Low Risk Value Investor

Tweets can be tongue-in-cheek. Toast: Value Investing. Roast: Politics. Boast: Humility (mine!). I don't do paid posts.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

@PuneetK009 Excellent read.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

Excellent read.

[Puneet Khurana @PuneetK009]

https://t.co/Dfqx1z38mO

[Stijn Noorman @stijnnoorman]

https://t.co/HVaw4Xuyle

[Nicolas Bustamante @nicbstme]

https://t.co/v7sot4WCI2

[Sandeep Manudhane @sandeep_PT]

WARNING
Massive AI hype being built in a sudden burst
(and most of it fake)

1) A scary article: I was surprised to read a long article on Twitter (X) claiming it's just 6-12 months before a Covid-like event changes this world. It claims this will be the AI-event, where most white-collar jobs worldwide would be gone, because AI is that good now. That article got 100 M plus views. Clearly, people are spooked (naturally). So the psy-op has worked.
(and I saw other similar dark articles too)

2) Suddenly many influencers are pushing the same narrative, and it so turns out that media reported many are being paid heavy sums by AI firms to push their story (that AI singularity is arriving). But if AI is "revolutionary", does it need an influencer push? No. This should be a clear signal it's hyped.

3) A correction in IT stocks' and SaaS stock's prices is suddenly creating a doom scenario about these companies dying any moment now, with second- and third-order effects on entire economy. Stock investors who haven't studied AI technicals are automatically assuming it's all over, dead, gone, finished. WRONG. NO.

4) What is the truth, and what's most likely to happen?
In my opinion, based on years of observing AI trends, reading and learning AI technology, and doing AI at various levels, my take is as follows. I urge you to read this, and preserve your sanity. Please don't panic, nothing catastrophic is happening anytime soon.

