Something's come up that will keep me occupied for a few days. I won't have time to blog, so please amuse yourselves with the bloggers listed in the sidebar. Regular blogging will recommence (God and the Internet willing) next Monday, November 16.
Peter
Anthropic is trying to raise billions of dollars in its Initial Public Offering of shares, to fund its projected growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) market. Karl Denninger retorts:
After hyping every single possible use for "AI" and firing people en-masse to replace them with computer "intelligence" firms are discovering that the code and processes produced don't provide an actual economic benefit all-in compared with skilled employees. Firing people of course saves money but then the compute you buy directly and indirectly costs money and what the machine produces had better not require much "spit and polish" or you're underwater.
Worse, and I've discussed this before, doing this makes the technical debt percentage on said generated stuff nearly 100%. That is, you have no humans that understand it at all because no human built it and if a human reviews it that is akin to reading a book as opposed to writing it. The reader might (in this case will) skim it and lacks deep understanding -- specifically they have no understanding at all why certain decisions were made when it comes to structure because no human made the decision. The alternatives were weighed (if at all) in a machine rather than a human and the machine may or may not retain enough context to help you in the future. Five or ten years hence it will almost-certainly be "not" in that regard.
Firms have already run into this and many who have realize the problem -- as this accelerates it becomes a deeper and deeper hole. When (not if) something goes wrong there is nobody who can quickly look at the code and figure out why it broke.
There's more at the link, all of it very ugly from Anthropic's point of view.
Lawrence Person provides a different, but still damning perspective.
Anthropic made just under $1 billion in profit for one quarter (it’s first profitable quarter), yet it has committed to spending an additional $1 trillion, so it only needs 250 years of similar profits or so to pay off its projected capital costs!
. . .
If a small number of giant tech firms are just trading IOUs back and forth, how much real revenue is actually being generated by any of them? It’s less a self-licking ice cream cone than a self-climbing rope untied at the top, with each of the tech giants acting the fakir in turn.
Then there’s the big risk of the whole AI smoke and mirrors edifice collapsing: “If revenue growth stalls and fresh capital dries up, the company could breach covenants under its credit facility and commercial agreements, triggering cross-defaults and accelerated debt repayment.”
AI has proven that you can actually do useful things with it, and Anthropic’s Claude was (the last time I checked) the leader in AI code generators. But the amount of revenue coming into AI companies is nowhere near the trillions of dollars of capex being shoved into the insatiable maw of the AI beast.
Again, more at the link.
Anthropic is, of course, only one of half a dozen or so giant AI corporations and conglomerates vying to dominate the market. Of them all, I think only two or three, including SpaceX, Google and possibly Apple, generate (or are likely to generate) enough revenue from their existing resources to cover the costs involved - yet most of the others are already committed to borrowing enormous sums of money that they have no realistic chance of repaying out of earnings.
What happens when the train wrecks?
It's going to be a wild ride . . .
Peter
I was intrigued to read about quadcopter drones being used to carry short-range missiles that could be fired against incoming drones.
A modified version of Malloy Aeronautics’ T-150 Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), designated TRV-150, intercepted multiple one-way attack drones during trials at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in late September, according to BAE Systems. The U.K.-developed platform fired laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) rockets from a three-pod launcher, engaging successive targets without landing to reload.
The test took place as part of a Mission Capabilities Joint Readiness Experimentation exercise of the Department of War’s (DoW) Office of the Under Secretary for Research & Engineering, or OUSW(R&E).
The latest test builds on an earlier APKWS firing demonstration at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah in 2025. On that occasion, the drone conducted single-shot engagements against both air and land targets, while the new trial introduced a three-pod launcher designed to engage multiple aerial targets in succession.
There's more at the link.
I'm sure the drones and their missiles will add another very useful layer of protection against incoming enemy drones. However, there's another aspect to this that worries me.
These drones are small enough to get close to an intended target without being detected by most current defensive systems. A quadcopter drone can fly down a narrow road, or along a firebreak in the forest, so low that it can't even be seen. It can literally fly behind something like a delivery van if desired, and the crew of the van would never know it was there. As soon as it got within range of the target, it could pop up over surrounding terrain, launch its missiles (and, if need be, designate their target with a laser beam), then duck down and make its escape the same way it arrived.
Think of the targets that could now become much easier to strike, because nobody would know the threat was approaching in time to do anything about it:
Terrorist groups and foreign powers will have no trouble at all getting their hands on such equipment. (In fact, the guidance system used by APKWS has already been fitted to non-US rockets with complete success. How many other nations have access to such rockets, even factories to produce them? The number must be in the dozens or scores by now. Even if compatible rockets are not available, there are competing rocket systems from several countries that can do the same job, and can presumably be launched in a similar manner.)
More and more, technology is a two-edged sword. We can't do without it, that's for sure, but how long can we live with its proliferation?
Peter
I got nailed Friday by the latest wave of flu sweeping the country, and spent most of the weekend feeling like death warmed up. It hasn't improved much, so I haven't had the time or mental capacity to sort through likely memes for Monday. I'll do my best to have an improved crop next week.
However, I do want to make an urgent suggestion for those in the path of the increased winter precipitation forecast for the Super El Nino scheduled to hit us over the next few months. I did some research. It looks as if rainfall in large parts of the South will be much heavier than usual, possibly causing flooding in areas that have not previously been at risk for it. Add to that danger the rapid expansion of suburban construction: for example, we have a new subdivision going up within a mile of us, and uphill from us at that. All the rain that falls on its roofs, concrete, roads, etc. will no longer have all that empty land for a runoff. Instead, it's going to head downhill . . . towards us.
My wife and I got on the phone to our insurers and discussed options. FEMA's flood insurance isn't available everywhere, and is pretty basic - no cover for contents of your dwelling, outbuildings, etc. and restrictions on total coverage. Flood insurance through private insurers can be much more comprehensive, but is also more expensive, depending how much coverage you want. We ended up spending well over what FEMA would have cost us, but with much better coverage. Premiums have to be paid in advance, which can be an unpleasant hit to one's wallet. Also, FEMA makes you wait thirty days from the policy being issued before it takes effect; private insurers usually only make you wait a week. If you're looking for flood insurance at the last minute, that's something to bear in mind.
At any rate, I just thought I'd pass on this "heads up" warning to my readers. I suspect some of us are going to need it over the next six months or so . . .
Peter
My wife and Alma Boykin are both big Sabaton fans, and have been looking forward to their next live appearance in Dallas for months. We're on the road today, headed for the Metroplex, where I'll be their chauffeur and dogsbody tonight.
No blog for today, but I'm sure you can amuse yourselves with the bloggers in the sidebar.
Peter
