The days of unlimited funding are over.

Let's recap. First, VC and mega-tech corporate coffers were the sources of unlimited funding. Compute was bought and essentially offered free or nearly free to even the most voracious users to juice usage stats and hopefully disrupt that too-long-entrenched habit people have of, let me check my notes, "using their brain to think." And to do 30% of the job of a person at 5% of the cost, sure, why not! Four to six months ago, those funds started drying up.

Fortunately, there was circular AI "investments" and "deals" between Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc, which of course wasn't funding at all, just moving money between multinationals/hyperscalers to double- or triple-count the value of the money as it changed hands and maintain the air of inevitability by sheer scale of AI investment. Sure, it wasn't real value, but it was good enough to (maybe, if SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic move quickly) give runway for a few IPOs, and heck, when we're only burning through a few billion dollars a month, what's the harm in placing a bet to own the all future labor value?

But now? It looks the CEOs, boards, and shareholders remember they like their present-day selves more than their future-selves (future me? That guy is basically a stranger!), who are really the beneficiaries of these costly bets. So, with no other funding sources, AI companies have no choice but to charge users for compute directly. So now AI can do 30% of the job of a person at 10,000% of the cost.

I think we all see where this is going.

This isn't really surprising.

The "AI experts" (oof) are the people who are best poised to reap any economic rewards either through being in tech pushing AI, or being otherwise invested (personally or financially) in AI succeeding. These include the people who magically think that productivity gains will benefit workers, as opposed to owners, which ignores 100 years of productivity-gain data.

The "non-AI-experts" are presumably regular workers who see the C-suite and owners salivating at AI as the fastest way to stop paying actual humans to do a service, or for companies to degrade quality with a magical-thinking "I can't believe it's good enough!" mindset that actually gives customers a worse experience (for a greater profit).

What this divergence doesn't rule out is that the "expert" class has well-founded reason for optimism, and the "non-expert" class has well-founded reason for pessimism. It just suggests that one side sees itself as the owner class in a corpo-owned dystopian cyberpunk future where wealth has access to skill and skill doesn't have access to wealth.

The unstated but obvious reason they are taking the time to remove it is because they want to train their LLMs on the messages.

Sorry, the linked summary is really just the same hype cycle I've seen.

Programmer friends at Google, Meta and Amazon have certainly convinced me that code is being assisted successfully by AI. However, the author's level of extrapolation to other fields and situations destroys any credibility he had.

For example, the author - Matt Shumer, who is an AI company founder, booster and frequent submitter to other AI-hype websites, but apparently is not legally trained - spends many paragraphs and anecdotes talking about how a partner at a law firm now has to use AI because he "knows what's at stake" and that AI can do legal work better than their associates.

Nope, the reason that partner is doing it is because he's scared of being left behind, which is the entire motive behind hype pieces like this. I'd wager that hypothetical partner is not the one who beats out all his colleagues and becomes "the most valuable person in the firm" but rather the one that gets sanctioned for submitting briefs with hallucinated cases (which is still happening in the wild regularly). As a lawyer, I can say even current flagship AI models cannot solve the problem of lawyer bar-required ethical duties which require effectively re-doing the work AI does so we can attest it is correct, taking more time than doing the work ourselves the first time.

Shumer similarly gives an "oh god, it's getting so good so fast!" timeline that includes AI passing the bar. That 2023 story was debunked in 2024 and somehow this guy is unaware of that. Why in the world would someone so unable to identify reliable information be trusted on AI reliability?

There may be some functional AI work - like coding within specific environments and circumstances - but there is a huge AI bubble built on this silly "it will do everything better" hype.

...well, not that shocked.

"Eventually" is better than "never," but unfortunately (like in the OP Humira story) we can quantify the damage by taking a look at all the extra profits that that extra exclusivity generates. Those profits come directly from consumers' wallets in the meantime, meaning it's not really an abstract patent or government problem.

What does $114 billion in average Americans' blood, sweat and tears look like? That's the true cost even delaying generics by just a few years.

Unless and until the DOJ treats this as an anti-competitive practice, nothing will improve.

The USPTO is overworked and the brands exploit that to wear down examiners with repeated office actions until they succeed, but even hiring more examiners wouldn't solve the immense funding imbalance. Brands will always be able to overwhelm the USPTO.

