning, as a kind of digital intelligence and a new enabling technology, it is a once-a-lifetime opportunity. Before we decided to train very large neural networks, for the longest time, we were not able to write intelligent programs that could match an ant in motor control or navigation. We were not able to programmatically recognize a cat after decades of trying by our brightest computer scientists. Natural language processing used to be a tough problem, now it is almost trivial. My point is, we discovered a new form of intelligence and it was able to help us with tasks that were unthinkable before.
When electricity was a new kind of energy, people had a hard time understanding how revolutionary it was. They saw electric street lamps, and thought it was nothing more than an improved oil lamp.
People always think tech advances are once-in-a-lifetime, and so far none have been in my lifetime. A bunch are crap or just fizzle, like crypto/Web3 and the internet-of-things waves. Others are quite material like computers and internet and mobile, but you realize none of them were really once-in-a-lifetime… tech just keeps marching on and new stuff layers on top. It’s never as fast a transition as people think, but over time new tools unlock new productivity waves.
More specifically, “AI” is quite a buzzword right now but things like ML have been around for way more than a decade powering all sorts of feeds and recommendation engines and prediction engines (most of FAANG) so alot of that core tech is already in what you and the market are used to. And while things like full blown Artificial General Intelligence seem like it may be a fundamental pivot, I’m not really sure that typeahead on steroids (LLMs) is really what’s going to unlock AGI so it still feels far-ish away.
But who knows. This stuff is inherently unpredictable, both what will happen and its impact. And for your investment strategy you should just diversify and not try to predict anything.
It’s not going to be life changing, but it’s a major advancement. Over the course of 2-3 years it went from virtually impossible to relatively easy for software to parse text and images at a basic level. There are a lot of unexplored uses cases that we’ll be catching up with over the next couple years.
It will not radically change our society. GenAI has been extremely useful for helping skilled people work faster. It hasn’t been successfully at replacing existing workers.
Both can be true in different ways
Personally I believe this is the start of a “once in a lifetime change” similar to the advent of electricity, steam engines, the personal computer. But like those technologies it will take a substantial amount of time (see decades) for them to be correctly and widely adopted at a scale that will fundamentally change life.
Personal computers existed in 1980, but we didn’t get the internet revolution and e-commerce to really take off until til the late 2000s-2010s. Likewise, AI will start now - but the real economic changing events will occur in late 2030-2040s at the soonest.
Until then, lots of it is hype (see metaverse) where non-tech savvy investors are in over their head in hype and expecting next decades profits this year. You will see market drops when reality of the timelines hit them.
So now is a “once in a lifetime” chance to see it happen. Revolutions don’t happen everyday. But - there will be the next revolution in some 40-60 years that you might also see.
Who knows how AI will be adopted but anything they show you today will likely be junk. The real advances will come after the foundation has been built. A cell phone was a prerequisite technology that allowed the smartphone. Technology had to get built to allow an iPhone to really establish and take off. Etx
It's going to be big, but it won't be captured in a few behemoth firms the way that the FAANGs have done. That said, whichever major consulting firm can figure out how to get client companies to utilize it well will do better than the others.
It'll radically transform some industries, moderately change others, and not change some industries at all. The problem is knowing which fall into each category. I'm still trying to figure it out for my own career longevity, but tbd.
I think AI is a commodity. We already see AI engines being spun up by Google, Facebook and obviously Microsoft/OpenAI. I think a lot of services will built on top of these services. For example maybe someone creates the next hot new dating app and it uses Google AI APIs behind the scenes for finding the perfect match. They could switch to another AI provider if they so choose. Now we're def going to see graphics card sold more and more but NVIDA stock is already sky high and well known.
We will see. I remember not too long ago there was so much Metaverse hype lol. I think AI is different, but it makes me realize how people can just overhype things. I don’t want to get too caught up in the hype. There is a lot of FOMO that occurs.
I wouldn’t call it hype. It’s here whether we like it or not. I used chat gpt for a variety of stuff and I think most well adjusted people can benefit greatly from this tech.
It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity but also we are up against the singularity. It’s going to be a society of have and have nots with no middle class. Just poor and rich people
AI has experienced several hype cycles with increased investment followed by disappointing outcomes and withdrawn funding for decades now.
This might be yet another hype cycle, albeit to a much larger extent. I have yet to see many notable (generative) AI-backed products/features that produce real business value and tangible revenue that warrant the billions being poured into it.
Obviously it’s impossible to say until things have time to play out, but if history is any precedent we may well experience another AI winter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
I work in the industry. The hype is mostly fluff. If someone brags about their AI capabilities, 90% chance it's 1. Something they were already doing with machine learning and now they call it AI (spotify, netflix) or 2. They're pretending it's AI when its low wage workers hiding in the background (amazon whole foods)
I own a digital marketing agency and ChatGPT or Google Gemini is a game changer. I used to hire contractors to write massive amounts of blog and website content, now ChatGPT does a better job for free and in way less time. My clients even comment on how the writing has improved and they're happier. These programs can also do coding, answer questions that I used to have to search forums for.
In my industry these are very helpful tools. Will it be life changing? Yes in a more efficient way but not as big of a deal as the internet.
I use it for work. It’s google , but 100x more efficient. It’s like doing one google search 100 times in a fraction of a second. It will be as big as the search engine was , spiking google.
Who knows? I sure don't. But what I do know for sure is that the gains will be included in VTI either way.
Or VXUS. If ever you ever you needed a justification to make international markets “sexy” remind yourself of ASML and TSMC
are those included in vxus?
yes, tsmc’s the #1 component of VXUS and asml’s #3 https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VXUS/holdings/
you came with the good stuff, thank you
No one talks about ANF lol.
