socialcommenter

Is it only a 10% annual return? That's not a lot.

I disagree on so many levels that it would be impossible to have a reasonable debate. To give only my most charitable counterpoint:

(If, big if*) successful AGI will be such an accelerant to human thought, it should be able to reproduce every human work, every scientific theory, etc. without any training data, in a decade.

All we have ever done as humans is look at the world and ourselves, and then create new data out of what we've seen[0]. Now imagine how much parallel compute we could throw at doing the same thing.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-XyJ3GlrWw

* Big, enormous, trillion dollar if.

And the typical book only sees 1 copy sold?

In a just world, the punishment can be more than just the sum of the direct damages, otherwise there's no incentive to stop reoffending.

Anthropic (and friends) proved they're willing to do obviously illegal things, and it didn't end them. Why do we think they stopped after doing it once?

Maintainer exhaustion is totally a secondary effect, not intended.

Malice, incompetence, etc. My question is, how much does it matter _why_ the problem exists because of AI/is being exacerbated by AI?

Kelley's blog post reads as follows:

The post implies you were diligently fuzzing your Zig code, while during our calls the Bun team told us that they were not fuzzing anything.

That's not compatible with saying that Kelley made the misleading claims. Bun told him they were not fuzzing. If they brought receipts later that indicate they lied, what should we be left to believe?

It's crazy that people have to eat the long payback time to switch to renewable, while these wildly profitable (maybe?) data centers can just drink excessively from the grid or switch on natural gas turbines, and skip the lead times/upfront costs.

If they're so productive, make them eat the cost and lead time so we can all have a cheap, functional electricity grid. It would be so easy to mandate no new data centres unless they can procure their own renewable sources of electricity.

I'm not the commenter claiming that this currently violates GAAP - that's someone else.

To summarise my opinion, subjectively it seems like a better distinction could be made in GAAP to look through this agreement and others like it. (Hypothetically if Hertz agreed to rent back rather than repurchase, like mentioned in a previous comment, that would also be suspect). But I'm not the one to propose what the preconditions would be.

Looking at the structure of the deal and analyzing the risks is perfectly valid. Screaming "accounting subterfuge!" when this is simple GAAP accounting is a different matter.

It can be legal and still be subterfuge. Everyone involved in the deal has a clear incentive to ensure Coreweave gets to recognise revenue, and gets to show growth on paper. It's the same reason why SoftBank paying OpenAI $800mln for services in 2025 stinks a bit - they don't need the services but the deal goes ahead anyway.

This simply isn't true. Google "DGX Cloud". Nvidia has a real business selling cloud-based compute for training foundation models and running heavy AI workloads, and leasing compute from its hyperscaler chip customers instead of competing with them was a strategic decision Nvidia made.

Sorry - you're entirely correct here. Though remember we're talking about a scenario where Coreweave aren't able to sell their capacity. If there's such a dramatic hole in demand, who are NVIDIA selling their compute to? This repo agreement won't give NVIDIA capacity that they need in the 90% of cases but will force them to purchase capacity they won't need in the 10%.

s/10%/some other probability/

there's no accounting issue here

This seems like a really narrow interpretation of what's going on. Is there any room to doubt/discuss whether GAAP rules could be improved? Or why the deal has been structured this way?

Why shouldn't we look through this arrangement? NVIDIA isn't in the business of purchasing outsourced GPU time. They could make better use of unused GPUs by repurchasing them for resale to another customer. If they're not doing that, it already seems likely that they specifically did this to guarantee that the revenue could be recognised.

Sure, NVIDIA's risk exposure could (legally) sit on their books without being recognised until it's already too late. That doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinize them.

Interesting take - upvoted you. I'm not convinced it's been the optimal management strategy, but you're succinctly explaining what they have done, not what they should have done, and in that sense you have a good point.

Still leaves huge questions about ROI ($26tln of TAM, anyone???) and doesn't quell the concerns brought forward by AI detractors though.

Out of $13Bln of 2025 revenue, OpenAI received $867 million from one customer (less charitably, one bankroller), SoftBank. And $300 million from Microsoft[0]. That's more than a drop in the bucket, especially given that they're not the only players complicit in being both an investor and a customer.

Also are we sure it's all at arm's length? Barring a full audit, it's not possible to guarantee that there's no round-tripping or overstating of revenue. With Microsoft also being a provider for OpenAI, they could be creatively using set-off, or using SG&A, in order to overstate their revenue/gross margin/inference profit margin. I of course have no proof, extraordinary claims etc. etc. It's unlikely but we should at least debate the possibility. They have such a huge collective incentive to do it.