The closest I can think of is a punitive rule against litigating expired patents, but that may also kill the good faith innovation alongside the bad faith "innovation" of creating derivative/related products.

Even going back to the early 2000s, I worked on patent litigation for an oral anti-heartburn medication (you can guess which one). This was a common tactic even then.

Step 1: Brand company blitzes the patent office with related applications to a blockbuster drug, creating a portfolio of later-expiring patents to cover obvious and unavoidable variations (dosage, delivery method, etc) on a drug. This is called "evergreening" the patent.
Step 2: Generic companies attempt to create products nearly identical to an expiring patent.
Step 3: Brand company sues generic companies, arguing infringement. Generic companies counterclaim arguing noninfringement and invalidity of the patents.
Step 4: Brand and generic companies test each other for a couple years in litigation while the FDA review and related testing occurs on generic product.
Step 5: As generic product is nearing approval and release, brand company offers generic a deal to settle the litigation: Stay off the market for X years, and we will give you (a) an upfront payment, (b) status as an "authorized" generic, or both. The "authorized" generic simply meant that instead of paying market prices for the drug, a consumer would pay the brand's artificial floor even though the brand has no claim to the generic, expired-patent drug.
Step 6: Brand repeats process for every new generic entrant.

It was and still is amazing to me that the DOJ does not prosecute what is clearly this anti-competitive, monopolistic practice.

There's no reason why "Eclipse" as a source designator for mobile graphics processors could not be trademarked, even with an existing registration in another area.

This is like saying a single neuron isn't responsible for a bad thought, so the brain can't be responsible either. Facebooks network effects, reduced friction and increased targeting efficiencies is entirely what makes it successful, profitable, and toxic.

Your wife's aunt's emails reached the few people she took the time to email, who gave it exactly the kind of weight a crazy aunt email would get because it wasn't positioned as real news. I remember those emails and they were a joke even then - it probably annoyed those people having to open it and read it. Facebook allows a single post, potentially from a bad actor, to target an expanding network, and users see it and treat it with increased importance because it is leveled with the same visibility as NYT or other real journalism. That post can then exponentially reach millions of people in mere minutes since users have zero friction to sharing and re-posting it, spurred on by Facebook's absolutely irresponsible algorithms that prioritize virality over everything else.

This also has nothing to do with people's right to say things - heck, you're here complaining about "banning" speech in response to a site releasing information - and everything to do with a company profiting off of and actively encouraging misinformation that is absolutely drowning good speech in its noise.

The US (via MPA and other media company lobbying) has been trying to export the DMCA since 1998, through trade agreements like the TPP. It's been successful at exporting other US-centric copyright restrictions that way, since it's a method that (1) is usually negotiated and agreed-to with very little transparency in any of the countries, and (2) sounds very boring and administrative, so doesn't garner much interest.

So all I can say is - stay vigilant if you don't want worldwide DMCA, because there's certainly someone somewhere still getting paid large sums of money to make it happen.

That's true. To be honest, this (very sadly) likely depends on if Murdoch continues his break with Trump. Fox News is starting to move away from Trump after he lost the election, and the Trump base is simultaneously rejecting Fox News for not being extreme enough. Murdoch can choose to move further right to follow his now-fully radicalized audience, or stay where it is and attempt to rebuild the republican party.

If it's the latter, then we have some hope. The party will split and have to soul-search to form a coherent whole, hopefully breaking Trump's spell. If it's the former, I agree we're in for a rough ride in 2024.

I can't really express how much of a relief it is we're on the offramp from the worst timeline. It's exhausting just thinking we could be about to spend 4(+) more years gaslit by this narcissist.

So the choice we have is either die to save the economy or nuclear annihilation with no recovery...ever? C'mon, work with me here.

If the economy shuts down, we consume less. If we consume less, less money is distributed through the economy. That leads to economic distress due to inefficiencies in that distribution. But the cost of keeping people alive is cheap. Calories are cheap. The US can certainly afford to keep its population healthy and safe until a vaccine is created, as can most other countries, if it came to that and if politicians do their jobs.

But it won't come to that. Because all sane people are doing is advocating is using some sense and listening to the scientists and epidemiologists rather than politicians and political pundits who have a mind-crippling amount of self-interest steering their decision-making. Wear a mask. Don't demand indoor businesses reopen when there is raging community transmission. Distance 6 feet away from each other.

I mean, truly trying to understand, does that sound apocalyptic to you?.