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Proton’s CEO Cancels AI ‘Re-Interviews’ (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -37 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Huh? The frontier model companies aren't operating at a profit but all the major enterprise tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, etc) are using huge amounts of AI in the SDLC and beyond and certainly are operating at a profit...

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  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago

    I’m not sure what you are trying to say, what difference does it make if the users of a product are profitable when the creator of said product isn’t, the users of AI make their money on a diversified portfolio of products, the AI companies are making no profits right now as the subscription prices they are charging are at a loss to gain market share, if they don’t find a sustainable profit margin over time they will have to shut down or increase the cost of the subscription so only a limited number of companies and individuals will be able to afford it. Either way the gushing AI inference taps will stop leaking so freely at some point.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    Every single one of those companies reported negative free cash flow this quarter, and some have been running in the negative for a lot longer. The only tech company at that scale NOT losing money hand over fist is Apple, and they're the only one not investing heavily in AI... but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 days ago

    Microsoft and Salesforce both have very positive free cash flow... but in any case that isn't profit. All 4 of the companies I listed are still very profitable (Alphabet/google being the one "exception" where they are still wildly profitable but down from q3 2024 vs q3 2026). But even in the Alphabet and Amazon cases, they have negative free cash flow because they are investing like crazy in AI. This doesnt mean they aren't profitable it means they are using their historic performance to make a big bet on the future. This is fundamentally very different from the frontier lab companies who have never been profitable and are staying afloat mostly from cash injection from big tech (Anthropic is an interesting one that may have just turned the corner).

    It's fine to have moral, labor, or environmental objections to "AI" (which is a very stupid name for some specific applications of machine learning) but I would expect Lemmy to have a higher level of discourse around this stuff that is actually rooted in reality.

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