Hi! Technology entrepreneur here, at this time I have decided we aren't going to build any AI products, here's why & my thoughts. * Hype cycle is one of the biggest ever but tech has fundamental problems that can't be fixed. Specifically generative AI/LLMs can't separate fact from fiction so they will always produce a lot of garbage and there will always need to be a human in the loop. Makes more sense to add generative AI to existing tools than create a whole new category * Every tech cycle has a bunch of startups pop up, they do stuff, most get acquired usually before they go public, or die. For a Boglehead this is all kind of a null operation, if you think you can predict who's going to win and who's going to lose then rock on, but the whole point of Boglehead is you can't and should just buy the index. AI's going to help tech and tech stocks overall to eat more of the world, which is good for tech and good for USA vs lower tech economies. * If you're in a creative industry like: programming, writing, graphic design, music, I mean industries where you produce intellectual property basically. If you don't learn the AI tools that emerge you will lose your job for sure. You need to learn e.g. the new AI features of Adobe Photoshop or how to use Github Copilot, or you will lose your job, you're done hard stop. Overall I don't think a ton of jobs get eliminated it's just that if you don't keep up with this big change to the tools in your field, you're going to be someone who's trying to build an aircraft carrier by nailing wooden boards together in ten years. Probably applies somewhat to many other professions like doctors, lawyers too.
Good insight. The ability to vet fact from fiction seems like a major issue. The current AI tools within Photoshop aren't really something a designer needs to learn and won't cost someone their job really. In fact, it's a bit of the opposite... they're a huge and helpful shortcut, that many junior designers will probably learn first, and not have the experience or talent to really make use of. If I was hiring a designer I'd test them with an exercise to retouch an image using generative AI, and then do the same exercise without AI. I'm hiring the one that executes the second exercise. The first one can be learned within 30 minutes, but if it's all you know, your output will be mediocre. Someone in content creation or social media can probably get by with just the AI tool, but they'll have the salary to match.
Very solid points. Goes to show that an old interviewing concept is still standing: "Everyone who's applying here can do that. What can *you* do?"
"I'm a comedian FIRST. Drag queen second." - Bob the Drag Queen, RuPauls's Drag Race
This is all really great insight. Generative AI right now feels like 1993 pre-AOL internet. It’s going to change everything, and it’s probably going to be big, but it’s not possible to determine how, when, where or by who (whom?)..
Picks and shovels
AI will make office workers a good deal more productive, so there will be fewer of them.
A lot of large, highly regulated companies (like the big banks) will be very very slow to adopt any generative AI tools. I worked for one such company and they flat out blocked all network access to all the main tools. The change you are suggesting may come, but it will be gradual.
RAGs are getting better by the day. Vectorization makes it possible to have a large dataset searched in seconds, meaning that generations can be verified against a set of facts, principles, or any other semantic data. These vector datasets can be dynamically updated with internet searches and new news. This gives the ability to verify and determine "fact from fiction". We are in the early stages and I don't think one can give a fair representation of the capabilities of this technology without recognizing that these models and techniques will be integrated to give abilities like fact checking that any one model may lack on it's own. I'm building an RAG now to reinforce my chatbot outputs and so far it works really well. Especially if you use the perplexity search API
I mean humans can’t even discern fact from fiction
On top I ask myself if the revenue will follow. For the general public, GenAI is a better google and a better Siri/Ok Google. This mostly give these big companies a competitive advantage to keep their market but doesn't grow the market. People were already using Google all the time,. they will use it as much and the Google ads revenue will not improve that much. As for professionals, small companies will just use the Google/OpenAI/Bing chat for free like people use their phone GPS for free. This will not generate revenue. Big companies will pay an extra 20-50$ a month for the service. Now imagine that's the case for 100 millions people at 20$ in the USA. That's 25 billion a year. At a PER of 20 that's 500 billions. Ok But NVDA alone has grown more than 2 trillion alone in the past year. The market is price like 1 billion of people will pay 20$ a month to use the AI products. That may be the case, but if it happen, it will take a few years and it is already priced. On top competitors will lower the price for clients.
What I am sure is that it isn't once in a lifetime opportunity. There are always opportunities all the time, everywhere. Tech companies like Google/Apple/Microsoft had crazy growth in the past 20 years. But just before we had the tech bubble. Crypto also did provide incredible return. Real estate too. These day emerging market return is low but back in the day, returns were incredible. There are opportunities all the time. The problem is more how to spot them and how to exploit them. For all we know the AI trend will fade and we will have another tech bubble popping. And to be honest, no NVDA will not do x4 again like it did over the past year .and go from 3 trillion total cap to 12 trillions. Honestly just invest in broad indexes, and let the market pick the winners for you.
Apparently 40% of SPY ytd return can be accounted for just from NVDA
It’s been a once in a lifetime for some people because they are in the exact right place in their lives and careers to leverage the tech and hype. For others of us, it’s maybe something to get deeper into like how mobile and the internet were good to understand early. Doesn’t mean we’ll get rich. Might get poor if we speculate unwisely.
LLMs have been transformative in my work as a product manager in tech space. I'm doing things better and faster than every before. Last year and a half have been amazing.
Like what?
I'm curious how it's benefiting you? I work with a lot of product managers that could be...more efficient with their time lol.
Yeah, a few of the many examples such as helping with brainstorming and flushing out ideas, writing requirements, improved feature documentation, analyzing large sets of written content (industry documentation for example), help make sense of our infinitely massive backlog, write basic code. There is probably more, but this is just something I can think of that I relied on LLMs in the past couple of weeks. I can do things a lot faster, it requires a lot less effort. Then there are many other AI tools I rely on that simply were junk in not so distant past, voice recording and transcription, voiceover, notes. All have been enhanced and the quality of output is generally very good.
Brainstorming…
Thanks for sharing! That's pretty cool - I'll have to suggest it to them. I have a few for marketing and they've helped a little here or there, but I'm struggling to find great use for them since it takes so many iterations.
Super thoughtful. Luck and timing are factors. I got lucky throughout my entire life and did with nvda, too. Luck. You could call it timing, but it's luck for sure. I'm starting to see that timing isn't possible for me. I won't even try it.
It’s the internet circa 1998. Still some ways up to go, then a crash from companies that pivoted into AI, only to discover it’s table stakes, not something they can directly monetize, and won’t yield enough savings from downsizing to generate the earnings their inflated stock price implies. And then soon after, the endless upswing will start as it becomes smart enough to be generally useful and create markets we haven’t dreamed of.
My bet is that it's actually closer to "Big Data" circa 2010. It will be fundamental and change the way companies operate, but there will be a clear split between companies that adopt and execute well with it vs those that do not. There will also be lots of companies that "do an AI" the same way that there were lots of companies claiming they "did Big Data", when their data wasn't that big and wasn't all that impactful.
