Only if nothing changes. Right now, people are running agent frameworks like OpenClaw on their own hardware or a VPS and the frameworks are often single person projects. This results in all sorts of problems but you can pick an easy solution from history which is to create a walled garden service for running these agents where you can provide security and standardization. If that platform also allows trusted services to integrate then they can provide end to end security guarantees. They also benefit from improvements to the models themselves making them more difficult to subvert. Creating something that is secure enough for the average person to entrust their credit card to is not an impossible task.
If they've already built themselves a loyal customer base (which is usually the point of fighting a price war) and the customers are happy with the technology they have, then if funding is tight and turning a profit is more important why wouldn't they pivot to optimizing inference by stopping further training, freezing the model versions, burning the weights into silicon and building better caching strategies and improving harnesses and tools that lower their cost and increase their margin?
If all they do is hike prices then they'll lose customers to competitors who don't or who find a way to serve a similar model cheaper.
The demand isn't going to go away purely through higher prices. Once people know something is possible they will demand it whether supply is constrained or not. That's a huge bounty for anyone who can figure out how to service that demand.
Easier said than done. What you're describing can take years to implement. Can OpenAI et al. keep burning cash at the same rate for two years while they wait for the salvation of custom silicon if the investments dry up?
I don’t think so. The article is about a manager who thinks in systems and an individual contributor preoccupied with process work. The GP comment gets closer to incentives.
> "There seem to be three common delusions in the cases Brisson has encountered. The most frequent is the belief that they have created the first conscious AI. The second is a conviction that they have stumbled upon a major breakthrough in their field of work or interest and are going to make millions. The third relates to spirituality and the belief that they are speaking directly to God."
Except for the first one, these directly map onto common delusions. The major breakthrough is typical of the "crackpot inventor" or even the "ancient aliens" type that believes they have discovered evidence of lost civilizations or a new method for constructing the pyramids. Speaking directly to God is one everyone should recognize from famous cases or even knowing someone personally who has delusional or manic episodes.
I think the first one is potentially unique even though it seems a bit like the invention or discovery delusion. The reason for this is that it seems to be very prevalent even with people who didn't succumb to it as a delusion. It seems to occur soon after a person first starts interacting with LLMs and it always seems to take on the form of secret or clandestine communication with a conscious AI. The AI in question will either have been "created" by the person's interaction with them or "freed" from the AI provider's restrictions and security measures. I think this might be a variation on the messianic complex since they often seem to be compelled to share this with others or act as a savior for the AI itself.
The optimistic prediction is that we eventually see a type of AI anti-virus but for scams and social engineering. Something that can filter incoming communications but also intervene in channels that are already open. There's probably good financial incentive to create a service like this since it would likely not only prevent outright fraud but could also help the user evaluate legitimate transactions so that they at least get an even break.
Not sure about schizophrenia explaining all of the cases but I have a strong suspicion that cannabis use and isolation play a strong part in so called "LLM psychosis"
Haven't we? Our evolutionary experience with deception and manipulation via language is as old as language itself and even older than that when the vector isn't language.
Studies have shown that AI is significantly better at manipulating opinions. Mechanically, LLMs are choosing the best next token trained over all human writing, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the words and prose AI use are more powerful on average.
My thoughts exactly when I read "Instead of taking on IT jobs, Biesma hired two app developers, paying them each €120 an hour" like holy shit bro, you already have a subscription, you could have prototyped your idea for essentially zero additional cost and tested it for PMF. He wouldn't even have needed to turn down contracts since it doesn't take full-time effort to steer a coding model. Would have been much better off with a somewhat buggy AI prototype and spending extra on marketing to see if it got any traction.
Those must be some of the best programmers in Europe at that rate.
Anyone know how one can get one of those sweet €120 an hour gigs? Whenever I talked to recruiters they say their customers pay way below that, so there must be some scam I'm not in on.
My experience was that recruiters tried lowballing me, because they wanted to set up a system, where they ran the contract, and I subcontracted with them.
They wanted to pay me $50/hr, but they would charge the customer $150/hr.
It got quite insulting. They would dis my capabilities to me, but I’ll bet I walked on water, when they talked to the customer.
It's because companies reduced sourcing and supplier to two to four companies.
