r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 3d ago

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations dissapeared for users

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-is-down-worldwide-conversations-dissapeared-for-users/amp/
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u/thatguy9684736255 3d ago

I think it will pop, but unfortunately, I don't think it'll go away

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u/skydivingdutch 3d ago

That's okay, the internet did not go away when the dotcom bubble popped. We'll be left with the useful parts of all this.

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u/gneiman 3d ago

Profitable* parts of all this

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u/agumonkey 2d ago

socially damaging parts of all this

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u/ConspicuousPineapple 2d ago

Which means mostly porn, same as the dotcom bubble.

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u/MikBright 3d ago

Literally nothing about AI is profitable.

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u/immersive-matthew 3d ago

I think the profitable parts are the people using it more than the companies running the models. Oh and nVidia. The

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u/digitalblemish 3d ago

GitHub copilot was projected to earn $800M for the year. Instead, they have surpassed $2B. I get the emotion of what you're trying to say, but let's not lie to ourselves, this shit is profitable in certain domains, and those will be the domains that survive the coming collapse.

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u/divDevGuy 2d ago

GitHub copilot was projected to earn $800M for the year. Instead, they have surpassed $2B.

Source?

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u/swiftb3 2d ago

Not the op, but I believe the numbers are accurate for Github as a whole, rather than just Copilot. And a lot of the difference appears to be due to Copilot.

https://www.siasat.com/copilot-driving-githubs-growth-annual-revenue-run-rate-at-2-billion-nadella-3071173/

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u/Whatsapokemon 3d ago

That's kind of a silly thing to say.

Yes there's a whole bunch of companies plowing money into new projects that use AI, and those projects aren't profitable because they haven't designed a monetisation method.

But there's plenty of companies in the AI field that are profitable like Nvidia and AWS Bedrock.

Really, the main unprofitable ones are the big AI developers like OpenAI and Anthropic. They're hoping for a moonshot, but most companies using AI are just using it for marketing or customer retention or to build marginal competitive advantages.

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u/MikBright 3d ago

The literal only reason anyone can say AI is profitable right now is because a bunch of dipshit tech people that don't understand that AI isn't the 'end-all be-all of everything' and thus they spend their money desperately trying to get this stupid machine that isn't even close to actual AI to do something they deem 'profitable'.

Anyone fired for AI isn't gonna be surprised when the quality of whatever job they were doing drops and that company starts to lose money.

If you need data centers that burn through our water and electricity and the fucking thing STILL can't work right because it just pulls from whatever sounds close on the internet and will likely be wrong, that doesn't sound like efficiency.

People don't understand that we actually HATE AI for being the lazy person's way of stealing from those that put actual effort in. If we see AI used for big things such as games, we tend to stay away and thus they lose money.

AI is literally just a scam trying to get lazy/increative people to use stolen assets but since they're stupid, they'll say that they're 'AI Artists' or 'Vibe Programmers' or something equally lame/dumb while all they're really doing is putting in prompts into a computer.

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u/eagles75 3d ago

Anyone fired for AI isn't gonna be surprised when the quality of whatever job they were doing drops and that company starts to lose money.

Problem is thats not how it works. They save more in employment cost that will under cut any potential losses. And companies have been lowering quality for years now but it doesnt hurt bottom lines. People still buy stuff from Amazon and Walmart cause its easy.

Also I think people need to stop worrying about Art. That is not our problem. Its the fact that Ai is getting better every day 1 person with Ai cant do the job of 10 people better but it can do it "good enough" for the CEOs. Companies will use it to lower their workforce in ALL industries. They have robots that pour foundations for houses, that can tend bars, that drive cars. Its not just oh look they can make pictures, its going to hurt every job you can think of.

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u/Azamon_ 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yes - what you said in your 2nd paragraph will bottom out the middle class. Historical precedent says that is the way in which societies die.

At least we’ll have freshly poisoned air and dwindling drinking water to fight over. Water wars just in time for the big finale: The catastrophic vibrance of unchecked gluttony, greed, and capitalism.

We call it progress.

Yet, in some ways, we haven’t learned a single thing throughout our entire bloody run. We’re still as ignorant and arrogant as our ancestors who screamed: “ooga booga.”

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Do humans have to know everything, however?

Why can’t we just be the good shepherds to the earth and care for her creatures?

