Alexander Chalkidis

Tag: stock

  • Is OpenAI a bubble? Of course it is. But it is already a “useful idiot”

    Is OpenAI a bubble? Of course it is. But it is already a “useful idiot”

    Χρήσιμος ηλίθιος. It is a Greek saying. And it is the best way to describe the role Open AI is playing in the tech industry and for the American economy.

    I will not go over all the details. Plenty conspiracy theories and videos explaining why it makes no sense. It doesn’t really matter how and why. Open AI is here and it is affecting almost everything. My point is that we should not expect it to go away for three reasons:

    1. Canary in the coal mine. Google could have launched an LLM like Chat GTP years before OpenAI surprised everyone. But this way everyone is shielded from the inevitable negativity of clearly premature and underdeveloped tools in the wild. Hallucinations, safety issues, data scraping..the list goes on. Much like smart glasses. Google launched their version more than a decade ago and even then it was more useful than Meta’s current product is today. OpenAI has made it OK for a whole bunch of new companies to break social norms under the guise of some AI tech race.
    2. Let’s pretend there is competition. AI searches are still only 5-6% of the total. And Google controls 90% of normal searches. Nothing has changed. But much like Apple played for Microsoft in the past, or iOS does to Android, it is useful to have a company like Open AI pretend they are the new big boy in town. New ‘fantastic innovative’ browser you say? At Google they are opening champagnes because they know that means the end of the monopoly accusations towards them!
    3. All eyes on us! The US stock market is adept at playing this game. Making sure they are sucking up investment from all over the planet with whatever they say is the new shiny toy. Right now it is AI. They produce companies out of nothing and get everyone talking about them. The drama of the rivalries and the promise of the next big thing.

    Sure. Some AI companies may go bust. But as long as they get big enough fast enough it is less likely. Apple is struggling to find someone to buy out. They are too late, most of the potential targets are already too big. Too big to buy, too big to fail. OpenAI may not be the future of intelligence but it’s the smartest way yet to keep everyone watching the same stage while the real power movers keep playing their game so well.

  • Apple is not about tech so stop judging it as if it was

    “So, seriously Alex, do you think Apple has a problem?”

    Financial analysts call me up some times for “insights”.  It is usually when their job is on the line and/or they have to handle a really really big investor.  The guy was worried and wanted me to give him something new to say in the big meeting, something none of the others in the office had thought about.  And he came to the right place.  I hate Apple, I have hated Apple since 1981 when I realized how little the company cares about technology.  So the analyst got some dirt and we chatted away.

    “OK, so I will tell them to buy Apple then” he concluded.  I didn’t disagree.  Because this is not about technology.  Apple had the smallest research and development budget for many years.  Apple has fallen way behind in artificial intelligence and the smart home.  Apple’s new computers are a joke that took years coming and isn’t even funny if you are a professional that relies on them.  No, this is not about technology.  It is about the stock market.  Apple is to stock what the dollar is to global currency markets.  And all it needs to do every so often is produce a fairy tale.

    Take the recent iPad launch.  This is a a truly insignificant dying sector.  About 4% of devices sold globally are tablets.  Apple has a third of a market nobody wants.  Apple is losing ground in education, medical and pretty much any vertical you want to pick.  But what are the analysts saying?  Every so often someone flashes that graph about revenue being too dependent on the iPhone but then they forget it like the Apple fan boys and girls they rely on in the media for information.

    So don’t call me about Apple anymore.  You don’t need my decades of experience in tech to guess what Apple will do next and how successful it will be. Tim Cook could present a half eaten moldy apple and sell it for a thousand dollars tomorrow.   Nobody would care if he only sold five of them at a loss.  Nobody cares about it working or actually helping somebody in the real world work.  Antennagates, Batterygates and even Bill Gates knew what he was doing when he saved Apple.  It was never about tech.

    .

    (That’s not an apple in the photo by the way.  But who cares?)