[0] https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/ (no affiliation with the website owner, who has a unique bias in this)

Until all of your interactions are trained into future model releases, and another competitor steps in and takes all your "R&D" straight out of the model.

Now it's open season for literally anyone.

Interesting anecdote - is the 2/3rd of costs related to service charges, or the all-in lifetime costs of all the advertising that the cleaner has to pay for?

There are definitely good, cheap/free ways for businesses to get their name out there, e.g. Facebook pages for your local city, so I'm pretty firmly opposed to how much money is sloshing around in online advertising. It's so extractive.

Ethics and morals are not "arbitrary".

Your source for 1/3 please? Google suggests smaller discounts.

Are they playing other games to make it economical for the insurer? Kickbacks and removing your choice of repairer so Tesla can patch it on the cheap?

Running with this analogy, the two sides of the AI argument are the people who think they can fire their plumber and electrician now that they have a drill driver, and the people who know it doesn't work that way...

Heisting multiple billions worth of crypto would have the same issues, just to a smaller degree. If that much illicit money is on the line, `mJurisdiction` which normally looks the other way might be tempted to investigate and confiscate it for their own benefit.

They also can't easily sell that amount quickly without repercussions (and without another institution like an exchange).

You're right, but only to a limited degree.

I was curious about this point when discussion came up on HN just recently. I don't see how you could "assign" each non-QR address a new quantum resistant address unless they "claim" it themselves somehow. What can possibly happen to an uneducated mom-and-pop bitcoin holder who never takes up their claim? Someone else who cracks their private key would be in an identical position to them w.r.t authenticating themselves and doing such a claim first - thus it becomes a race

Shareholder returns go to the top 10% of Americans (who own 90% of US equities), so any argument about prosperity impairment from impaired immigration is going to fall on deaf ears in this context.

"We fail to tax our corporations adequately, so the proceeds of rampant deregulation and profiteering don't benefit the general populace".

I don't necessarily disagree with your stance but this seems like a weak justification (it's pragmatic, to be fair)

Do understand, though, that market return will struggle to achieve 9% for the coming decades. A 9% annualised return would put the US stock market at 50% of world GDP in 10 years (edit: 20) and something like 90% of world GDP in 30 years (edit: 50 years). Cost of goods, and your customer's money, both have to come out of global GDP too.

(The current value of around 25% of global GDP doesn't even include the 1.75 trillion SpaceX which alone would be another almost 1%...)

ETF expense ratios are small but still mean retail will underperform anyway. It's an unfortunate situation all around.

Facial recognition would be able to detect all the strangers around you, whereas audio would surely only pick up people nearer the device, and presumably wouldn't be able to tell people apart/identify them. You're right about network data; if they're using Wifi/BT probes then they can already find and identify everyone in the vicinity.

I'm curious why you're using past tense by the way?

https://archive.md/TxupO

With the guard rails up, right? Right?

I think you're right - outside of COVID, it's not fringe, it's an accepted norm.

Personally I at least wish sick people would mask up on planes! Much more efficient than everyone else masking up or risking exposure.

I specifically wasn't referring to that instance (if anything I'm thinking more of the recent increase in measles outbreaks), I myself don't hold a strong view on COVID vaccinations. The trade-offs, and herd immunity thresholds, are different for different diseases.

Do we know that 0.1% prevalence of "unvaccinated" AI agents won't already be terrible?

This argument has the same obvious flaws as the anti-mask/anti-vax movement (which unfortunately means there will always be a fringe that don't care). These things are allowed to interact with the outside world, it's not as simple as "users can blow their own system up, it's their responsibility".

I don't need to think hard to speculate on what might go wrong here - will it answer spam emails sincerely? Start cancelling flights for you by accident? Send nuisance emails to notable software developers for their contribution to society[1]? Start opening unsolicited PRs on matplotlib?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46394867

Really sorry in advance, but I thought this whole HN thread could use a bit of positivity. I turned your satire into a mad-lib and asked AI to fill it in in a happy way.

But not me, I’m a dreamer. I have gifts, like the courage to kindle hope, or the patience to lose track of time if I am laughing with friends. Thank god there are no frowns here in this sun-drenched park where people are gathering to get together for picnics or music or stargazing.

Have a nice day!

(A human posted this)

I tend to think you're right about what happened in this instance.

It contrasts with your first paragraph though; for the record do you think AI agents are a house-burn-down-toaster AND it was used neglectfully by the human, or just the human-at-fault thing?

The operator (airline) pays the compensation to the victims in the first instance, right?

The label and the consequence go to two different parties, both of whom are responsible in some way. Sounds reasonable.

https://archive.md/ks83q

Let's spare the guy some web traffic.