Artificial Intelligence

[Fly]

56 minutes ago, rogermunibond said:

@WayWardCloud the legacy pharma are development, production, sales and marketing powerhouses.  small early stage companies that do drug discovery don't have the muscle with sales and marketing to push new drugs to clinicians and CMS and other nation's health systems.  Most of the legacy pharma have drastically cut down their early stage research pipelines from where they were in the 2000s iirc.  they go shopping for promising startups and early stage companies.  I think they still earn a pretty sizeable return for their distribution prowess.

 

in fact if MAHA has it's way and DTC drug advertising is killed off, the legacy pharmas will have even better returns and bigger moats.

 

Ive heard this struggle to sell/market drugs as a small biotech company, would it be possible for some 3rd party sales company to perform these duties? Have some sort of revenue split from sales where both could benefit and focus only on their niche of development/sales

[Spekulatius]

How do you sell meds for “restless leg syndrome“ without marketing?

 

Banning DTC drug advertising will hit the ad market badly. FWIW, I do think it’s a good idea.

[rogermunibond]

Snippet from Bernstein on ASIC vs GPU winners and losers.  TAM is growing.

 

 

[rogermunibond]

[MungerWunger]

Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research

 

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutskever-2

Edited November 27, 2025 by MungerWunger

[cubsfan]

Eisman playbook has some interesting commentary on what may limit AI - power constraints.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-real-eisman-playbook/id1818671690?i=1000738823969

 

[Spekulatius]

1 hour ago, cubsfan said:

Eisman playbook has some interesting commentary on what may limit AI - power constraints.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-real-eisman-playbook/id1818671690?i=1000738823969

 

This seems to be the current consensus but that’s partly because  people take what OpenAi states as a gospel. Now we also look at far more efficient AI stacks (Gemini, Deepseek variants ) which also means much lower power consumption. So the assumption about power consumption from AI based on this linear thinking are possibly way too high.

Edited November 30, 2025 by Spekulatius

[Junior R]

its all in the hands of the Fed in a week...Depending on what happens market goes up or down ...if they disappoint this will be a replay of 2018 

[NnnnotSoSmart]

Elon recently interviewed. As always, fascinating on a wide range of subjects.

 

At 1:25:55 he is asked what one stock, other than Tesla, he would invest in at current valuations.

 

Elon answers that he doesn't really invest in stocks, or concern himself with investing. Rather he builds companies and then holds the stock of those companies.

However, he mentions AI and robotics will be "very important". Goes on to mention GOOGL and NVDA specifically.

 

Elon: "I think GOOGL is going to be very valuable in the future. They've laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. NVDA is obvious at this point. There's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics...and maybe space flight are going to be overwhelmingly all the value. The output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else."

 

https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/status/1995145212570...
 

Edited November 30, 2025 by NnnnotSoSmart

[rogermunibond]

Insurers like AIG, Great American, WR Berkley, and Chubb want to limit coverage on liability related to AI agents/chatbots or limiting coverage on "widespread" AI incidents.  In discussions with insurance regulators and brokers.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/abfe9741-f438-4ed6-a673-075ec177dc62

[sholland]

On 11/29/2025 at 7:50 PM, Spekulatius said:

This seems to be the current consensus but that’s partly because  people take what OpenAi states as a gospel. Now we also look at far more efficient AI stacks (Gemini, Deepseek variants ) which also means much lower power consumption. So the assumption about power consumption from AI based on this linear thinking are possibly way too high.

Disagree with this take.  I believe optimization is linear thinking and staying on Ray Kuzweil’s computing power curve is exponential thinking.

 

Superintelligence will give a decisive economic and military advantage.  The U.S. will do whatever it takes to stay on the Kurzweilian curve. 

 

Image from https://situational-awareness.ai (I just read through this entire thread and surprised no one referenced Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness)

[Spekulatius]

On 12/2/2025 at 8:23 AM, sholland said:

Disagree with this take.  I believe optimization is linear thinking and staying on Ray Kuzweil’s computing power curve is exponential thinking.

 

Superintelligence will give a decisive economic and military advantage.  The U.S. will do whatever it takes to stay on the Kurzweilian curve. 

 

Image from https://situational-awareness.ai (I just read through this entire thread and surprised no one referenced Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness)

The brute force approach is almost always beaten by smarter and more efficient approaches. We are very far away from superintelligence and the current LLM’s don’t reason at all.
I do think weaponization of AI and robots is probably close ( a couple of years way) and China could well have the lead there, due to mass manufacturing and good enough AI.  You don’t need your terminators to be all that smart either.

Edited December 6, 2025 by Spekulatius

[SharperDingaan]

The artificial stupid  ......

 

Lot of potential uses, all needing high end chips, and the makers of some of those chips ..... valued at well over the GNP of some sizeable countries ???? 

