Quote :

"nobody wants this shit, yet the most powerful people in the country keep pushing it and pushing it it’s very obviously a bubble, and they’re going to keep pushing it to believe otherwise is to believe that the money behind it cares more about people than profits, and that’s so blatantly absurd that it’s not worth arguing anymore "

ChatGPT has 810 million users. Every Fortune 100 company in the world tech or not is training all their employees to use it. Gotta be a little more precise than nobody wants this shit.

It has characteristics of a bubble for sure, but the ramp of users is unprecedented. If they solve the cash burn will be hugely profitable. They can quit pushing it for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with people.

[Edited on May 17, 2026 at 10:58 PM. Reason : H]

5/17/2026 10:56:33 PM

how many people pay for ChatGPT?

5/17/2026 11:07:15 PM

About 50 million per chatgpt, last part of answer says "For perspective, 50 million paid subscribers would put ChatGPT in the same league as some of the world’s largest subscription software/services businesses."

[Edited on May 17, 2026 at 11:09 PM. Reason : Additional info]

5/17/2026 11:08:43 PM

We have big money deals with Google and are working something out with Anthropic. The enterprise subscriptions are ramping.

5/18/2026 5:07:23 AM

Quote :

" It has characteristics of a bubble for sure, but the ramp of users is unprecedented. If they solve the cash burn will be hugely profitable"

And surely they'll act ethically to achieve that goal, right?

Again, I think AI is an incredibly useful tool and warrants continued research and use, but lets be real, the vast majority of the output is just slop right now. The world isn't going to be changed by people who are convincing themselves they're writers, artists, profound intellectuals or any other delusion when all they're doing is posting slop while their new best friend tells them what a good job they're doing. The amount of people who have formed some parasocial relationship with these tools and spend hours a day with it is honestly frightening. These people have convinced themselves they're a part of the chosen flock to spread the gospel of AI and criticize any and all concerns.

These companies are in a massive rush to make profit, they simply don't care about anything else. They'll continue the destruction of the environment, continue to skirt or straight up ignore laws and regulations, and strive to get as many people hooked on their product as possible.

5/18/2026 6:41:26 AM

Quote :

"And surely they'll act ethically to achieve that goal, right? "

I was just answering "no one wants to use this shit". If the goal posts have moved to "no one wants to pay for this shit". That's untrue as well--both for the consumer and enterprise. It's true, there are tons of products and businesses jamming AI features to make them more relevant. And yes, no one wants to use THAT shit. I don't need Jira's dumbass Rovo bot.

Quote :

" Again, I think AI is an incredibly useful tool and warrants continued research and use, but lets be real, the vast majority of the output is just slop right now. The world isn't going to be changed by people who are convincing themselves they're writers, artists, profound intellectuals or any other delusion when all they're doing is posting slop while their new best friend tells them what a good job they're doing. "

The vast majority of any output is slop. Creative output follows a power law like most things in nature. 10% great, 90% garbage. See popular anything, music, tiktok, youtube. People aren't consuming high art on average. In between the slop there are diamonds. Those people that watch TV 12 hours a day (or TikTok in now) are still going to consume garbage and some of it will just be AI garbage.

"Most people's intellectual output is zero, zero times 10x is still zero" -- Minsky (the Epstein Minsky) on computers for common people. In the hands of someone capable AI will be a formidable weapon. You won't need a team of people to do grunt work, you can move quickly and experiment/build. No waiting for designers, low level devs to finish something. You need a labeler for the data for your ML model? Build it in 20 minutes.

Quote :

" The amount of people who have formed some parasocial relationship with these tools and spend hours a day with it is honestly frightening. These people have convinced themselves they're a part of the chosen flock to spread the gospel of AI and criticize any and all concerns."

See slop comment above. If it wasn't AI it would be 12 hour binges of Married with Children. Also, citation needed.

Quote :

" These companies are in a massive rush to make profit, they simply don't care about anything else. They'll continue the destruction of the environment, continue to skirt or straight up ignore laws and regulations, and strive to get as many people hooked on their product as possible."

That's about the most uncharitable view possible. I was in meetings at a FAANG when the hype started to ramp. People panicked and thought the trillion dollar businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of people were going to go bust. "WHY ARE YOU BUILDING THIS IS NO ONE IS GOING TO BE WRITING CODE" the CTO of AWS screamed at my boss in a meeting the month after ChatGPT came out. People are just struggling to be relevant. Maybe Tristan Harris and these lobbyists really are cautious given the history of social media, or maybe he's influenced a bit on his $200,000 a gig speaking fee for being a doomer.

5/18/2026 7:11:18 AM

Quote :

"The vast majority of any output is slop. "

Sure! But the amount of effort to produce such slop is so much lower now. Even with video content, there was a barrier of entry of "I have to put in the effort of filming myself and preparing for that", and now it's just "I'm going to just copy and paste ai slop into the world".

5/18/2026 7:51:48 AM

That's just "No true scots man". These cameras have auto develop film. No one is a real content creator unless they mix the chemicals to develop the film themselves!

5/18/2026 7:57:57 AM

I didn't say they weren't creating content, I said the barrier to entry is nearly non-existent .

I did however say that someone who asks chatgpt to generate a novel isn't an author or to create a painting isn't an artist. They're creating a prompt, which is something, but it doesn't make them something else

5/18/2026 8:15:20 AM

Quote :

"Again, I think AI is an incredibly useful tool"

so let's just leave it at that. if it's a tool people find useful, they'll use it, and sometimes even pay for it. if people don't, then they won't. the market will decide, just like it does for everything else.

i'm not big into sneakers but everytime i go to the mall there's a sneaker store. they're all slop, why are they forcing sneakers on me? shut down the shoe factories!
i don't eat pork, and it's immoral, so shut down all the hog farms in eastern nc! they pollute the water!
i went into a bookstore and everything was slop! shut down the paper factories!
greedy developers want to build a new apartment complex down the street from my neighborhood. it'll increase traffic and noise and maybe there's an endangered turtle species nearby! shut it down!

