The Great LLM Delusion - Part III: Vapourware as a Business Model
Microsoft vapourware battles (a siege against reason and PR stunt over people's sanity)
IN yesterday's relatively short article, or in some memes, we attempted to introduce the subject and frame it using metaphors, just as others had done before. Explaining some technical concept using metaphors from the animal kingdom or the kitchen ("pagpag") can certainly help. LLMs, aka digital pagpag, are copyright-infringing. It is plagiarism as a service. It is a lot worse than the originals.
In Part I of this series I explained that I had already worked with machines learning for over 20 years. It's not new to me. In Part II we collectively focused on the failure of Azure and why Microsoft had embraced OpenAI (giving it lots of computational power) to fake "demand". Several people have contribute to this series.
Microsoft hopes that people won't grasp just how far back machine learning goes. It's not new at all; adding words like "advanced" or "generative" to AI does not make it new. Where I worked 20 years ago we had already done all this "generative AI" thing with faces, brains etc. But the term "generative" was combined with words like PDM or "models". This was done at a lower resolution due to limitation in computing power back then (or sheer cost of combining machine learning-optimised machines). Almost none of what Microsoft has shown the public this past year can be considered new; they just threw some "brute force" at it (higher electricity bills; it helps fake the "demand" for Azure).
Microsoft could really use some fake growth, some hope, some new promise/s to shareholders. They have almost nothing else to show and they are running out of fuel. Headcount too is decreasing.
In purely speculative market (where perceived value is based on lies if not fraud such as fake 'results'), a company that sinks into deep debt (almost the highest debt in the tech sector worldwide!) can be framed as "most valuable".
We have two questions:
- What is Microsoft still selling in 2024? Windows has become almost a giveaway (due to growing competition) and Office has resorted to spam-styled marketing*, so where does the revenue come from? Bailouts**?
- Does Microsoft have an actual plan for making LLMs actually profitable?
For a company, the bottom line is, can it pay all the salaries or have to fire loads of staff? Sure, shareholders can receive the excesses, but without staff there is no actual company. Microsoft keeps shrinking, so on what basis can its "value" grow? The increase in losses induced due to LLMs? None of this makes any sense; it's the hallmark of fraud.
The Microsoft layoffs are probably aimed at pumping the stock price, an associate explains, since among the financial LARPers layoffs raise stock prices. That way they can sell stock and then in a few days after the dip buy it back.
One can hope that they shut down soon. "Not that it'll happen but one can hope," a reader said, perhaps not taking account/measure of bailouts. "In a financial model affected by reality," this reader remarked, "layoffs would drive down the stock price due to clear divestment from growth-related activities and resources."
The truth of the matter is, Microsoft is in a hard place. "I think that is the main reason so much effort has been put into cancelling Eben Moglen, RMS, and the others," one person remarked internally. "If not cancelling at least tying them up fending off attacks rather than being able to participate in national processes." █
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* The other day we noticed that Which? had resorted to posting pure Microsoft SPAM to sell Office. Which? was definitely not this rogue a year ago, so a warning label is required.
** "Not only has Which? gone rogue," one associate noted, but Microsoft has also more or less completely captured the White House, the US Senate, the US House, and basically all college and university curricula. Both Trump and Biden kept funnelling "defence" budget directly into Microsoft coffers. We covered many examples over the years.