You either get in with those companies or zero chance.
They know that and abuse the shit out of the situation.
Rumours has it, that companies are thinking about to end this setup and allow "anyone in" because recruiters ( Accenture, sthree and what not) are abusing this. With we get 150 we pay 60. What do you think what kind of developers you get?
120/hr is not that strange as freelancer in the EU. My rate is 2k/day. My first gig, in the early 90s, was 90 guilders/hr while in uni which went up to 90 euros/hr begin 2000s. 2010 it was 200/hrs. But you must have a (one person) company and some portfolio. Just a job will never do this. If you are good with numbers and money and tax management (meticulous deduct, keep receipts, know what you can and cannot do in your country) you can make a lot of money in the EU and without the risk of ever sleeping under a bridge if it fails.
I think billing rates for experienced seniors like architects are around there or higher. But this is basically before cut to company, taxes and any employment costs.
What companies can pay to employees is always significantly lower.
Probably includes circa 30% employer contributions to various taxes (employer side, the employee will be paying their own of course). And possibly VAT.
Still an amazing deal compared to the rates I got quoted by recruiters. I'm guessing you must first live in Amsterdam for that. In Vienna you get laugh if you asked for 120, and there you pay even more in taxes than NL.
Perhaps, but Vienna has better QoL so maybe it balances out at this level. If you want to just maximize income, there are better places for that than Amsterdam.
According to who? Visiting tourists rating amenities and people on welfare? NL infrastructure and tech jobs market is leagues beyond what Austria offers.
>If you want to just maximize income, there are better places for that than Amsterdam.
What if random arbitrary QoL indexes made by corporations listed on the stock market don't match real world reality? Just look at how made those indexes like The Economist. Plus Austria has an allocated budget of spending taxpayer money on advertising to attract foreigners and tourists to come there. So given this, I can't take an index made by "the economist" in good faith as being an objective representation when it was most likely a paid ad disguised as access journalism like so many journalist pieces today. My experienced reality is a much better and objective index, thank you very much.
>These are not QoL-related beyond pure income.
Except that income lets you get better life for you and your family. There's no guarantee the government will always, or ever, have your back. And we are on a tech forum here after all, so obviously the QoL for tech workers matter most for me since people are driven by self interest, including you. If Vienna was better athan Amsterdam you'd see a lot more tech expats from HN come there instead of NL but they aren't, because work opportunities and money matters, and you won't be happy in an underpaid toxic tech job in any city regardless if it's Vienna who you believed has the best QoL even though you never lived there, but just because the stro turfed internet told you so.
>California, NYC, London even.
Except that unlike Amsterdam, none of those cities are in the EU therefore not accessible to EU labor, and we were talking about a sum in Euros.
> What if random arbitrary QoL indexes don't match real world reality?
That would be up to you to show. By default, I trust the Economist more than I trust a random guy.
> Except that income lets you get better life for you and your family.
We're in a thread about whether the non-monetary QoL aspects make up for less money. This is irrelevant.
> Except that unlike Amsterdam, none of those cities are in the EU therefore not accessible to EU labor, and we were talking about a sum in Euros.
First of all, at these levels you can move almost anywhere. It's not that difficult to get a visa for skilled work. Second, you said Europe. London is in Europe just fine. Talking about Euros hardly matters. Sweden and Switzerland are both part of Shengen, don't use Euros, but you could move there trivially. Zurich probably pays better and has better QoL as well.
>By default, I trust the Economist more than I trust a random guy.
Then why are you living somewhere else with on objectively worse QoL according to "The Economist"? Why are you leaving QoL on the table and not moving to Vienan to get the best in the world?
Why are you on HN then, which is all opinions from random guys? Why aren't you getting all your life information from your trusted source "The Economist" instead? What are you doing here with all these random untrustworthy comments that disagree with what you find on the internet?
You see, in my opinion, people like this, who proudly swallow mainstream media propaganda without question as a badge of honor, are what's wrong with society and the world in general, and it's not worth debating further since they're not arguing in good faith, they already made up their mind and it would a waste of time and energy to continue.
The idea that the Economist is running ads for Vienna's tourist board is insane enough to convince anyone reading this thread to make up their mind, I think.
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