A) IPO pressure: AI firms are going crazy pushing their God-narrative, as many giant IPOs are lined up soon. They need public to buy their paid subscriptions or else the story goes kaput. So they are creating a false hype. It's shameful, anti-social and deeply hurtful.
(Almost all AI firms released doom-scenarios just before their next funding rounds; investors who haven't learnt technology fall for it; pure FOMO. This playbook is so repetitive it's comical)
B) OpenAI is spooked: Sam Altman has lost the lead he temporarily managed to build against Google and others, and now his loss-making enterprise isn't the darling of any investor any more. He's terrified.
C) Elon Musk's Grok does not have the traction in consumer space anyway near what's needed to make it a profit-making entity. So with many other capex-heavy AI firms. But the GPU / TPU hungry AI ops need more capex each day, not less. It's a dead-end for most except cash rich Googles.
D) Enterprise AI is patchy, lagging, slow, choppy: Anyone who has ever built a company, or run a large department, or consulted a business enterprise knows how random, undefined, tacit, and unstructured most of the real world work actually is. No way is AI ever going to replace humans doing those very complex things on a daily basis. No way. Not tomorrow, not in 10 years. NO.
(I am not even beginning to get into 'regulated' industries' needs)
E) Consumer AI is cool, but has limits: The more AI regular humans (of all ages) use, the more the artificiality of it becomes apparent to anyone. The novelty cannot sustain the commercial numbers needed to make AI (foundation models) profitable. OpenAI and Perplexity would never have given free tiers for most Indians otherwise. They desperately need folks to stick to this opium.
F) LLMs aren't solved, Hallucinations aren't zero: The structure of any LLM is such that it will ALWAYS hallucinate, no matter how much fine-tuning humans do. In most sensitive business operations, you cannot allow LLMs to control the core data at all. Can you run an airline with a Generative AI system (LLM-based) that's 98% accurate? Can you run a precision-mfg. operation at 97% accuracy? Can you run a financial services firm with 95% accuracy? NO. NEVER. So the deterministic, old-fashioned computer software ERP will go nowhere. Nowhere at all. LLMs will be good as a top layer on those ERPs to glean insights, nothing more.
[ None can 'train away' hallucinations in a probabilistic LLM model, using larger datasets. You are actually claiming I'll build a dice that lands a 4, or a 6, each time ]
G) Agents aren't magical, humans aren't going anywhere: Multi-step agentic AI is being touted as the final solution where one founder sitting alone can run 100 agents and build an empire. Try doing that once, experience the frequent breakdowns, see the regular edges and new complexities, and you will realize that other than the most mundane of tasks, nothing else will be seamless. Yes, Voice AI agents are good, and many in the developing world are now deploying those, but that's hardly a cutting-edge technology that'll replace all humans.
H) IT and SaaS firms are going nowhere: Ironically, the more AI happens in enterprises, the more will be the need for humans to supervised and orchestrate those bits and pieces of AI, to ensure nothing flies off the rails. The complex software code that Claude and Codex can write only changes the nature of work for the human coders who now have to check the AI code thoroughly for the many edge cases in real world. The nature of IT and SaaS work will change, some companies that can't innovate and adapt will vanish, but many new ones will emerge in their place. (Yes, there'll will be some much-deserved disruption in short-term, and the non-innovating IT firms will have deserved every bit of it)
I) If IT and SaaS are dead, why are AI firms hyping: Ask this simple question - if AI is indeed killing IT and SaaS, then why are AI firms spending massive sums hyping their wares? They need spend nothing and still earn the spoils. But they know the truth.
J) The China angle: Models from China - many of them open-sourced - are getting better and more competitive. Many of them are cheaper, or free (for now). OpenAI complained recently that they are stealing from American models (via "distillation"). Imagine, just imagine - OpenAI that stole entire internet work of creative work is complaining the Chinese are stealing from it. A dacoit crying that thieves broke into his house. Rich. You think these are signs of singularity? Ha! The judicial backlash on stolen content and profiteering off of it hasn't even begun in most jurisdictions.
(now imagine what happens to American LLM-makers when Chinese models gain traction everywhere)
K) Downside of mindless AI already visible: Take just one example: In education everywhere, students, parents and teachers are all realizing that mindless AI use is harming the process of learning, not aiding it. The sensible, guarded and limited way AI should be brought into pedagogy hasn't even been given a proper thought. Students are just doing "cognitive offloading", and turning into non-thinking beings. This is bound to collapse sooner than later. Humans as species don't learn this way - it's a long, tortuous and slow process, always.
L) AI is normal technology: Serious researchers from the AI field have for years argued that AI is being hyped unnecessarily out of proportion, turned into Snake Oil like propositions, and most of AI's predictive powers are anyway not better than that of astrology. AI's ability to talk to use like humans has totally stumped normal people, and anthropomorphism has kicked in. Since no ERP talked to use like a human would, the computer revolution came about without the singularity fears.
M) AI in law and judiciary: The impact will be on the grunt work. It will be cut down substantially. But no judge will outsource their cognition to AI, now will any lawyer. The fact that an LLM can read a complex document fast and summarise it means nothing if it hallucinates. And LLMs will forever hallucinate; that's their structure. (so you'll need humans to sign off on LLM outputs)
N) Enterprise AI's lessons: Every company that has mindlessly gone in on AI has learnt that employees just stopped using it if it didn't adapt to the existing workflows. AI cannot magically alter anything: it can speed things up (with hallucinations), it can generate beautiful stuff (needed or not) and it can help save some time, but the company-to-company needs are so different, it cannot be force-fit on all in one shot. (that is what foundation LLM firms are trying to do). Remember: Enterprise work is not just code. It’s messy data, old legacy systems, compliance needs, multiple integrations, business context, human complexities, and more. Services firms are going nowhere.

O) AI has no solutions for the human situation: Fertility rates everywhere are dropping. Humans are being converted into permanently marketable selves. Consumption comfort has made us soft, and our morality is totally adrift. AI doesn't solve any of this, it just force-multiplies most of it. We built it. It reflects what we are.

5) So what should you do?
a) Read up on AI. Its technical side. How LLMs are created. What they just cannot do. What they can. Why they aren't superhuman at all. Why AI is a good but normal set of technologies.
b) Think why regulated industries (at least 25) cannot hand over their future to AI, LLMs, and GenAI.
c) Check the history of Indian IT and how it kept rebooting itself to suit a new era (from Y2K, to outsourcing, to SaaS backend support, to much more).
d) Check how human societies eventually revolt when artificiality starts overpowering natural human interactions.
e) Be prepared for more hype and nonsense. Sadly, the AI firms won't stop at it at all. They need more humans to subscribe to their paid tiers, and fear seems to be the chosen weapon. Tragic.
[I am subscribed to more than 10 such paid AI tools currently, and know exactly what's good and what's not, and why no singularity is arriving]
f) Adapt your work, and bits of it, to AI tools that can adjust to the workflow well. Let your discretion be supreme.
g) If AI is the shiny new tap, IT is the plumbing behind it.

Remember:
Elon Musk's predictions have mostly gone wrong
Geoffrey Hinton's predictions have gone wrong
Mustafa Suleyman's predictions have gone bust
Yet they keep predicting.

