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