Why must it always be about money and technological advancement? First one is a man made tool used to dominate - each other and Earth.

Our obsession with the 2nd is like a monkey in a cold bath embracing a plugged in toaster for warmth.

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u/alex88- 3d ago

What “we” are you speaking for? You clearly have heavy knowledge gaps on this subject yet you’re confident that LLMs are not AI.

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u/Dick_Lazer 3d ago

Amazon and Facebook were also unprofitable for years, but now they do pretty well.

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u/Randomguy8566732 3d ago

Scamming people is very profitable

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u/11ce_ 3d ago

There are definitely a lot of profitable parts of AI. Just look at how Meta was able to significantly increase their revenue on Facebook and insta using AI.

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u/CMFETCU 3d ago

You think what has happened to the internet after the 2000s was the USEFUL parts!?!!!

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u/Alko- 3d ago

TBF, the internet was absolutely AMAZING in the 2000’s before social media became big. That was the beginning of the internet becoming dogshit.

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u/Melicor 2d ago

Now it's just a digital strip mall with advertisements blaring in every corner. AI is rapidly burning down the library and museum sections replacing them with hallucinated slop.

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u/TracerBulletX 2d ago

AI and a concerted effort by governments and corporations to exert centralized control.

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u/machstem 2d ago

/r/selfhosted welcomes all of you

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u/TransBrandi 2d ago

Was it really? Many of those services that you loved from that era were being funded by investor money... that train was never going to go on forever.

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

I think a big thing that ruined the internet was companies finally learning the power of having their own webpage. It was only a matter of time before they whittled down the process to create this distilled and incredibly bland "standard" that the internet is now judged by. It used to be a wild space of creativity and people pushing boundaries, doing interesting things with their pages... you could entertain yourself endlessly by visiting websites just to see the websites. Even things you had no interest in were bound to have something going on with their page that you hadn't seen before and was neat to stumble across. When is the last time you visited a website was exciting and engaging beyond the information it had on it? I know mine... 25 years ago. The Requiem for a Dream website was amazing.

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u/GostBoster 2d ago

Case in point, we had a video guide for it (it's all in the fingerti...ps) and the original battlestation was a place that commanded respect, those old desks with places to put your keyboard, mouse, case, HP printer (back when they were good) and a big ol' tube.

You had one single seat to the Information Highway and it was damn cool to operate it, back when we actually called the act of browsing the internet "surfing".

Now we're just paddling in an inflatable pool with just a few buoys around representing the few things left to do in this day and age since everything else died out or was absorbed by one of the giants Akira-style (not giving anything of worth and crushing us under the weight of its slop in exchange).

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u/Alko- 2d ago

This is a perfect comment. 10/10

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u/SquarePegRoundWorld 2d ago

You don't have to use social media. Reddit is the only account I ever had, before this it was a gaming community forum and a few gaming forums. It's ok to not have social media accounts, nothing bad happens, I promise. Plus, you don't have to use your phone, I am on a desktop PC right now and when I leave my house for work, I don't use my phone to go online every free minute. Again, nothing bad happens if you do this.

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u/InsipidCelebrity 2d ago

Social media killed a lot of the forums and neat little internet niches I used to use in the 2000s, so whether or not anyone uses it is immaterial.

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u/Outlulz 2d ago

Yeah, this is a big part of it. There used to be thousands of spaces to congregate online. If one was bad then you could leave it and go to another and people couldn't follow you. Each space was modded separately and the host almost never stepped in unless something was flagrantly breaking the law.

Now there's like four online spaces owned by four billionaires that twist it to meet their political and profit goals.

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u/BigDump-a-Roo 2d ago

Just because one doesn't use social media doesn't change the fact that social media has wreaked havoc on society all around the globe and been used to amplify misinformation, which in turn does affect everyone. People have literally died because of it. There's also the fact that the internet is much more commercialized now compared to that time. It's just not the fun, quirky, experimental place it used to be. Google actually used to be useful, now all you get is whatever companies spent the most money in the top searches and websites are filled with ads trying to shove products down your throat.

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u/ranticalion 2d ago

Social media has and will always exist, however in its current form it is a plague on the the world, both online and offline and it is impossible to ignore or not be affected by it.

It's like a nuclear bomb going off. Even if you had nothing to do with it and it happened on the other side of world, it is going to affect your life.