 

Many years out, maybe the entire factory is robotic; from raw material processing through manufacturing, packaging, distribution, programing, and equipment repair/replacement. Value today at a 25% discount for that factory that is 20 years out? Almost squat, and still squat even if it now occurs 15 years out. Artificial stupid 

 

And all this with zero resistance from the working populations that artificial intelligence is supposed to replace. Nuts, bolts, sand, sugar, acids, backdoor programs, signal jamming, don't work well with sensitive machinery.

 

So ... if artificial intelligence in the real world versus the lab .... is more like a ponzi scheme vs a game changer. And there are very high pay offs on it having at least a few stumbles .... how high do valuations have to go before a helping hand aids with that first stumble ???

 

Real, versus artificial intelligence 

 

SD

 

Edited December 8, 2025 by SharperDingaan

[NnnnotSoSmart]

McKinsey Report

 

Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI

 

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/agents-robots-and-us-skill-partnerships-in-the-age-of-ai?cid=mgp_opr-eml-alt-mgi-mgp-glb--&hlkid=4194d61de3f84175bb34e6bf21eacc2c&hctky=16776252&hdpid=678f34ce-42cc-403c-85fc-78952ef88ce7

[SharperDingaan]

The PV of $100 in 20 yrs discounted at 25%/yr is $1.15 ...

 

McKinsey says USD 2.9 trillion/yr of value in 2030; a very generous valuation, with everything working perfectly, in 5 years. Really 

We calculate the economic value of AI and automation in the United States by multiplying employment, salaries and wages, and estimated automation adoption in the midpoint scenario of 2030 for each occupation. Occupation-level employment and wages are based on 2024 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. For details, refer to the chapter 3 sidebar “How we estimate the economic value of AI” and the technical appendix.

 

Of course, in the real world shyte happens; rushed new builds take longer to deliver, and often deliver at less than the nameplate capacity. Assume AI delivers only 40% of the promise [USD 1.2 trillion/yr] across the entire US economy, and 20 years in the future, versus this very optimistic 5 years. 1.2 trillion x 1.15/100 is only USD 17.4 billion/yr. Microsoft does that in a single deal ... https://www.b-ta.ai/blog/microsofts_17_4_billion_ai_deal_nebius_cloud_infrastructure

 

The reality is that the AI thing ... just isn't that big a deal across the US economy as a whole. Where it is a big deal is at the social level, and the US isn't good at social change. When there is no power, there is no data centre, no AI, and multi-billion write offs; it needs a lot of green backs to cover over the dark patches that are starting to show.

 

Real, versus artificial intelligence. 

 

SD

Edited December 8, 2025 by SharperDingaan

[NnnnotSoSmart]

8 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

The reality is that the AI thing ... just isn't that big a deal across the US economy as a whole. Where it is a big deal is at the social level, and the US isn't good at social change. When there is no power, there is no data centre, no AI, and multi-billion write offs; it needs a lot of green backs to cover over the dark patches that are starting to show.

 

Real, versus artificial intelligence. 

Organizations adopting AI have 3x higher revenue per employee than those that don’t: PwC

 

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/12/09/organizations-adopting-ai-have-3x-higher-revenue-per-employee-pwc.html

 

[NnnnotSoSmart]

November 26, 2025
By Greg Jensen, Jas Sekhon

Quick thoughts from co-CIO Greg Jensen and AIA Labs Chief Scientist Jas Sekhon on the release of Google’s Gemini 3 model and its implications for economies and markets.

 

Editor's Note: This article was updated on December 2, 2025 to include new information.

 

Progress in artificial intelligence continues at a rapid pace. We have described how this rapid technological advancement has driven the industry into a “resource grab” phase, which is more dangerous than earlier stages of the AI boom and has major implications for capital markets. In today’s report, we focus on a timely development in the technological progress that underpins AI’s economic impact—Google’s release of its latest model, Gemini 3—and share some of the key takeaways for the AI ecosystem, economies, and markets.

 

As we see it:

 

Both external testing and our own internal testing indicates that Gemini 3 is the best publicly available model in terms of raw intelligence and reflects the biggest jump in frontier model capabilities we’ve seen in a while. The model is strongly multimodal—performing well in text, image, and video generation and interpretation. Across a range of text-based assessments, like coding, “humanity’s last exam,” mathematical reasoning, as well as vision-based assessments, Gemini 3 outperforms previous models by a substantial margin. On our own internal tests, Gemini 3 is the largest jump in performance since at least OpenAI’s o3 more than half a year ago, and possibly since o1, which was released in late 2024. The charts below show Gemini 3 versus previous models, using the Center for AI Safety’s aggregation of different AI benchmarks.

 

https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/googles-gemini-3-means-ais-resource-grab-phase-is-on

[formthirteen]

Where in the cycle are we? The phase were we're using airplane and rocket engines to power AI...

 

 

[SharperDingaan]

Thing is ... all of this is digital. Same as any supply chain, it is the last mile that kills you ... and that is primarily human. They don't buy in ....  the tech fails to deliver.