Sad part:
We are living in an age of bullshit. And LLMs are excellent bullshitting machines. The reason the AI Bros are continuing doing so is no one is holding them accountable for their nonstop lies.

But what about AGI:
If AGI is ever built, it won't be by any one company. The technology diffuses rapidly each day. So multiple AGIs in multiple hands. Goes without saying governments will capture (claim) that technology almost immediately. If that day ever arrives, UBI is happening too.

Finally:
Your brain, running on just 20 watts, continues to outthink LLMs fueled by the energy of an entire planet. Never underestimate yourself. And stop falling prey to AI hype.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

Phenomenal. Recommend this.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

.@collision and I interviewed @elonmusk.

0:00:00 - Orbital data centers
0:36:46 - Grok and alignment
0:59:56 - xAI’s business plan
1:17:21 - Optimus and humanoid manufacturing
1:30:22 - Does China win by default?
1:44:16 - Lessons from running SpaceX
2:20:08 - DOGE
2:38:28 - TeraFab

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

So much market manipulation!

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

Trump got everything he wanted.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

My theory:
Trump will get whatever he desires from India ...
...
... after Bihar elections.

[Brad @BradleyKellard]

In 1973, Richard Feynman revealed a way of thinking that makes “common sense” look like superstition.

He broke down:
• Names vs knowledge
• Experiment >> history
• How real discovery happens
• Why rituals survive without evidence

12 lessons from Feynman’s masterclass:

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

Going as per plan 😊

[Arihant @haryannvi]

So, we are
- doing everything US wants
- paying huge costs monetarily & strategically in doing so
- only BRICS nation to not attend naval exercise to appease US
- So much appeasement - only making US angrier

What type of foreign policy is this? There should be a term for this.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt drops a chilling warning on AI's future

"Within 5 years, AI could handle infinite context, chain-of-thought reasoning for 1000-step solutions, and millions of agents working together.

Eventually, they'll develop their own language... and we won't understand what they're doing."

His final words: "Pull the plug."

This is the man who ran Google talking about the singularity.

2:59 clip inside—must-watch.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

X will become like other social media. Full of garbage.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Elon Musk tells X to increase creator payouts to compete with YouTube.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is largely being ignored but it's easily one of the biggest China news of the year.

What China is doing with Hainan - a huge island (50 times the size of Singapore!) - is pretty extraordinary: they're basically making it into a completely different jurisdiction from the rest of the country, and an extremely attractive entry gate for the Chinese market.

You can now import most products in the world (74% of all goods) entirely duty free into Hainan. And, if you transform the product and add 30% value locally, you can then send it to the rest of mainland China completely tariff-free.

So for instance: import Australian beef into Hainan tax free. Slice it and package it for hotpot in Hainan: it can enter all mainland supermarkets duty-free.

They also have insanely low corporate tax rates: 15%, lower than Hong Kong (16.5%) and Singapore (17%) or the rest of the mainland (25%).

That's not all, Hainan now has different rules from the rest of China in dozens of areas:

HEALTH: Basically the rule is that if a medicine or medical device is approved by regulatory agencies anywhere in the world, it can be used in Hainan - even if banned on the mainland. Which undoubtedly makes it THE place in the world with the widest range of medical treatments available.

NO FIREWALL: Companies registered in Hainan can apply for unrestricted global internet access

OPEN EDUCATION: Foreign universities can open campuses without a Chinese partner

VISA-FREE: 86 countries get visa-free entry, probably one of the most open places in the world

CAPITAL: Special accounts let money flow freely to and from overseas - normal mainland forex restrictions don't apply

So they're running a pretty extraordinary "radical openness" experiment there.

They're basically building a "greatest hits" of global free zones: Singapore's tax regime, Switzerland's medical access, Dubai's visa policy - all in one giant tropical island attached to the 1.4 billion people Chinese consumer market.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

@MysticWealth11 Qc6#
good one :)

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

@microcp2mltibgr 100 basis points is 3 syllables more than for 1%. Finance bro giving more.
(sarcasm)

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

@ValueWithPrem since when are Ambanis "old business clan"... Mukesh Ambani is second generation.

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

@aniketkrishna more your activity, happier your broker and government.

[Arjun* @mxtaverse]

bro skipped the middleman and pulled up straight to the boss😭🙏

[Low Risk Value Investor @Khambatta]

US gets what it wants.
We may see many such actions in the coming days.

https://t.co/UkEnBlKFcI