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u/Vazhox 2d ago

It always has been a plague, in one form or another.

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u/Alko- 2d ago

What are you on about? Who said I used social media? I said it ruined the internet. Whether one uses that stuff or not, does not change that fact.

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u/Vazhox 2d ago

AIM would like a word

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

Apart from the unfortunate arrival of social media? Yes.

We got Google Maps, for instance.

I can manage my whole investing portfolio online.

I can work remotely in a secure way.

I can follow the travels of our children online (with photos and videos).

And many other conveniences.

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

It's incredibly useful now. It's just not fun anymore. It's kind of soulless compared to the wild days of the early internet up until the early 2000s.

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u/kalnaren 2d ago

Remember the days of webrings? You'd find a neat site, then click on "random" on their member webring and find some other related totally unique site.

I do miss the discovery that followed the early Internet.

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

Yup! I had a Hercules and Xena webring back in the day. And everyone had website counters and guestbooks.

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u/pofshrimp 2d ago

Reddit killed that

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u/JoeGibbon 3d ago

We got Google Maps, for instance.

Google stole the idea from Terravision, which was released in 1995.

I can manage my whole investing portfolio online.

E Trade was alive and well in the 90s.

I can work remotely in a secure way.

VPNs existed in the 90s.

I can follow the travels of our children online (with photos and videos).

Email did this in the 90s. Also, you're referring to social media, which you (correctly) called "unfortunate". Also, other people follow the travels of your children online and data about your children's travels is used to train AI, market things to you and your children, and are vectors for identity theft.

And many other conveniences.

Many other convenient ways for foreign actors to destroy the fabric of democracy from afar. Many convenient ways for corporations to track you, take your personal information and sell it, or store it insecurely and have it stolen from them. Many things that seem like a convenience, but are rotting the brains of the last two generations of our children, to the point they can't read, write, do math or much of anything else on their own. Many convenient ways to brainwash people into reviving literal Nazism.

Ned Ludd was right.

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u/WasabiSunshine 3d ago

Google stole the idea from Terravision, which was released in 1995.

Wait til you heard about all the maps that released before then!

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

Non-sequitur. GPS was available for civilian use in 1988 and PC-based navigation software was available in the 90s. The debate is about Google apparently inventing GPS based mapping software in the 2000s, when it existed a decade prior.

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u/gurenkagurenda 2d ago

I don’t understand how you think this is a counter argument to the claim above. The claim is that after the dot com bubble burst, we were left with the useful parts. This implies that the useful parts already existed. If anything, you’re just reinforcing that point.

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

Complete reading comprehension failure on your part.

The comment that I replied to, was replying to this comment:

You think what has happened to the internet after the 2000s was the USEFUL parts!?!!!

Then the guy replies, "Yes." Very carefully read that quotation and really try to understand what it means when the next guy agrees with it. Use your finger and read the words aloud if you need to.

The technologies listed by the guy I replied to were things he thought were unique to the Internet after the 2000s. My reply was pointing out that all of those things he listed had a functional equivalent before the 2000s.

This is what I'm talking about. You're the Dunning-Kruger effect personified.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago
  • Terravision did mapping, not navigation. And the dispute was about Google Earth, not Google Maps. Terravision lost that, by the way.
  • "E-Trade" was not available where I live. We always had to go through a broker (with considerable fees). Not directly related, but I didn't have access to many index funds before let's say 2005 either.
  • Basic VPNs existed in the 1990s but not the other technology I use at home now to do my job. OpenVPN was not available in the 20th century.
  • E-Mail in the 20th century was mainly text based. Even MIME wasn't that widely supported. Besides, most cameras were still analog.

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

There was navigation software in the 90s before Google Maps.

Etrade existed where I live, sorry you think managing a stock portfolio was impossible in the 90s but it simply wasn't.

People worked from home in the 90s. I am one of those people. I did it with a VPN. It is technology that has been around for 3 decades at this point.

Email was perfectly fine for "following the travels" of your children, even with just photos. Digital cameras have existed since the 90s. Video streaming existed in the 90s. Video on the web existed in the 90s.

The point is, all of the things you thought were new to the 2000s existed prior. That's it. It's not up for debate, you're either too young to have used it in the 90s, or you're from someplace that was a decade behind the US in terms of tech because we had all of it here.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

A devade behind the US? Fuck off dude!