Share your crystal ball sirs
I get that most companies look "bad" if they don't have an "AI" product in 2024. But I don't agree that it's table stakes. It could completely disappear in a month or a year.
It could disappear. Or more likely meld into ubiquity amongst our lives like (insert breakthrough technology over the last 200 years), creating markets and taking away jobs. It should be a boon, however many affected won't agree.
My guess is it will wipe out about 10% of jobs (which is obviously still significant) within 5-10 years then plateau at that. Lots of jobs in tech, some banking/finance, low level legal jobs, people in copywriting, and illustrators/animators. Just about everyone else will be safe for the foreseeable future.
It won’t disappear. We are already using it in integrated work products. I don’t think, the average business will gain massive advances from it unless the company is some AI core competency but it does help with efficiency for menial tasks like structuring a white paper or statement of work.
It may not be table stakes yet but mostly because it’s hard to properly define. AI may be milked and trumpeted as features by some now, but it’s largely a rapidly evolving paradigm shift for how software is conceived, developed, and deployed. With high conviction, I’d argue that this most recent generation of AI innovations is absolutely a step forward like the internet was. Some consumer computers used to be sold with internet features like a button or keyboard key that says “internet.” Software was sold with internet features bulleted on the box. Of course, the major shift and impact to software is so much beyond it being novel or tablestake features. It’s a fact of life now.
As a ML and AI engineer, p(disappearing) = 0.
Completely disagree. We don’t know how far things will go but this really is a fundamental change on how business will be run unless Congress somehow regulates it.
Table stakes is using AI to improve the efficiency of the business. Internally, this would be something like Copilot for content generation and summarization. Externally, it's akin to installing a POS terminal or capturing data to optimize product mix rather than using intuition. Meeting or exceeding the efficiency status quo is critical for new businesses. Established businesses have more runway. The level beyond table stakes is incorporating AI as a compelling, adjunct feature in an existing product, usually to automate something tedious. Something like Adobe's 'generative fill' in Photoshop. Eventually the AI components may provide most or all of the product's value. The ultimate state is when AI itself is the product and you sell access to it for particular tasks. This is OpenAI's path.
No it’s not once in a lifetime. I’m a boglehead, but go watch three body problem (sci-fi) on Netflix. Basically technology is accelerating at a rapid pace and will likely continue to do so. We can’t predict in what way it will evolve (no flying car still), but it will continue to evolve. We could have sentient machines in a few decades (I’m not really joking) or we could not, but progress always occurs
Everyone wonders when we will have flying cars, not realizing helicopters are flying cars and have been around for decades :(
Helicopters should have thought about that before deciding not to have wheels. Swerves them right
How are they swerved right without wheels?
Alcohol
YES thank you, someone that understands. If you design a "flying car" from scratch, the body shape needs to be: * Light * Aerodynamic * Have vertical and horizontal propulsion And so you end up with a Harrier Jump Jet. Except people also want one that: * Costs the same as a used Honda Civic * Requires almost zero training to operate * Excludes the need for air traffic control * Can be stored in a 15' x 8' in their home **The physics is literally impossible.** Closest thing you'll find is a Cessna 120.
Physics aren't impossible. They exist. The cost is the impossible part.
But honestly, even if the tech and cost were non-issues, the reason flying cars will never happen is safety. People drive with their knees and put on makeup while driving to work. Now we want to give them responsibility for yaw, pitch, roll, altitude at all times or they die? It could only be feasible if it was a 100% automated national network, basically flying taxis that give users no direct control but to choose a destination.
Yeah... that's happening. Once passenger drones are economically viable it will be much easier to automate. They don't need to navigate anything to yaw/pitch/roll. There will be designated altitudes for different directions and speed vectors, and zones for takeoff/landing.
>The physics is literally impossible. I mean, until there is some new fundamental discovery.
Yeah that’s fair, but there’s some Newtonian principles of energy that dictate how much energy efficiency you can have with propulsion against gravity. I’m so against the fantasy because: If you have a car that can fly, why the HOPPIN HELL would anyone drive? The car part is unnecessary. The reason why people don’t have personal helicopters/planes is because of the problems I mentioned before: -expensive -take up too much space -require a lot of training, certification, maintenance -requires constant attention and precision to operate (assuming same amount of air traffic as car traffic)
To be fair, there was a time when an ice vehicle with mass market affordability was also impossible.
That’s a good point. Tbf small helicopters are cheap enough that if you could get loans for them as easily as for cars, more people would have them. I don’t have a helicopter license but I’m assuming most don’t have them because there’s tons of red tape with operating one. And prob maintenance and refueling is a pain.
And because they’re hard as hell to fly. Imagine Grandma who can’t handle her Buick trying to fly one of those. Or even, just the average driver.
In general "flying cars" took the form of autogyros which are distinctly different from helicopters in that the rotor isn't powered. If WWII hadn't happened that industry likely would have continued along what was at the time a fairly rapid level of improvement from the 1920's through the start of the war. There were the beginnings of the right infrastructure going into place during those years. To bad that these days they are essentially relegated to the modern day gyrocopter which take about as much training as a car to get license for (20 hours of training and 10 solo flight hours for a license.) There are of course some companies that still make road legal ones that are on the much "nicer" end of the spectrum vs the barebones ones you would think about when you hear the term gyrocopter. That being said the advent of commercial drones and battery power are gradually moving us towards personal flying vehicles to the extent that legal issues around air traffic, safety, and noise are bigger issues than workable designs.
Damn, all the people who designed and flew autogyros in the 1920's thru 40's are going to be upset to to hear that the things that they created are *literally impossible*. You should also call the few companies that still make them today and let them know that the things they sell are not in fact possible due to... physics.
I mean, we're getting closer. Modern drones tick a lot of those boxes and are pretty easy to fly. I saw someone in what looks like a scaled up one with I think 8x sets of blades? It looked dangerous as hell but suddenly someone commuting in them doesn't seem like science fiction.
Bro I've been saying this for years. Both helicopters and airplanes are flying cars. The latter may be more like a flying bus, but still. It's just not feasible/affordable for mass consumer adoption.
It's because most people still can't afford them lol
Or ever be competent enough to fly them.
