On Meta’s Q1 2026 earnings call, CFO Susan Li said the quiet part out loud. “We recently shared internally that we plan to reduce the size of our employee base in May. We believe a leaner operating model will allow us to move more quickly while also helping to offset the substantial investments we are ... Mark Zuckerberg Just Told 8,000 Employees Their Layoffs Are a Line Item in His $145 Billion AI Bill
Is AI the final bubble they’ll inflate? Usually some new tech gets hyped when the old tech fails. See the progression through deep learning, Blockchain, NFT. Or will they do robotics and suddenly it’s robots everywhere. Maybe quantum computing.
Ai Is also a highly specialized technology with a limited number of use cases. though you cant brute force improvement through scaling like you can with ai, so it wouldnt be as good of an investment capital black hole
Quantum computing will only be useful to a handful of people instead of mass consumer use. Quantum computers are mainly for cybersecurity.
So in the end it’s even more useful than the metaverse or NFT, and they hyped that shit up like crazy.
Quantum processors are already a thing. I dont think we’ll see quantum powered consumer products for a while but I think they will eliminate the need for massive data centres and should be way better for the environment.
Or ever. Quantum processors have to operate close to 0k to work
Idk, Miles Dyson was able to engineer a neural-net processor with room temperature superconductors all the way back in 1995…
What do you think we’ll see instead. When it comes to tech, id never say never. But I know what you mean.
Eh, there is a degree to that, but there’s also the fact that you can’t just break thermodynamics. With quantum effects you need to remove a lot of noise, and near-0k temperatures will do that.
Not only that, is there even a practical purpose to getting quantum computing on an individual level? While it’s better for specialized problems, current transistor tech is way better at general use cases and is good enough that we don’t really need significantly more power. And even if it was technologically possible to shrink dpwn quantum computing enough to fit in a desktop of phone, what’s going to be the cost of it compared to transistors?
Only small parts of specific algorithms get a boost from quantum computing. I could imagine the NAG library offering quantum as a service for some of their routines
You mean for comlutation
AI is kind of different just because of the magnitudes of investments and loans at stake.
It does feel like the moment when somebody pushes ask their chips forward and declares all-in.
Yeah. I mean blockchain is sorta resource intensive but more distributed. Crypto is basically the same thing. AI requires gigawatts of power, is disrupting almost every tech based manufacturing, uses tons of natural resources. All to create terrible content, hallucinate completely made up answers, and automate things to destroy themselves. Great idea guys.
Do get me wrong, I’m not totally against AI. I think it can be a useful tool especially if sandboxed and run locally. But these giant data centers sucking up all the electricity and water are just no bueno.
funny thing and “robots” are mostly controlled by humans.
https://youtu.be/qZq7fW6ftlU?t=11
Or atleast pre-programmed by a human.