NOPE. Never in a million years.
I hope this trend dies folks, but it seems like the age of Chromium-based LLM browsers have started. That is, if the AI bubble doesn’t pop sooner than later.
Do you think it will become impossible one day to not use an AI browser? These features are creeping into every single option we have now.
Everyone say this sentence, but its quite meaningless to me.
So what if it pops, and what does it change. Billionaires still have endless amounts of money to keep investing in this.
I rather hope fediverse takes over the world and leaves meta in the dustbin of history:
Likewise linux overtakes microsoft… 
And what community tech could overtake google? And other companies?
Only that way their “bubble can pop” in practice when people stop relying on these companies.
At least, we still have anti-AI browsers…
There are tons of browsers on the market, and very few have made it to the point of being relevant for lots of people. Even then none have come close to dethroning Chrome. I guess I’m not worried about this because there are already so many like it and I don’t believe the market for this is that big.
The other thing with the AI bubble is the aspect of this that I see less people talk about - that running these services is unprofitable now and will never become profitable. If that is true then all of these browsers will never come back because they just burn money. For this claim I present Ed Zitron.
Non-AI browsers will stay, for sure. Most of the features an LLM in a browser provides are pretty useless to me, and I think a lot of people share this sentiment. Not only that, but the obvious privacy issues with a browser like this, and the unethical nature of current AI models, make it a hard pass for me.
As long as there are browsers that either refuse to implement them or at least allow me to disable any integration of this kind, it’s fine. But a browser where AI is mandatory? No thanks.
After the .COM bubble bursted in 1990s; google, facebook, amazon etc grew like crazy and took over the world.
And there we many companies that did not survive the dot com bubble. Up until now the question for the sustainability of AI has been behind how smart can it get and how efficient can it get. The cost of inference has not yet gone down, which means the smarter it gets the more it costs to run the model. If that piece is not solved with the billions of dollars that AI is receiving today, I think there’s a good chance it won’t get solved. In the scenario you will have some AI business in the future, but it will be at the fringes of technology - features here and there, but nothing on the scale to justify this bubble.
If we’re just talking features then I don’t think there would be as much concern, but the premise of an AI browser is the agentic features, which takes a lot more processing than even returning an answer to a prompt. If that business can’t turn a profit or have a roadmap to turning a profit, it won’t succeed. And if all you have is a basic browser dependent on an LLM service that can’t run profitably because they ran out of investment dollars to burn, then the browser will become irrelevant. That or it plays the same game as the current crop do, and even then I don’t think they will produce a completive product.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think we would be looking at a bubble if LLMs were all they are cracked up to be.
It all depends on how the broader technological landscape deals with this. They can keep adding features all they want, but will other products and services leverage this somehow in a way that is desirable for them? And will these “others” be used by society at large to sustain their existence?
For example: We “have” to use smartphones nowadays because products and services that were on the come up with them leveraged it. Social media apps, for example, were on the rise with smartphones. We use social media, therefore we use smartphones. Bank apps, game apps, entertainment apps, etc. They all leveraged smartphone technology. This slowly made smartphones a convenient tool because it was culturally adopted by lots and lots of people.
We can extrapolate this to AI browsers to make an “educated guess” about what could happen given what we know (although predicting the future is impossible). For example: What “others” (products/services/etc.) are on the come up with AI browsers that we (i) use a lot and (ii) is leveraging the technology/features/etc. of AI browsers?
I personally don’t know much about AI browsers, so maybe someone else can fill in the gaps here and answer the questions. I personally don’t see much use for an AI browser.
If what I said above has any worth, then “popping” the AI bubble would mean that no product/service would want to leverage AI in their stuff anymore. But I hear you
They will only invest in it as much as they believe in it. If they believe they will get money out of this, they will invest more. If they realize that it won’t (such as in the case of the bubble “popping”) then they will not invest further. The real question is not whether or not billionaires will keep investing in it, because the answer has no substance without the answer to the actual, real question: What value does AI have that billionaires think they do? Do they believe in something we don’t know about it? What are their projections for AI?
I think billionaires clearly do value AI immensely. At least the rich big tech social media platforms, that is. Their algorithms are driven by AI insofar as it detects our interests and keeps us on their platforms, so they will definitely keep pouring money into this.
Another viable AI investment is probably AI-related video games. There are so many good breakthroughs happening with AI with respect to video games, and the video gaming industry will never die down. Most of modern society is too privileged to not want to be entertained.
As for other kinds of AI, like LLMs, I’m not too familiar with. From my point-of-view, though, they are a dead technology. Nothing but a trend. Maybe there’s a market for students since they rely so much on LLM technology to cheat, but I doubt this will continue further. And even if it does continue, I doubt that there will be a stable demand for a particular LLM other than the big ones already established, like OpenAI and others. Stable demand is very necessary for long term investment. If investments keep happening without stable demand, then a bubble “pop” will happen. It’s just a matter of when.
Do note that I am not an economist or anything other than a lay person. These are my non-professional opinions and I am hoping that someone more knowledgeable comes along to provide a more nuanced response to your statement.
For one, it’s most likely going to take US economy with it, considering the scale of money being invested in it. 80% of stock market growth in past year or so has been driven by AI companies, and many have their savings tied to that.
And rest of the world is in even more of a rude awakening if they think they won’t be affected by a US recession.