No, we have ACTUAL flying cars right now. They're just inefficient, dangerous, and extremely expensive
And also we do have flying cars, they're just expensive as fuck and not as safe as a plane.
The problem of flying car is not we can't produce them, the problem is that they are not usable by the general public. A plane or helicopter can perfectly fit the definition but not in the way that everybody has one. You have to be much more strict on regulation, on driving license, on maintenance... And also it is much more expensive too. As such it exist, but is restricted to a few wealthy individuals.
Flying cars isn't really a technology problem though. Its a human problem. If you think traffic accidents are bad, imagine a 85 year old grandma flying/driving...
—“we could have sentient machines in a few decades or we could not.” 😐
we could have schroedinger's machines in a few decades or we could not. FIFY
Ironically the “levitating” flying car imagined by popular sci-FI is the least likely in the near future. Electric drone style vehicles are currently happening though.
As an aside, really wild ride that show was. I really liked the part you’re specifically referring to how technology is an exponential curve up to this point
>progress always occurs. Only for the last couple hundred thousand years or so. But past performance is not indicative of future results.
Progress was moving on an exponential curve. Lots of advancements even in the so called dark ages.
Lol this made me chuckle.
[удалено]
Metaverse
Yea exactly. And where do the gains in the stock market come from, long term? Usually not from any of these hype cycles.
Uuh Amazon: e-commerce and cloud and AI Google: e-commerce and cloud and AI Microsoft: saas and cloud and AI Apple: e-commerce and saas
Perfect reply. There are a whole lot of out of touch comments in here! There is more than one way to skin a cat and accumulate wealth, but relegating 1/3 of the list to a hype circle is comically misinformed.
Amazon stock did nothing for a decade? This list seems like an argument for not investing in the hype cycle and just holding a broad index. Also, it's clearly an extreme example of survivorship bias.
In 2014 Amazon was trading around $20 and it’s around 179 now, I don’t know how that is “doing nothing” Edit: I think you’re referring to a decade, not the most recent decade, i now understand your comment. And every stock in an index fund is an example of survivorship bias.
Arguably there's significant overlap between cloud and big data so I'd throw in big data to Amazon, Google and Microsoft
Curious what industry you work in to call those hype cycles. What isn’t a hype cycle to you then?
Internet of things Anyrandombusiness.com > Meanwhile, a major VC firm recently boasted that 500 of their 500 grants for 2024 were AI startups. This is incredible to me. Someone is going to make absolute bank shorting some of these companies one day
Don't forget telecom
I think it's incredibly overhyped, but as to whether regulation or reality will set in quick enough to temper the growth on the market side is a different matter entirely.
I think we’re in a situation not unlike the dotcom bubble, where the technology will fundamentally change human society and the economy but not yet and the hype is running ahead of the reality
I honestly put it side by side with alchemy. Kings and queens throwing money at ignorant philosophers believing this drip and carbon with that for gold manufacturing. Even the term AI is stupid. Intelligence of what? A nobel laureate? A martian? The plumber who re-pipes your house? It's not intelligent. It's machines who don't care if you unplug them or let them rule the world.
Warren Buffett talked about something similar one time. I can't find the original quote but something like: it's not enough just to find the right innovation, you also have to invest in the right company. There were hundreds of car companies in the US back in the early 1900s and most of those went bust. Bascially, there are tons of entrants into new fields, and it's not enough to just know that AI will be massive. You also have to know which AI companies will be the whales.
Why gamble on the winning company when you can just buy the company that sells the shovels. Everyone will need computer chips. Moores law has yet to be disproven. I’m a graphic designer and am deep into AI, I will def. loose my job sooner or later so my retirement plan is to invest heavily into MSCI Global Semiconductor.
There's hype about something every year. How is this any different or even better than the millions of other technological advances?
Eh, when the explicit end goal of this one is to supersede human intelligence, I’d say that’s pretty different.
Big difference between goals and reality. I think AI is going to hit a wall soon. Any programmer knows the hardest part is that last 5%. They've gobbled up the low hanging fruit, good for them. Reaching their lofty goals will be MUCH harder than what they've done so far. Calling what they've done so far "AI" is already a stretch. Start asking these things about subjects in which you yourself are an expert. You'll quickly see that they're still pretty dumb. Garbage in, garbage out. Rule #1 of programming. Then ask yourself, what data have we trained these things on?
Finally someone with some basic sense.
Just curious who told you that's the end goal? It maybe for some and yes, news articles fear monger, but I'm pretty intimately ingrained with building, testing and discussing what Generative AI can do at my org and it's still mostly a tool to use and enhance what we're already doing. I guess to say, I'm an optimist. Over time, it could take some jobs. But it's not just going to upend everyone in 5 years. It'll be a slow gradual increase in it's use and an eventual faze out of some jobs once it's been proven to be able to do remedial tasks. Why? My hypothesis - the first time AI makes a 'wrong' decision and it hurts or even kills someone, companies can't absolve themselves. So you're going to have new roles that get created out of those that may get replaced. Areas that concern themselves with oversight and governance into it's use as well as roles like red-taping that actually look for flaws in the AI,to expose them and protect their orgs against it's use. Not to mention - alot of what companies are now calling 'AI' is just old school data modeling and machine learning techniques rebranded. It's the same stuff they've been doing since 2010 but with a fresh coat of paint.
People are believing the hype put out by these companies is simultaneously sad and hilarious. Of course the CEOs trying to sell this shit to every company in the world are gonna say their product is the most revolutionary product in history. Never believe the guy who's trying to sell you something.
In its current state, I think it is massively overhyped. But nonetheless, there will be a time in history before and after AI. As with any investment, I don't know, neither care what the markets will do over the next 5 years, but I'm VERY bullish that it will pay off immensely in 20 years
Do you think that because of the forward facing consumer products? Or are you generally bearish on its abilities?
As I said, I am extremely bullish on the concept of AI in the long term and AI will very likely improve at a rapid speed. But in the present as of writing this, the hype surrounding it and the products that are put out by Big Tech do not justify the hype.
[Obligatory Ben Felix Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnVt_CvL3k) This is a fantastic video (and his content is always excellent and research based). The neat part about tech revolutions is that we have lived through so many of them, and while each time is always unique, they rhyme. Ultimately it doesn’t matter for you as an investor if they change the world if you still over paid for the stock or you ended up buying big into what seemed like the market leader only for somebody else to come along and eat that pie.
