This is a good way to grow. The old "the first hit is free" model. However, in this scenario, the AI companies should give their product away for free and recognize no revenue. They can report active users per month or something similar. Subsiding the sales and then recognizing the revenue feels like fraud.
Does it really take $1.25 billion in opex to give away $9 billion? WOW!
$1.25 billion get you 5,000 employees making 250k each. At a charity???? (I know. There is also coffee, insurance, rent, lawyers, etc.)
Who on earth is running this place? Oh. Wait...
It's genius. Say the product is too dangerous, and you can't have it. Have the few people who actual touch it sign NDAs.
Sit back watch the news go wild.
Company valuation jumps.
The CIA is running Chinese language ads looking for spies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us...
The US will pay very good money for secrets.
These guys could have quietly cut a deal with the NSA/CIA. Now that China knows to look for them, they better watch their backs. Talk about poking the dragon.
those in power will want it to go away.
It might take one person one year to write 25k lines. How does a person get their head around that in 15 hours? One little "why on earth is this here" question can generate an hour or more in research with product managers, asking developers, reading 1000's of pages of documentation.... If it is fintech quant code, good luck with finding a quick explanation.
Weak signals over a long distance. You may as well try to listen to people whispering in China from the US.
(Why would a civilization dedicate a large amount of resources, say 1,000+ nuclear power plants, to send a very narrow signal into the void hoping for a billion+ to one chance of hitting our little planet at a time we are listing - Not before the Romans or after we're cooked. Engineers start with: how can I send the message with as little cost (materials, power, etc) as possible? If they over engineer, they get fired. "Close" in this context is 10,000 light years. Millions of light years for galaxies.)
Then why not tell the AI to write the code in highly optimized Assembly?
MS stock is only down 1% today. Still time to get in.
They claim to use AI for 30% of their coding. If they had even one person QC this build, this would have been caught. You can't log in to test without hitting this bug.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/2...
If this is the future, we're all in trouble. And yes. I run Ubuntu, but none of my corporate programs run on Ubuntu. I have to use MS. As does most of the world.
Don't know about the Nürburgring.
However, this is from Car and Driver:
https://www.caranddriver.com/n...
"YangWang U9 Track Edition just reached a top speed of 293.54 mph at a test track in Germany" at the ATP Automotive Testing Papenburg track.
In Germany. Not China.
I've been to China a few times in the last few years. I've been in plenty of Chinese EV taxis or "Didi da che" (their version of Uber). Yes. They are good. Ask a cab driver how the car has been for the last 2-3 years, and they have positive comments. Trust me, the cab drivers will bitch about anything they don't like - from government corruption to speed cameras to the long waits at the airport. After 2-3 years of heavy use, the interiors of those taxis are generally in impressively good shape. They hold up. Some of the interiors would hold their own against a Mercedes E class. Same with exterior fit and finish. Take the badges off, and it is difficult to tell the difference next to a new Audi.
How much of their coding is done by AI?
1. Colleges should screen applicants. If they aren't ready, don't take them.
2. Colleges should fail anyone who can't pass their courses. Fail too many courses, and you are done.
It isn't the college's job to teach anything other than college level courses.
They will build what they want. Not what we want.
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. - Brian Kernighan
