It's surreal to see Uber brought up as directly analogous to Enron when everyone I know in SF completely switched from taxis to Uber/Lyft many years ago, raved about the improvement, and can't...
It's surreal to see Uber brought up as directly analogous to Enron when everyone I know in SF completely switched from taxis to Uber/Lyft many years ago, raved about the improvement, and can't imagine going back. I know there was a bubble where investors were overly excited about Uber years ago, they're less excited about it now, and the prices are up a bit, but the product is still here. Taxis and city transit were already bad and it's far from obvious to me that the situation would be better now if more people had sat around waiting on them to get good instead of making rideshare services. (I still dutifully vote for all kinds of public improvements in the city.)
I totally believe that there's a bubble in businesses building on current AI tech, but I expect that mainly has to do with there being many more people trying to get in early than there are good workable business ideas right now for the current technology level, and not because the technology is going to top out right here. I don't think the companies at the center making the biggest models (OpenAI) are going to die. They have absolutely no shortage of research directions to make current models much cheaper and new models much more powerful. The article seems to posit that copyright cases are maybe going to kill OpenAI (weird that Doctorow almost seems to be cheering for copyright here), but a recent case is looking good for AI companies. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are confident enough right now that they're offering to cover any legal cases for customers related to copyright issues from using their models. Even if copyright proved to be a big obstacle for AI companies, I fully believe they'd soon find ways to deal with the issue through training on fully licensed or artificial data.
I feel like the general public's annoyance with the overhyped cryptocurrency bubbles has created a market for tech-industry-skeptic articles, and this article is filling that role more than providing insight on the technology and the future. I think people who primarily try to understand the tech industry as a social phenomena of certain subjects being either hyped or overhyped will understand the future less well than people who spend more time directly thinking about the technology and its possibilities.
Doctorow continues to never miss. I've not seen someone understand how tech and finance influence each other and together influence society as much as this guy.
Doctorow continues to never miss. I've not seen someone understand how tech and finance influence each other and together influence society as much as this guy.
One example of a miss is saying that nothing of value happened due to Uber. I use Lyft instead, and prices are higher now, but maybe he doesn't remember what calling a cab was like? His guess as...
One example of a miss is saying that nothing of value happened due to Uber. I use Lyft instead, and prices are higher now, but maybe he doesn't remember what calling a cab was like?
His guess as to where AI is going isn't very clear and it's no more informed than anyone else's. Putting self-driving cars in the same bucket as AI chatbots makes little sense. Talking about Cruise's troubles without mentioning Waymo doesn't make a lot of sense.
Generally speaking, I expect that Doctorow's articles will be popular and shared widely, and I will dislike them for saying some popular but probably wrong thing.
To me, the article implies that the experiences on Uber and Lyft are better, not because the business model is fundamentally better, but because the service is heavily subsidized by investment...
To me, the article implies that the experiences on Uber and Lyft are better, not because the business model is fundamentally better, but because the service is heavily subsidized by investment capital and operated at a loss. As far as I know, this is still true for Lyft, but not for Uber as of recently. I agree that the experience as a fare is definitely better on Uber and Lyft, but less so for the driver who faces the depreciation on their vehicle, lower fares, higher fees, and increased liability.
If we decided to spend billions operating the traditional cab system or public transportation at a loss, they would likewise improve dramatically, but would still be equally fiscally unsustainable. Which gets to the nature of his point: it's not whether these things are "good" or "bad", but are they bubbles (he thinks they are) and, if so, will they produce something that's lasts after they are gone?
FWIW, I hadn't thought of the question before and enjoyed considering his opinion.
The prices were unsustainable but the apps seem to be here to stay. There will be a business for someone at prices that drivers accept. Maybe with less coverage, though. Public transportation...
The prices were unsustainable but the apps seem to be here to stay. There will be a business for someone at prices that drivers accept. Maybe with less coverage, though.