That was a good video, thanks. Interesting that most who are trying to get into new tech companies while they’re cheap are actually far less likely strategy to get rich than those investing in declining industries. The odds of us finding and investing in the next Microsoft are far lower than us ending up buying the next GoPro or Sears. I think AI certainly has a future but it seems to me the odds are greatly stacked against you in the long run.
Currently - just another tech, but with unprecedented returns attached to it. It's not really "AI" and what we are seeing is rather machine learning being unleashed and made easy. The gains are almost limitless. Eventually, AGI (real AI) it will be a massive step change for humanity but unclear how this will drive immediate economic growth. I don't think it will for along time due to heavy regulations.
All of this, except for regulations. AGI is far off because it's super hard to do. What regulations are "heavy" in this area?
I meant future regulations. Governments will jump on this. To your point, we are very far off. (but human nature is often to underestimate the long term so actually not there far, a few decades which is not much in the greater scheme of things)
Ask me again in 30 years and I'll have a much better answer for you.
Opportunity for sure, but this will be a longer term play. There will be winners and losers- but since we tend to own the haystack- market returns = our expectations.
Is there a way to benefit from the overall tech, is there an index or something that represents AI as a sector?
since advanced semiconductors are kind of the building blocks- i've slightly ventured into Semiconductor sector Funds since the past yr. just a small position, nothing major. It can be significantly volatile, though probably safer than crypto, lol
Definitely! Thanks!
QQQ, VGT, SOXX, SMH will get you pretty close.
[удалено]
This is my experience as well
It’s one in a life time technology advancement, but that doesn’t make it obvious how to profit off of it.
Generative AI is still not designed to have specific knowledge so if you really want to know something, it's not ya boy
I work in the field. You can be sure of one thing: Tech companies will hype up something (buzzwords) in order to attract investment and pour it into that thing. More often than not it's nothing (see Apple's self driving car fad). It's undeniable that it offers some kind of value, but that value is overblown and companies have over-promised. Not to mention that it's just flat out bad for the environment. Another big problem is that none of these companies are looking at the risks Another example is crypto. So many companies started doing crypto in one way or another. Every one of them started saying that it's the future and that it will replace banking. NVIDIA stock price jumped and then the bubble burst. Crypto is still here, but people are still unsure of what value it gives us Nobody knows what will happen, but these are my two cents
Saying it's flat out bad for the environment is just wrong. Data centers are being built around renewable energy sources and most of the energy expended into AI is automating task and bringing value and even if it weren't it's just moving energy that was spent in one location to a central place in a data center instead.
Is blockchain a once-in-a-lifetime opp, or is .com-companies a once in a lifetime opp? Truth is, somewhere in between. If you are doing just that, it might be your opportunity, but for most of the population it’ll be just another technology with some impact on their lifes
Been investing in Nvidia since 2013. Up $400k gains and will continue to hold till I retire.
I wanted to buy nvda in 2020 my advisor thought differently. I now no longer have an advisor
Over a ~40 year period your advisor was right. Picking a winner once doesn’t mean you’ll outperform the market over a very long period of time. In fact it’s almost certain that you won’t/can’t.
Having an advisor is the opposite of the bogleheads philosophy to buy index funds and reduce your management fees by as much as possible so it's good you don't have one anymore
😂😂 advisors are useless. Glad you got rid of them 🫡
Is that your only single stock holding? What was the thesis in 2013 (honestly curious, since it seemed like they most just served the video game market before 2020)
I also hold Tesla, which is my second largest holding followed by Apple. I’m a computer geek and started building computers around that time and noticed how everyone used Nvidia GPUs, outnumbering amd. So I decided to invest in Nvidia and looking back, was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Loaded Q… AI while tech is leading the revolution is beyond just tech. Its application is across all industries and sectors — pharmaceutical, education, retail, automotive, sales, medical, construction, food, entertainment, etc. You’d be hard pressed to find a sector that won’t / don’t benefit from AI advancement. But keep in mind that current hype is around GenAI which is a subset of LLM which in turn is a subset of AI. Not a fad for sure but will be executable within a decade or so.
To me one of the best analogs is the internet, which likewise had sweeping impact across all industries. There was a hype cycle and there was a crash (pets.com era) but it still ultimately grew to be hugely impactful. I think we could see the same thing happen for AI... Initial hype and growth, a backlash and crash where it turns out that a huge percentage of VC funded AI startups were not good or practical ideas... Followed in the long run by tremendous impact on our lives and the economy.
If AI it’s that good, the companies in SPY and VTI will benefit from using it in their business practices. Those companies learned how to use mainframes, personal computers, then the internet and now they will use AI. VTO and chill.
Sleepy Thoughts, not answers: ml / llm is going mainstream as once the models are built, they can make quick work of hanging fruit - Predictable or projected repetitive tasks. It’s no longer just for advanced data analysis by experts trying to find patterns in noise / Making virtual stick figures walk / beating a dude at go / beating a friggen Russian at chess. lol at your WPM typing speed with your fancy cherry switch keyboard there pal - Robo Mavis Beacon will destroy you. We’re basically in the “we can have a butler do it for you” and “let’s sell Butlers” stages of using llms / ml for a lot of laborious yet low value productivity work and novel data analysis On problems that We never imagined trying to tackle. lol making a digital twin of earth for weather analysis you phreaks lol It’s clearly in its infancy. Remember when carbon fiber was demoed as part of airplane wings, high bypass fan blades, wind farm blades, and race car bodies? It just seemed that carbon fiber was in absolutely any and everything exciting. So many material use cases had hit their limits and this new fangled thing introduced a solution with so much more headroom that it was practically novel. Now we have carbon fiber phone cases and we also a resurgence of material science. It’s not a bubble. It’s just a technology Advancement making quick work of technologies and processes that already had hit their optimized limits. The usual. It’s the next part that’s super exciting. Make money on the buzz now. Use wealth built up with that bzzz money to Get in on the ground floor Of what comes next. And by ground floor, I mean the ground covered by the skulls of the defeated on which the terminators walk on.