[Edited on May 18, 2026 at 8:40 AM. Reason : my shtick is to leave people the fuck alone and let them live the lives they want to live]

5/18/2026 8:34:49 AM

Quote :

"my shtick is to leave people the fuck alone and let them live the lives they want to live"

ISWYDT

5/18/2026 9:00:21 AM

All of those are exactly the same thing, you're right

5/18/2026 9:01:21 AM

*absolutely right

5/18/2026 9:04:08 AM

https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social/post/3mm5rewed3225

Quote :

"Sir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names""

lol

5/18/2026 5:44:54 PM

The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

Article from WSJ

5/19/2026 12:50:42 AM

5/19/2026 4:50:40 PM

there have been multiple such breakthroughs in even just the last few weeks/months

[Edited on May 20, 2026 at 3:35 PM. Reason : imagine hating the coolest thing ever]

5/20/2026 3:29:43 PM

https://defector.com/wow-americas-graduating-seniors-really-fucking-hate-ai?giftLink=5cbe416663d5f0fe2ee5c4738b5d9a91

5/20/2026 3:45:01 PM

every tgl post is basically



[Edited on May 20, 2026 at 4:33 PM. Reason : most miserable fool i've ever seen on the entire internet ]

5/20/2026 4:33:16 PM

not miserable

definitely not a fool

5/20/2026 4:39:23 PM

I love the dedication to passive aggressively bash everyone who criticizes or has valid concerns over AI or the companies behind it. Just reducing their arguments to the most simple, basic strawman or hand waving it away.

5/20/2026 4:54:25 PM

Quote :

"America’s graduates are seeing clear through this bullshit. Imagine you’re 22 years old and about to enter the workforce with $300,000 in student debt already on your personal ledger. How would you feel if some country-club asshole took the mic on your special day and told you that your duty was to build and maintain those robots? "

Hard to take it seriously with that number. Only doctors and high end law degrees, maybe someone at Stanford with no assistance could possibly have near that amount. Very few hit 100k.

I think reading the room is in order. Mentioning it using it for a college talk seems dumb.

[Edited on May 20, 2026 at 5:01 PM. Reason : A]

5/20/2026 5:00:26 PM

Okay, lets steelman it then. Imagine no debt, imagine you're not some 'first in your family to graduate' type story...you still put in the work to earn your degree, don't you think you'd be miffed if the speaker was talking about something that was helping to make the job market more difficult? Or if the college used AI to read your name and it just skipped it?

5/20/2026 5:03:46 PM

^ that was what my last sentence addressed.

5/20/2026 5:07:19 PM

I didn't see your edit

5/20/2026 5:07:43 PM

24 seconds is pretty damn impressive

5/20/2026 5:08:16 PM

Just curious, at what point would you say someone is addicted to AI? Like how many hours a day would they have to spend interacting with it/having conversations? Or maybe it's more how much they've let it affect their actual real person friendships/relationships?

5/20/2026 9:02:55 PM

Quote :

"I love the dedication to passive aggressively bash everyone who criticizes or has valid concerns over AI or the companies behind it. Just reducing their arguments to the most simple, basic strawman or hand waving it away."

who's being passive aggressive??

there ARE valid concerns about the impacts of AI. i feel like i'm taking crazy pills! besides being tww overlord isn't one of the most well known things about me is that I spent a year+ of my life working at no/half pay for a longshot presidential candidate who wanted to bring attention to the impact that AI would have???????? we NEED to be talking about these changes.

but there are responsible ways to go about that discussion (talking about the pros AND the cons), and there are garbage ways (catastrophizing/moralizing every god damn thing). i'm mostly seeing garbage these days. slop, if you will.

Quote :

"at what point would you say someone is addicted to AI?"

i've seen you talk about AI being "addictive" many times, but I really don't have a sense of where you're coming from on that one. I don't think the issue is addiction, per se though. i've seen many examples of what I'd call "unhealthy" directions people have taken with their use of AI being a significant factor. AI psychosis being the typical umbrella term. i have a twitter friend from years ago who is imho not doing well. she posts a lot of AI generated photos/videos of herself in what I see as a fantasy life that she wishes she had. but her use of AI tools is mostly an outlet for other things in her life. she's in her 60s, she was quite attractive in her youth but now she's wrinkled and losing her hair, she lost her husband/kids many years ago, her parents died last year. she's basically alone and not dealing well with her circumstances. there are people on twitter who constantly talk about how openai "took away" their 4o model. i remember there was a VC last year who had some kind of psychotic breakdown. there's a real thing going on here, but I think the presumption that AI companies are intentionally engineering addictive qualities or ignoring the AI psychosis issues is founded more in conspiracy and assumption that "powerful" people/orgs have zero interest/incentive to consider such ethical concerns. i'd just like to see a more grounded approach to understanding what is going on here and what can/should be done about it.

[Edited on May 20, 2026 at 9:40 PM. Reason : .]

5/20/2026 9:28:57 PM

Quote :

" I think reading the room is in order. Mentioning it using it for a college talk seems dumb. "

I don’t agree with this. Ai is the most significant new technology in decades. It would be remiss NOT to mention it in a commencement speech. The whiff was not in framing it on their terms.

5/20/2026 9:58:22 PM

Is this considered AI?

[Edited on May 20, 2026 at 10:01 PM. Reason : Sorry, ignore if you want. Just realized photoshop is kinda like AI so figured i'd ask...didn't want to make a thread in chit chat asking

5/20/2026 9:59:34 PM