Public transportation actually does operate at a loss most of the time. (The New York subway is $48 billion in debt, apparently.) This doesn't seem to have resulted in dramatic improvements in service?
I think with time we've come to accept that losing money on public transportation is common, but there are broader benefits for society.
His argument isn't about quality of service, but about profitability and sustainability. @carsonc put it into decent words elsewhere in this thread, but the key concept is that Uber is...
I use Lyft instead, and prices are higher now, but maybe he doesn't remember what calling a cab was like?
His argument isn't about quality of service, but about profitability and sustainability. @carsonc put it into decent words elsewhere in this thread, but the key concept is that Uber is fundamentally not a profitable business and propped up by VC funding. They've now had consecutive quarters of slight profitability for the first time in company history. With a revenue of approximately ~9.26 milliards slimmed down to like 300 millions of actual profit. And while I have not fact-checked Doctorow's claims about this profit being the result of some clever financial wizardry rather than a business model that lasts because they are still losing money on every ride, I'm willing to believe him on that.
Putting self-driving cars in the same bucket as AI chatbots makes little sense.
He doesn't, though? He explictly states that they are different buckets of the AI bubble. High-stakes and low-stakes and that he expects them to fare differently, even though they low-stakes models do depend on the big expensive models to some extent.
Weren't the other companies in the other bubbles unsustainable too? The article is based on the broad concept that sometimes investors lost money (that's how bubbles work) but something useful is...
Weren't the other companies in the other bubbles unsustainable too? The article is based on the broad concept that sometimes investors lost money (that's how bubbles work) but something useful is left behind. That can be true sometimes even of companies that went bankrupt.
This seems broadly true of Uber as well. They lost a lot of money, but we can schedule and pay for taxi service using our phones now.
One difference is that Uber didn't go bankrupt. Doctorow predicts that Uber will go bankrupt like WeWork. But they don't seem comparable. WeWork's IPO failed because investors looked at what they're doing and it didn't look like a business. I don't follow Uber, but it looks like Uber stock is near a high and they're about to join the S&P 500. Investors seem to think they have a future for some reason.
Sure, maybe that's a bubble too? But a problem with the article is using Uber as an example in passing, rather than doing the homework. A whole article could be written about Uber's prospects (and maybe linked from this one) but instead Doctorow relies on the assumption that his readers don't like Uber, so we're willing to assume negative things about them. We don't actually learn anything about how Uber is doing. Instead our prejudices are reflected back to us.
Assuming that Doctorow did his homework on whatever he mentions is a bad idea. Don't give him a pass on that.
(You are right that he discussed high-stakes and low-stakes AI applications differently.)
This is of immense value, at least to me. I'm not a fan of Uber's "disruptive" model, how they basically used VC money to get big, how they squeeze drivers and shrug off insurance risks onto the...
we can schedule and pay for taxi service using our phones now.
This is of immense value, at least to me.
I'm not a fan of Uber's "disruptive" model, how they basically used VC money to get big, how they squeeze drivers and shrug off insurance risks onto the drivers. I also don't like how much user reviews can hurt drivers. Seems to be far too one sided.
But where Rideshare Apps still win over Taxis has to do with a long standing and much ignored serious problem with the taxi industry: that individuals can take customers for a ride and there are no recourses for the customers being driven up river without a paddle.
When taxi industry move to a platform where I know exactly how much I will be charged and the driver knows exactly how much he will make and where I'm going before picking me up, there will be no reason for me to use rideshare.
Maybe not typical and maybe most people just want the cheap rides and will always chase the VC tails for whichever one is cheaper today. But I'm sick of being refused rides or sitting in a car having to hear a taxi driver complain about my paying him to drive.
Not necessarily. That would only apply if people buy them in a buy & hold pattern. The price of a stock is primarily decided by how many people want it. Sure a lot of people in the market base...
Investors seem to think they have a future for some reason.