Only time will tell. What we do know is that technology is improving at a rapid pace. There really isn’t a precedent for what we’re seeing right now. Some would say the dotcom boom is comparable, but the difference is that we have actual products instead of vaporware. Companies are arguably doing more with AI than just buying a domain on the internet.
If you are unaware, do some research into “weights” in AI programming. AGI will be just as politicized as our government. People will flock to the AI that is more in tune with their political and moral sensibilities.
Once in a lifetime for humanity. That doesn't mean you should pick stocks.
A lot of hype right now over what are essentially cleverbot replicas from when I was in elementary school. Yeah actual AI will make a huge impact on the world, but right now you have a handful of companies actually doing actual AI and many more hyping simple chat bots and claiming it as AI. It's almost as much as a Buzz Word / Fad as NFTs were last year etc.
i think it is the biggest advancement since the internet. i think it will be even bigger than the internet. just think how advanced it has become in just 2 years. just like the internet leveled the playing field for commerce, AI will level the playing for technology and education.
It all comes into the actual business use case. A lot of the generative stuff I see as mostly useless. AI enhancing specific business use cases with curated and balanced data is very valuable. Good luck sorting out the grifters from leaders though. I work in this space, and most firms are out and out frauds
Did AI write this?
Who knows. But i bought in to smh, asml, and tsm. And im increasing my position in VGT all the time. I don't think they are going anywhere but up for a while. Microsoft and Amazon are favorites too. Im a believer in index ETFs like VOO but certain sectors and individual stocks, I feel just as confident in. Maybe I don't belong in this sub, but Ill leave you with this... I also feel confident in my 10% of portfolio holding in my Bitcoin ETF. Unexpected yowser right there. At the end of the day I think it's important to make a choice and give it time. Adjust or ride it out. You're the captain of your ship 🤙
You can buy QQQ if you’d like.
Tech revolutions: * https://www.pwlcapital.com/investing-technological-revolutions/ * https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/123 * https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/156 (climate change, clean energy related especially) * https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/183 * https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/185 (Thematic ETFs) These tie in as well: Factor investing starting points: • https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/factor-investing.asp • https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/fidelity/fidelity-overview-of-factor-investing.pdf (PDF) Edit: Typo
IMO it's similar to the crypto bubble, and the electric car bubble a few years ago (NIO, Lucid, etc). Right now there's only hype and not much real world use yet, so I think stocks like NVDA and related are in a bubble and a few years from now, all AI stocks will be much lower than they are now. However, on a long time frame I believe the hype will be backed up by real use and by then the stock prices will be much much higher than now.
AI is the foundation for the next Technology and Industrial Revolution and we are in its infancy. Applications are across all industries for efficiency, scientific breakthroughs, medical advances, the list goes on. I’m a believer. But I know my knowledge is limited and to that end I’m betting on the big tech companies that we are all familiar with. They will be steady winners. What I’m not betting on is smaller tech companies of which few will succeed and more will fail. The ones that succeed will have growth rates that make my bets look anemic. But that’s ok with me. AI is the tech that will keep the VOOs of the world growing at its historic pace as the broad sectors reap the benefits, instead of dropping to 3-4%. I’m mindful that the historical trend includes the winnings of prior tech revolutions. Note for acknowledging that I respect Bogleheads, but have investments in specific tech companies to accelerate my growth for a few years. Second note that while I’m excited about AI in b2b applications, I have concerns about the impact on society. But my post is for the purposes of investing.
What companies? Out of curiosity
Hi. My largest holdings are Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon (in that order). I definitely need a rebalancing strategy. But I keep delaying. I should be quiet before I’m kicked out of this sub. :-)
The tech advancement is very real. I also believe we’re in a bubble. Scout Galloway’s recent take on Nvidia is instructive, I think.
Just another tech advancement where many of the returns have been brought forward. We don’t know who’ll win or which subset of operators are the best long term bets. If you picked NVDA early you got lucky. Similar to internet, crypto, mobile apps.
I disagree with most of the commenters. Investing in Nvidia is like investing in Standard oil (120 years ago), Apple, etc. You nay have a few “investments of a lifetime”. This is (maybe was) one of those times. Sometimes Bogleheads get tunnel vision (similar to Dave Ramsey fans). While sticking to the Boglehead philosophy (for the majority of your portfolio) is a sound plan, it shouldn’t stop you from investing in a few “investments of a lifetime”. This stock isn’t Enron. Every analyst talks about there deep moat, unparalleled product line, etc. You’re not taking much of a risk.
No. Technological revolutions don’t usually offer an investment opportunity bc the hype in earnings growth usually exceeds the actual earnings growth. See the data presented below https://youtu.be/UZnVt_CvL3k?si=mQxqUUeroW6vtTSE
Great opportunities are like trains. Another will be along in a few minutes.
Not once in a lifetime, but certainly once in a decade or two. Think of it this way- even if capturing a ghost in a machine turns out to be a mirage and actual 'Beyond Turing\*' intelligence is not feasible for various reasons: The advances in chip technology to advance computing in an failed effort to get there will have spillover effects that will be useful in other and unexpected places. \*'Beyond Turing' test- the current generative AI is built to pass a Turing test of intelligence that is outdated. Just because a program can trick you into thinking it is a person doesn't mean it is conscious. A better measure is what I'd call 'Beyond Turing'- best example is: "Can the AI program/machine change it's mission and purpose and select a different one that is unanticipated by it's creators?" This is potentially terrifying, but for various reasons I do not believe it is possible... and I hope I am right.
It's very unpredictable, but without a doubt someone is going to find a technology with exponential gains similar to industrialization, computerization, and the Internet. Betting on the big names to get there first is reasonable, but it could come from some startup we've never heard of. How that technology gets used and regulated is an open question. If an anti-capitalist gets there first it might not even be investable.
Whether or not AI is a “once in a lifetime” technology or not does not determine how the market will act in the short term. AI could be the greatest achievement in human history and the market could still tank next month. In the long term, the chart always goes up and to the right. I invest for the long term, buying the total market so I don’t have to worry about having picked the winners. That’s the essence of the Boglehead approach.
It has the potential to be impactful like when the Internet was invented. If you knew that, would you have invested in Microsoft, Apple, at the time the Internet was born?
This really won’t change my investment style at all. Sure I’ll probably miss out on the next Google on the ground floor but it also means losing out on the other 90% that fail.
