"Despite massive investments & widespread hype around #ArtificialIntelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech...

there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth... With no impact on the bottom line, mainstream corporate America is pulling back & starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins."
https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector

ht: @pluralistic

#Tech #AI #Business #News #US #USA

(1/X)

I've become fascinated learning more about how the current AI bubble will pop, and what that'll look like.

First up, we have an entertaining historical perspective on bubbles. The thesis here is that much of the "pro AI" vs. "anti AI" discourse may be asking the wrong questions; focusing on the demand side rather than the supply side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J2Fb1bBufA

#economics

@veronica @pluralistic I have looked at two AI tools, one is a simple line completion model that guesses at what I'm about to type. It's a simple model that runs locally and is right about 80% of the time. Overall I think it offers a benefit.

The other is a big model that tries to figure out the next few lines, and even after letting it at a code base for some time, the guesses are wildly inaccurate, and mess with keystrokes, so I wind up having that inaccurate code injected, which means I then need to remove it before typing what I was already planning to type. This has lowered my productivity. I have used this model to generate test cases; about 80% of the cases made sense, the rest needed minor tweaks, so there's a potential use case there.

I will try getting an advanced model to build a small application, but at this point I expect I'll spend as much time fixing the generated code as it would have taken to write it in the first place.

One place where it might be useful is generating code in a language I am familiar with but haven't mastered. At that point the logic would still be auditable, and I could use that review to raise my level of expertise.

@pluralistic At the tech conference I was at last week, which was of course 2/3 AI, it was often taken as self-evident that AI had given us huge gains. I should look up some of those people and send them this ...

> "Perhaps most importantly, AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, all of which shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins."

Figures. These are all things the tech industry couldn't care less about.

@pluralistic https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117501317286872418

Oh, anyone reading this thread as result of @pluralistic boosting my quote toot would probably also appreciate this. Excellent (albeit depressing) analysis of AI as an enclosure movement for the information commons: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117501317286872418

This is fine.

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117501317286872418

That's major news.

If anybody reads this OpenAI post and thinks AI found a zero day - no. This one was patched months ago, not found by OpenAI, and reported by an old-school fuzzer.

oooh, this is so cool, you can see the marcescence in the autumn leaves in infrared! Healthy leaves are bright pink, while withering leaves are golden-yellow, as they reflect less IR.

The last photo is an un-edited crop directly from the camera, you can see how most leaves are more blue than pink. The blue channel of that camera captures just IR, while the others capture IR + their respective colour, resulting in more blue -> more IR. #photography #infrared

THE INTERNET

We do not live in a fucking democracy: https://www.leicester.news/bbc-edits-out-pride-pins-on-university-challenge-in-orwellian-move/

Do feel free to complain to the BBC about this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints
And maybe mention how many times Reform and far right folks are featured in their shit but apparently being Queer on the BBC isn't allowed...

#UKPol #LGBTQ #Activism

In #Munich, you might see (and hear, feel) this weird machine, making weird vibration and sound sweeps. This is part of the Giga-M project. Its goal is to create a detailed 3D map of the underground in Munich and surrounding areas (in total 1100 square kilometres) that will be made available as #OpenData to assist in planning geothermic plants. Switching away from fossil fuel for heating. Impressive!

https://giga-m.de (in German)

#Geothermic #Vibroseis #Research

This analyst's report from Apollo about AI uses the term "S&P 493" to refer to the "S&P 500 minus the Mag 7" - because if you take out the AI companies, the S&P 500 is tanking. https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector

Did my annual @eff donation at @BSidesPDX, and got a nice @pluralistic enshittification pin.

I've never attended a peer-based writers' workshop and probably never will, but this piece by @pluralistic struck a chord from when I was at art college and doing 'crits' with other students. The benefits of this kind of thing are not necessarily what you might expect. https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/23/better-to-give/

The #AIBubble will pop; all bubbles do. There will be something small to salvage. Meanwhile there’ll be damage.

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life after AI : How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before it's Too Late
by Cory @pluralistic Doctorow

Doctorow's new book is insightful, concise, clear and accessible to the average reader. This is my favourite AI read this year. If you have energy for just one book on AI, then I recommend this one. Borrowed from and in demand at #LibrariesACT.

547 words on “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. (29282 words total) #dailywords

My favorite example of adversarial interoperability is the Hush-a-Phone. @pluralistic