Not necessarily. That would only apply if people buy them in a buy & hold pattern. The price of a stock is primarily decided by how many people want it. Sure a lot of people in the market base their purchases on a strategy or even math, but stocks can absolutely be driven by hype. Think Gamestop. You are essentially trusting the hivemind of the market. Can be smart, can be dumb.
Sure, maybe that's a bubble too? But a problem with the article is using Uber as an example in passing, rather than doing the homework.
Doctorow makes it seem like he parsed the financial statements of Uber, and because I have seen him do his research within his books, I trust that. There is also the question of what Locus Mag wanted from him. If they gave him free reign or requested he stay within the topic of viability of AI, for which drowning it in complaining about the financial nonviability of Uber would be inappropriate.
This is what links are for. You can cite other articles, which can be as long as you want. But there are no links in this article. Maybe they're not allowed? That's a problem with many opinion...
This is what links are for. You can cite other articles, which can be as long as you want.
But there are no links in this article. Maybe they're not allowed? That's a problem with many opinion pieces in publications that were originally intended for print. They make a bunch of assertions without any backing.
It's surreal to see Uber brought up as directly analogous to Enron when everyone I know in SF completely switched from taxis to Uber/Lyft many years ago, raved about the improvement, and can't imagine going back. I know there was a bubble where investors were overly excited about Uber years ago, they're less excited about it now, and the prices are up a bit, but the product is still here. Taxis and city transit were already bad and it's far from obvious to me that the situation would be better now if more people had sat around waiting on them to get good instead of making rideshare services. (I still dutifully vote for all kinds of public improvements in the city.)
I totally believe that there's a bubble in businesses building on current AI tech, but I expect that mainly has to do with there being many more people trying to get in early than there are good workable business ideas right now for the current technology level, and not because the technology is going to top out right here. I don't think the companies at the center making the biggest models (OpenAI) are going to die. They have absolutely no shortage of research directions to make current models much cheaper and new models much more powerful. The article seems to posit that copyright cases are maybe going to kill OpenAI (weird that Doctorow almost seems to be cheering for copyright here), but a recent case is looking good for AI companies. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are confident enough right now that they're offering to cover any legal cases for customers related to copyright issues from using their models. Even if copyright proved to be a big obstacle for AI companies, I fully believe they'd soon find ways to deal with the issue through training on fully licensed or artificial data.
I feel like the general public's annoyance with the overhyped cryptocurrency bubbles has created a market for tech-industry-skeptic articles, and this article is filling that role more than providing insight on the technology and the future. I think people who primarily try to understand the tech industry as a social phenomena of certain subjects being either hyped or overhyped will understand the future less well than people who spend more time directly thinking about the technology and its possibilities.
Doctorow continues to never miss. I've not seen someone understand how tech and finance influence each other and together influence society as much as this guy.
One example of a miss is saying that nothing of value happened due to Uber. I use Lyft instead, and prices are higher now, but maybe he doesn't remember what calling a cab was like?
His guess as to where AI is going isn't very clear and it's no more informed than anyone else's. Putting self-driving cars in the same bucket as AI chatbots makes little sense. Talking about Cruise's troubles without mentioning Waymo doesn't make a lot of sense.
Generally speaking, I expect that Doctorow's articles will be popular and shared widely, and I will dislike them for saying some popular but probably wrong thing.
To me, the article implies that the experiences on Uber and Lyft are better, not because the business model is fundamentally better, but because the service is heavily subsidized by investment capital and operated at a loss. As far as I know, this is still true for Lyft, but not for Uber as of recently. I agree that the experience as a fare is definitely better on Uber and Lyft, but less so for the driver who faces the depreciation on their vehicle, lower fares, higher fees, and increased liability.
If we decided to spend billions operating the traditional cab system or public transportation at a loss, they would likewise improve dramatically, but would still be equally fiscally unsustainable. Which gets to the nature of his point: it's not whether these things are "good" or "bad", but are they bubbles (he thinks they are) and, if so, will they produce something that's lasts after they are gone?
FWIW, I hadn't thought of the question before and enjoyed considering his opinion.