 

All that capex, and very little revenue to offset the enormous amortization. Great tax write off, but the rest of the business has to subsidize the cash burn .... via layoffs. 

 

There are limits. Ok if it hides obscene profits and the attraction of windfall taxes ... but comes the day profits fall. Every round of layoffs throughout the economy pushing that day closer.

 

We're all for progress, but we also question, and look at risk. The feedback loops within the magnificent seven are a problem that isn't going to end well .... and a  developing opportunity

 

SD

 

 

 

 

[rogermunibond]

Go big or go home, YOLO - or AI gets commoditized, bubble goes bust, and what's leftover are all the data centers that got built on investors' tears.

 

https://ftav.substack.com/p/what-if-openai-is-worth-more-dead?r=2gv2&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

[nsx5200]

15 hours ago, NnnnotSoSmart said:

Organizations adopting AI have 3x higher revenue per employee than those that don’t: PwC

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/12/09/organizations-adopting-ai-have-3x-higher-revenue-per-employee-pwc.html

The most important part of that is this:

"Joe Atkinson, PwC’s global head of AI [...]"

 

Buffet said something about Barbers and haircuts.

[NnnnotSoSmart]

9 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Buffet said something about Barbers and haircuts.

 

Get your point.  Consultants gonna consult - fees to collect.

 

How about this one from Wells Fargo CEO:

 

 "Anyone who sits here today and says that they don’t think they’ll have less headcount because of AI either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or is just not being totally honest, because ‘it’s not the right thing to say’."

 

https://thefinancialbrand.com/news/banking-technology/ai-will-reduce-banks-headcount-get-over-it-193732

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2025 by NnnnotSoSmart

[SharperDingaan]

1 hour ago, rogermunibond said:

Go big or go home, YOLO - or AI gets commoditized, bubble goes bust, and what's leftover are all the data centers that got built on investors' tears.

 

https://ftav.substack.com/p/what-if-openai-is-worth-more-dead?r=2gv2&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

 

Nice substack 

 

We just look at the chip makers, and can recognise when we're looking at vendor take-back financing on steroids... no matter how well disguised.

 

XYZ sells its high-end chips (at a high price) to Cloud Coy ABC in return for preferred vendor status and a convertible note paying nominal interest. Upon maturity, interest is paid and the note is rolled over into a new convertible note at a higher price, plus a new shipment of chips based on the difference in value. The better Cloud Coy ABC does, the more chips it gets, and the more valuable it becomes. The XYZ share price goes up on record volumes of high margin chips selling at progressively higher prices.  

 

Of course Cloud Coy DEF has its own supplier, and while Cloud Coy DEF is forced to buy the same chips from XYZ (at a higher price) to maintain its competitive advantage; Cloud Coy ABC also has to buy chips from the DEF supplier. Everybody loves each other, and the companies end up with market caps > the GNP of some European countries. What could possibly go wrong 

 

When Cannabis was made legal in Canada, everybody rushed out to build the biggest greenhouses possible ... in quantity - didn't work out so well. It would seem that the same thing happens here.

 

SD

 

 

[NnnnotSoSmart]

Howard Marks: Is it a Bubble?

 

(snip)

 

"Here’s my actual bottom line:

• There’s a consistent history of transformational technologies generating excessive enthusiasm and investment, resulting in more infrastructure than is needed and asset prices that prove to have been too high. The excesses accelerate the adoption of the technology in a way that wouldn’t occur in their absence. The common word for these excesses is “bubbles.” 

• AI has the potential to be one of the greatest transformational technologies of all time.

• As I wrote just above, AI is currently the subject of great enthusiasm. If that enthusiasm doesn’t produce a bubble conforming to the historical pattern, that will be a first.

• Bubbles created in this process usually end in losses for those who fuel them.

• The losses stem largely from the fact that the technology’s newness renders the extent and timing of its impact unpredictable. This in turn makes it easy to judge companies too positively amid all the enthusiasm and difficult to know which will emerge as winners when the dust settles.

• There can be no way to participate fully in the potential benefits from the new technology without being exposed to the losses that will arise if the enthusiasm and thus investors’ behavior prove to have been excessive. 

• The use of debt in this process – which the high level of uncertainty usually precluded in past technological revolutions – has the potential to magnify all of the above this time.

Since no one can say definitively whether this is a bubble, I’d advise that no one should go all-in without acknowledging that they face the risk of ruin if things go badly. But by the same token, no one should stay all-out and risk missing out on one of the great technological steps forward. A moderate position, applied with selectivity and prudence, seems like the best approach."

 

(memo in its entirety found here, the postscript is worth reading)

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/is-it-a-bubble

 

 

Edited December 10, 2025 by NnnnotSoSmart

[formthirteen]

Anyone here heard of The Musk Triangle before? More discussion materials for dinner parties...