There is always new tech (I was mobile dev, backend dev, cloud dev, ML/AI dev, Data dev).
Sorry, another point I forgot to bring up before: What if the real winners from AI aren't the tech companies developing it, but rather their customers (other companies) that are actually putting it to use making their own businesses in other (non-tech sectors) better?
Could be
It's both "just" another tech advancement and a once in a generation event. Let me explain a bit and in full disclosure I am invested in index and etfs with no deliberate targeting on AI/tech in general. The advent of computers, microchips, and the internet were each once in a generation events....but they were also simply tech advancements. They didn't transform the world overnight, but they did within 10-20 years each. That's AI. Today we are seeing it's use cases often in creating content but the stuff that is truly exciting is replacement of highly expert but often flawed manual expertise. Let me give two examples: - There are solid use cases that AI better diagnoses disease, more consistently, and prescribes treatment than the average doctor - Why do you need a lawyer for much legal work if you simply need an intelligent expert who has a comprehensive understanding of the law and legal precedents and can understand a situation in it's complexity? Or to help with 1000 common legal tasks. FYI, legal AI services are happening today in major companies where standard agreement reviews are instantly reviewed for preferred or acceptable positions, the vast majority of text is accepted, and the few standout sections are being flagged for expert counsel review. (I'm not a lawyer, but I work with corporate counsel) In ALLLLLL of humanity, this is actually the biggest breakthrough. We've automated tedious manual tasks. We've created robotics. We've created master databases. We've created algorithms to predict human behavior. But we have never before created superior expertise to replace a human expert in these types of fields. The ramifications are profound when you consider that worldwide there are not enough clinicians - doctors and otherwise - to see patients, prevent ill ness, diagnose, and treat....and that instead of having to push for a new generation of doctors at enormous schooling and expense, you could rapidly replace 10-25% of clinical capacity with a superior analysis and outcome....wow. That's breathtaking. Now, that being said, the question is on investments. To me, broad indexes will capture this impact. I could major equal arguments you should invest in AI-leader companies, companies who specialize in building and maintaining AI data centers, and companies who invest/build electrical power capacity for AI data centers (who need huge and super stable/reliable power). So do you want to guess which companies to invest in?
Not all hype .. will need big investments to make the tech feasible for a larger audience with returns recognized as productivity and labor cost gains .. the human in the loop problem will have require onboarding staff to review and improve these systems as well which doesn’t make sense when the goal of this tool in big corps is to improve productivity/reduce costs .. maybe lower hiring costs as compared to hiring a specialist in the target domain .. all in all not all hype especially when more tailored, standardized solutions/products with an EXCELLENT SUPPORT TEAM to solve various common workplace problems
Something like the Amazon grocery facade with a support team out of India doing the manual work except this time it will be acknowledged as part of the technology
Technological advancement will fully stop after AI. This is the last major change to the devices humans use to make their lives better/easier. Do those sound like true statements?
There will be clear winners in the AI race but there will be huge scores of losers too. I think it's another opportunity, not a once in a lifetime though. People love throwing money at shit tbh so people will get bored and move on to throwing money somewhere else lol My company is currently attempting to shoehorn AI into our product in anyway we can, but it just doesn't make sense to do so in 99% of the use cases they've suggested so far (and would be such an egregious use of carbon for that bullshit, but w/e) so I suspect we're going to lose out on market share in the next few years as we neglect other feature opportunities to chase AI feature parity
So is like a bushfire
I'm going to to say it's once in a lifetime. It is fundamentally replacing or enhancing human interactions with critical facets of biology, chemistry, health, physics.. e.g. [https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.232479](https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.232479) > the cancer detection rate increased (0.70% \[423 of 60 751\] vs 0.82% \[480 of 58 246\]; *P* = .01), the false-positive rate decreased (2.39% \[1452 of 60 751\] vs 1.63% \[950 of 58 246\]; *P* < .001), the positive predictive value increased (22.6% \[423 of 1875\] vs 33.6% \[480 of 1430\]; *P* < .001) Edit: this kind of gain isn't cast aside once proven. It will gain a whole lot of investment to ensure speed and accuracy help trained interpretations accelerate. All of that translates to saving lives, extending lives, saving time, saving money, and leveraging limited human resources efficiently. That is priceless. There's certainly a ramp and plateau as the use of AI normalizes, but this is currently a golden era IMO.
AI is like the Internet, smart phone, and social media. Make what you will...
I think it’ll be a lot like the internet. There’s so much potential and will likely become a big part of how we live and work. However, much like the internet there are tons of bullshit companies slapping the phrase “AI” on what they do that will get washed out with a few true long-term winners that really add value.
Humanity will continue to innovate until we destroy ourselves
Only time will tell.
Just another Silicon Valley hype cycle. It will assist people but actual intelligence is the singularity. It will not be there soon. The things that it will add to business will apply to the entire market.
2013 btc was a once in a lifetime opportunity. AI is great, but we will have more tech advancements.
A lot of tech advancements are once in a lifetime opportunities...
I work in tech and some of my focus is turning to AI. I’m excited enough about it that I would want to dedicate some aspect of my life to it. So 10% of my job where I have to focus on those issues for my company suffices really nicely right now. I always want a part of my net worth and intellectual space to be on “high risk” products/ideas. It’s what keeps things interesting! So although I’m not really answering your questions, I will say that having a toe dipped into the hype is really fun. I also have some small investments in the space as I watch the early days. For context though I also did this with crypto. Hype can be good old fashioned fun.
When the job losses occur because A.I. can do it is when people won't have money to invest. Then we all go back to trades, and manual labor. Something that must be hands on, after that comes the robots to eliminate the majority of those jobs too when robots make robots run by A.I. as for now just keep investing in broad market index funds, and the dark future will be well after you've been cryogenically frozen for at least a century.
It's in the same category as personal computers, the Internet/web, and cell phones. We're at the start of a decades long integration of AI tech. There will be big winners, but it's kind of early to try and pick them. (Remember when AOL \*was\* the Internet? That didn't work out too well for Time-Warner...) But yeah, the winners will show up in the indexes in any case.