The prices were unsustainable but the apps seem to be here to stay. There will be a business for someone at prices that drivers accept. Maybe with less coverage, though.
Public transportation actually does operate at a loss most of the time. (The New York subway is $48 billion in debt, apparently.) This doesn't seem to have resulted in dramatic improvements in service?
I think with time we've come to accept that losing money on public transportation is common, but there are broader benefits for society.
His argument isn't about quality of service, but about profitability and sustainability. @carsonc put it into decent words elsewhere in this thread, but the key concept is that Uber is fundamentally not a profitable business and propped up by VC funding. They've now had consecutive quarters of slight profitability for the first time in company history. With a revenue of approximately ~9.26 milliards slimmed down to like 300 millions of actual profit. And while I have not fact-checked Doctorow's claims about this profit being the result of some clever financial wizardry rather than a business model that lasts because they are still losing money on every ride, I'm willing to believe him on that.
He doesn't, though? He explictly states that they are different buckets of the AI bubble. High-stakes and low-stakes and that he expects them to fare differently, even though they low-stakes models do depend on the big expensive models to some extent.
Weren't the other companies in the other bubbles unsustainable too? The article is based on the broad concept that sometimes investors lost money (that's how bubbles work) but something useful is left behind. That can be true sometimes even of companies that went bankrupt.
This seems broadly true of Uber as well. They lost a lot of money, but we can schedule and pay for taxi service using our phones now.
One difference is that Uber didn't go bankrupt. Doctorow predicts that Uber will go bankrupt like WeWork. But they don't seem comparable. WeWork's IPO failed because investors looked at what they're doing and it didn't look like a business. I don't follow Uber, but it looks like Uber stock is near a high and they're about to join the S&P 500. Investors seem to think they have a future for some reason.
Sure, maybe that's a bubble too? But a problem with the article is using Uber as an example in passing, rather than doing the homework. A whole article could be written about Uber's prospects (and maybe linked from this one) but instead Doctorow relies on the assumption that his readers don't like Uber, so we're willing to assume negative things about them. We don't actually learn anything about how Uber is doing. Instead our prejudices are reflected back to us.
Assuming that Doctorow did his homework on whatever he mentions is a bad idea. Don't give him a pass on that.
(You are right that he discussed high-stakes and low-stakes AI applications differently.)
This is of immense value, at least to me.
I'm not a fan of Uber's "disruptive" model, how they basically used VC money to get big, how they squeeze drivers and shrug off insurance risks onto the drivers. I also don't like how much user reviews can hurt drivers. Seems to be far too one sided.
But where Rideshare Apps still win over Taxis has to do with a long standing and much ignored serious problem with the taxi industry: that individuals can take customers for a ride and there are no recourses for the customers being driven up river without a paddle.
When taxi industry move to a platform where I know exactly how much I will be charged and the driver knows exactly how much he will make and where I'm going before picking me up, there will be no reason for me to use rideshare.
Maybe not typical and maybe most people just want the cheap rides and will always chase the VC tails for whichever one is cheaper today. But I'm sick of being refused rides or sitting in a car having to hear a taxi driver complain about my paying him to drive.
Not necessarily. That would only apply if people buy them in a buy & hold pattern. The price of a stock is primarily decided by how many people want it. Sure a lot of people in the market base their purchases on a strategy or even math, but stocks can absolutely be driven by hype. Think Gamestop. You are essentially trusting the hivemind of the market. Can be smart, can be dumb.
Doctorow makes it seem like he parsed the financial statements of Uber, and because I have seen him do his research within his books, I trust that. There is also the question of what Locus Mag wanted from him. If they gave him free reign or requested he stay within the topic of viability of AI, for which drowning it in complaining about the financial nonviability of Uber would be inappropriate.
This is what links are for. You can cite other articles, which can be as long as you want.
But there are no links in this article. Maybe they're not allowed? That's a problem with many opinion pieces in publications that were originally intended for print. They make a bunch of assertions without any backing.