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Discussion (70 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Either AI will get cheap enough and blow up and destroy the economy by eating everyone's lunch and killing off sectors left and right. Or it will become an uncontrolable weapon destroying the internet and killing off people on the battlefield. Or it will tank the economy because there may not be a way to monopolize it making the billions of investments moot leading them to their only leverage of hoarding up all the resources pricing out the competition but also destroying the industry. And maybe all of those at once.
These people are the main reason why AI companies have unlimited funding, and can afford to buy global RAM supply for years in the future despite their expenses exceed revenue by billions.
Can't afford thing? Gamble on stock market instead.
Ridiculous argument that already rich people make.
Shorting doesn’t only require you to be right. It requires perfectly timing when the market will realize you’re right.
Anthropic net loss in 2025 was $42 bln, OpenAI $38.5 bln. Both are spending enormous amounts with no obvious path to profitability.
I would try to solve this by making the market structure reflect the underlying difficulty: we have to decide what capacity to produce years in advance, to construct the memory fabs. So this should be a futures market, and a capacity crunch would affect short-term-futures, but leave full term futures at the same price. Because the companies supplying the memory can just construct more capacity to fill those futures at the same cost regardless of the AI demand.
Since almost everybody is a consumer of those companies, I do suggest we reuse the governance system we have that solves other "everybody problems".
Same way nVidia did through the crypto insanity - make sure they're supplying enough to the consumer market so it doesn't get completely destroyed and pulls down the other parts of the consumer market they're reliant for long term success.
> Should we blame this on memory companies or the AI companies bidding for memory?
Blame doesn't change the outcomes, neither does it improve the negative consequences. Think in terms of "what does destruction of our consumer market mean for my prosperity?" not "oh, how do defend poor companies again?"
The question of choice between a profitable vs unprofitable venture is easy. But yeah, to what extent is choosing profitable instead of VERY profitable a breach of duty to shareholders?
> Contrary to what many believe, U.S. corporate law does not impose any enforceable legal duty on corporate directors or executives of public corporations to maximize profits or share price. The economic case for shareholder-value maximization similarly rests on incorrect factual claims about the structure of corporations, including the mistaken claims that shareholders “own” corporations, that they have the only residual claim on the firm’s profits, and that they are principals who hire and control directors to act as their agents.
[0] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
The shareholders own the company. It is their property. They paid for it, they own it, and likewise they can do whatever they want with it.
It would be crazy if I proposed you let me drive your car to work everyday. Why? Because you own your car, it's your property, and it works for your own interest. Basically every human agrees with this logic, but somehow "the company is just focused on pleasing shareholders" escapes this.
It's more like voting for public officials. Shareholders can vote to fire a CEO if they feel he's not acting in their best interests no mattter if that's the case or not.
Raid your own assets, cut costs manically so you can have a few splendid quarters with stock buyback bonanza or focus on long term value creation, which a lot of times involves giving at least a passing tought to other stakeholders such as client and employees?
The getting was great for some time for HP shareholders under Fiorina, or GE shareholders under Welch. Lots of them left the sinking ships at the right moment, but I bet that lot of the others left holding the bag, would have preferred having bought AAPL.
avoiding the destruction of good faith with consumers is a legitimate business interest
memory companies could have attempted to protect consumers, at least a little, but the AI money machine goes brrrr
Well if your thesis is that they should have acted differently, then we should blame the laissez-faire capitalists.
Unless you know, your main and only PC/notebook just died and need a replacement ASAP, they you don't really have an option to not buy. And no, the used market (where I live) is just as fucked, proportionally reflecting the retail gouging, with people wanting quite a lot of cash for tower PCs and notebooks from the Pentium 4 - Core 2 Duo era.
> Prices will crash.
Does your crystal ball also say when exactly? If my laptop broke, then I need a replacement now in the overpriced market, not in X years when prices will crash.
I think we're seeing the end of the PC as we know it, personally.
And I am a SWE.I am not making bad money. I can't imagine what others are going through.
> Enhanced memory performance, system stability, and compatibility with CXMT memory chips for improved low-latency operation.
A year ago I'd hardly know what CXMT is.
When a few people have so much wealth that they are no longer price-sensitive, they bid up the price of everything and anything of value be it stocks, real estate, computer hardware, fine arts, sports teams, etc.
The result is that a business which tries to make quality products at reasonable prices will fail. They aren’t luxurious enough for the people with money. They aren’t cheap enough for the people without. Customers in the middle hardly exist. Any valuable good that is genuinely scarce will inevitably become a luxury.
If the consumer had access to this RAM, they might all just run local or semi-local AI. It's important to outbid them so you can rent AI to them, and extract money from them in a million other ways while they use it.
Yes, it's the manufacturers fault, not the unbelievable market demand.
We are all Capitalists, until the Market comes after the stuff we love.
Anyone with half a brain isn't a "Capitalist" (with a big C, like in your example) which is why every single prosperous nation (including USA) regulates markets to avoid destruction of their prosperity and society.
1/ speak for yourself
2/ where is your capital and your means of production? Your machines? Your factories? Your raw materials, your tools? How long do you survive tomorrow when you quit your job and you have no other income?
You're not a capitalist. You're just a consumer for them to suck dry. The faster you learn it, the better off you will be.
Someone misspelled "Altman", https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...