---
categories:
- AI and Machine Learning
date: '2024-07-29 21:18:00'
draft: false
tags:
- linkblog
title: GenAI and the Trough of Disillusionment
type: posts
url: /2024/07/29/genai-and-the-trough-of-disillusionment/
---

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>There have been a bunch of recent stories about the GenAI hype not panning out so well.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:indieblocks/like {"empty":false} -->
<div class="wp-block-indieblocks-like"><div class="u-like-of h-cite"><p><i>Likes <a class="u-url p-name" href="https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ai-optimism-vs-ai-arms-race/">The Game Theory of AI CapEx</a> by <span class="p-author">David Cahn</span>.</i></p></div><div class="e-content"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>A story from Sequoia Capital, who have a lot of money riding on AI investments, talks about the power dynamics at play between large cloud providers. They're all buying a bunch of GPUs because they're worried their competitors will beat them to it - a very rational and normal reason.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></div></div>
<!-- /wp:indieblocks/like -->

<!-- wp:indieblocks/like {"empty":false} -->
<div class="wp-block-indieblocks-like"><div class="u-like-of h-cite"><p><i>Likes <a class="u-url p-name" href="https://futurism.com/investors-concerned-ai-making-money">Investors Are Suddenly Getting Very Concerned That AI Isn't Making Any Serious Money</a>.</i></p></div><div class="e-content"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Big investors like Goldman Sachs are starting to wonder where the magical human level intelligence that they were promised by OpenAI and friends is. Early stage investment has significantly dried up</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></div></div>
<!-- /wp:indieblocks/like -->

<!-- wp:indieblocks/like {"empty":false} -->
<div class="wp-block-indieblocks-like"><div class="u-like-of h-cite"><p><i>Likes <a class="u-url p-name" href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/?ref=ed-zitrons-wheres-your-ed-at-newsletter">How Does OpenAI Survive?</a>.</i></p></div><div class="e-content"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Ed Zitron does some napkin maths that suggests OpenAI might struggle to stick around much longer without significant breakthroughs - they will have to keep raising and in this climate that might be hard, even for Sam Altman.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></div></div>
<!-- /wp:indieblocks/like -->

<!-- wp:indieblocks/like {"empty":false} -->
<div class="wp-block-indieblocks-like"><div class="u-like-of h-cite"><p><i>Likes <a class="u-url p-name" href="https://www.404media.co/websites-are-blocking-the-wrong-ai-scrapers-because-ai-companies-keep-making-new-ones/">Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)</a>.</i></p></div><div class="e-content"><!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Meanwhile LLM companies continue to steadily tank their reputation by changing their user agent strings (which are used to identify their bots when they scrape your website) on a regular basis so that it's hard to know what to block.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></div></div>
<!-- /wp:indieblocks/like -->