Hacker News Reader

Comment by Altaba | Hacker News Reader

Ben is wrong; demand for compute, aka revenue backlogs, is mythical and will collapse, simply because of two reasons :

1. Circular investment/spending.

2. Too much capital in the system, so returns cannot be hit regardless because the barrier is too high. (Evidence being every capital cycle in history)

View on HN

I think more interesting take here would be WHEN this will happen. I don't think Ben, or anyone else, thinks we wont have some sort of correction or stabilization in supply/demand (he has said as much) But when will that occur? 2 months? 2 years? 20 years?

well its typically when it becomes clear that the private equity firms taking the risk decide they can not get the returns they need, forcing the backstoppers such as Nvidia to take that burden, and the whole ecosystem collapses.

I guess my point is that until that collapse, returns are very very very good. This can (and probably will) go on for a decent amount of time more, regardless of the inevitable things you point out.

My guess is at least another 2 years, as most people don't use AI yet, or maybe more precisely, AI is not used in the underlying workflows (which are invisible to the consumer) that make up most people's jobs.

Who knows if I am right. My original post was just pointing out that what you say is about timing, not whether it's true or not, because of course its true.

Yes, agreed, it is timing. I think a sign we are getting closer is the new equity issuances, which kind of are leveraging the current environment and the retail excitement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com