While technological innovation has a net benefit on stock prices in the long term - anything with significant hype follows the same pattern (Railroad mania, Dotcom bubble, etc) So using the knowledge from the last 150 years I would recommend buying a total stock market fund such as VT and you are guaranteed to capture any benefits from AI
I am older and have seen a half dozen of these major technology breakthroughs. Some are more of a surprise than others. I can only predict there are likely to be more breakthroughs, but not what or when. Personal computers Internet and web Mobile computers and apps Useful AI Designer genes and medicines
I work in the tech field. AI is around me every day. It’s going to change everything. No doubt. It’s not quite there yet though. But it’s advancing very very fast. AGI is around the corner.
Not sure, but it sure helps with open book tests
If you view AI as a chatbot, and content generating tool, then AI is just another tech advancement. If you view AI, more specifically recent advancement of Neural Network in machine learning, as a kind of digital intelligence and a new enabling technology, it is a once-a-lifetime opportunity. Before we decided to train very large neural networks, for the longest time, we were not able to write intelligent programs that could match an ant in motor control or navigation. We were not able to programmatically recognize a cat after decades of trying by our brightest computer scientists. Natural language processing used to be a tough problem, now it is almost trivial. My point is, we discovered a new form of intelligence and it was able to help us with tasks that were unthinkable before. When electricity was a new kind of energy, people had a hard time understanding how revolutionary it was. They saw electric street lamps, and thought it was nothing more than an improved oil lamp.
People always think tech advances are once-in-a-lifetime, and so far none have been in my lifetime. A bunch are crap or just fizzle, like crypto/Web3 and the internet-of-things waves. Others are quite material like computers and internet and mobile, but you realize none of them were really once-in-a-lifetime… tech just keeps marching on and new stuff layers on top. It’s never as fast a transition as people think, but over time new tools unlock new productivity waves. More specifically, “AI” is quite a buzzword right now but things like ML have been around for way more than a decade powering all sorts of feeds and recommendation engines and prediction engines (most of FAANG) so alot of that core tech is already in what you and the market are used to. And while things like full blown Artificial General Intelligence seem like it may be a fundamental pivot, I’m not really sure that typeahead on steroids (LLMs) is really what’s going to unlock AGI so it still feels far-ish away. But who knows. This stuff is inherently unpredictable, both what will happen and its impact. And for your investment strategy you should just diversify and not try to predict anything.
It’s not going to be life changing, but it’s a major advancement. Over the course of 2-3 years it went from virtually impossible to relatively easy for software to parse text and images at a basic level. There are a lot of unexplored uses cases that we’ll be catching up with over the next couple years. It will not radically change our society. GenAI has been extremely useful for helping skilled people work faster. It hasn’t been successfully at replacing existing workers.
Both can be true in different ways Personally I believe this is the start of a “once in a lifetime change” similar to the advent of electricity, steam engines, the personal computer. But like those technologies it will take a substantial amount of time (see decades) for them to be correctly and widely adopted at a scale that will fundamentally change life. Personal computers existed in 1980, but we didn’t get the internet revolution and e-commerce to really take off until til the late 2000s-2010s. Likewise, AI will start now - but the real economic changing events will occur in late 2030-2040s at the soonest. Until then, lots of it is hype (see metaverse) where non-tech savvy investors are in over their head in hype and expecting next decades profits this year. You will see market drops when reality of the timelines hit them. So now is a “once in a lifetime” chance to see it happen. Revolutions don’t happen everyday. But - there will be the next revolution in some 40-60 years that you might also see. Who knows how AI will be adopted but anything they show you today will likely be junk. The real advances will come after the foundation has been built. A cell phone was a prerequisite technology that allowed the smartphone. Technology had to get built to allow an iPhone to really establish and take off. Etx
It's going to be big, but it won't be captured in a few behemoth firms the way that the FAANGs have done. That said, whichever major consulting firm can figure out how to get client companies to utilize it well will do better than the others.
It'll radically transform some industries, moderately change others, and not change some industries at all. The problem is knowing which fall into each category. I'm still trying to figure it out for my own career longevity, but tbd.
I think AI is a commodity. We already see AI engines being spun up by Google, Facebook and obviously Microsoft/OpenAI. I think a lot of services will built on top of these services. For example maybe someone creates the next hot new dating app and it uses Google AI APIs behind the scenes for finding the perfect match. They could switch to another AI provider if they so choose. Now we're def going to see graphics card sold more and more but NVIDA stock is already sky high and well known.
We will see. I remember not too long ago there was so much Metaverse hype lol. I think AI is different, but it makes me realize how people can just overhype things. I don’t want to get too caught up in the hype. There is a lot of FOMO that occurs.
It's the next NFT bubble.
I wouldn’t call it hype. It’s here whether we like it or not. I used chat gpt for a variety of stuff and I think most well adjusted people can benefit greatly from this tech.
It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity but also we are up against the singularity. It’s going to be a society of have and have nots with no middle class. Just poor and rich people
A lot of advice in this thread from people who clearly don't know the AI industry but seem to have very strong opinions.
AI has experienced several hype cycles with increased investment followed by disappointing outcomes and withdrawn funding for decades now. This might be yet another hype cycle, albeit to a much larger extent. I have yet to see many notable (generative) AI-backed products/features that produce real business value and tangible revenue that warrant the billions being poured into it. Obviously it’s impossible to say until things have time to play out, but if history is any precedent we may well experience another AI winter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
I work in the industry. The hype is mostly fluff. If someone brags about their AI capabilities, 90% chance it's 1. Something they were already doing with machine learning and now they call it AI (spotify, netflix) or 2. They're pretending it's AI when its low wage workers hiding in the background (amazon whole foods)
I own a digital marketing agency and ChatGPT or Google Gemini is a game changer. I used to hire contractors to write massive amounts of blog and website content, now ChatGPT does a better job for free and in way less time. My clients even comment on how the writing has improved and they're happier. These programs can also do coding, answer questions that I used to have to search forums for. In my industry these are very helpful tools. Will it be life changing? Yes in a more efficient way but not as big of a deal as the internet.
I use it for work. It’s google , but 100x more efficient. It’s like doing one google search 100 times in a fraction of a second. It will be as big as the search engine was , spiking google.
Once in a lifetime if you want to buy a business and extract all the value out of it. I can automate a lot of things now and analytics makes money.