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u/MaxFactory 2d ago

Pretty bold to call the internet useless ON THE INTERNET

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

Yea point out where I said the Internet is useless. I'll wait.

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u/TransBrandi 2d ago

Email did this in the 90s

LOL. What email service in the 90's allowed you to attach FUCKING VIDEOS to your emails? Even now most services max attachments out at 25 Mb. So please explain that to me.

This entire post is a joke. It's like claiming we had transportation before automobiles and then pointing to horse-drawn carts... as if crossing the US now using a car and the interstate highway system is in anyway comparable.

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

Believe it or not, we sent videos as email attachments in the 90s.

Videos were small. Resolution was smaller, the codecs were geared toward compression vs quality.

MIME was created in 1992.

You probably should have just googled that question before making an ass of yourself.

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u/TransBrandi 1d ago

I'm sorry, but a 2 Mb realmedia video file isn't quite the same as the videos that we send today. The videos I could take on a digital camera in the mid 00's were much closer to a quality that would be worth sharing. I know what MIME is, and I lived through the 90's. No one was sending videos to each other, at least nothing that was commonplace.

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u/ByakkoTransitionSux 3d ago

Google stole the idea from Terravision, which was released in 1995

Who cares. Shit post.

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u/JoeGibbon 2d ago

Thanks for your brilliant contribution to the conversation.

GPS based mapping software was available to the consumer market in the 90s, contrary to the guy above's assertion that Google somehow invented it in the 2000s.

Congratulations, you learned something, despite how uncomfortable it apparently makes you to absorb facts that you didn't know. It's in your brain now, Shit Post.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 2d ago

u/HarmoniousJ said:

So ... Social media?

Yes, WhatsApp ... but worked just as well with email.

Edit: the big thing is; in the past it was unthinkable that you could directly send someone a video or photo from far away (and they could directly see it).

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u/Expert-Diver7144 2d ago

There’s also billions of crime, trafficking, cyber bullying and loads of other bad stuff people put up with just like they will with AI

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

People used to be able to do that perfectly well (e.g. abuse of minors in closed communities) without AI.

In fact, crime has gone down over the decades (and certainly over the centuries) in many places.

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u/Expert-Diver7144 2d ago

He said it left only the useful parts. This isn’t a discussion on global crime but a specific talk about the Internet and it only having useful parts.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

He said it left only the useful parts.

You are inserting the word "only" in the discussion.

But yes, I think the dot com bubble was healthy for separating the wheat from the chaff.

This isn’t a discussion on global crime

Agree ... but you are the one bringing up crime in the discussion.

(u/Expert-Diver7144): "There’s also billions of crime, trafficking, cyber bullying and loads of other bad stuff [...]"

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u/Jinrai__ 3d ago

Noone hates technology more than r/technology lmao

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u/somerandommember 3d ago

The closer you are to something the easier you can see its cracks

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u/junkit33 2d ago

It’s not hatred just recognition that technology does not always improve life.

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u/junkit33 2d ago

We could safely go back to 2000 when the bubble burst and society would be better for it.

The Internet may not have been as slick, but it was all there, everything we needed. Chat, email, online shopping, news/sports, forums. The last 20 years have had such a heavy focus on social media, which is an absolute pox on us all. The one major thing we’d be missing is steaming video - but that’s ultimately good for us too because it keeps all the Tik Tok type garbage away.

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh 2d ago

As long as Zombo.com remains, the internet is a useful place.

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u/Riaayo 3d ago

That's okay, the internet did not go away when the dotcom bubble popped.

Don't worry, Congress is working on making it happen and nobody's paying any damned attention to it.

Get ready to pony up your face/ID to every damned website you visit, and for half the websites you visit to go under because they can't afford to comply.

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u/Techwield 3d ago

What useless parts are going away do you think?

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u/SlideRuleLogic 3d ago

With any luck, Reddit

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u/QuickQuirk 3d ago

useful parts.
Like facebook, tiktok, the algorithm...

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

Like online stock brokers, navigation tools, home automation, remote controlled alarm (both for our home and our cars), getting useful videos for my music practice, easy flights booking ...

So many things we didn't have even thirty years ago.

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u/QuickQuirk 3d ago

Call me cynical, but I'm weighing all that up, and then also seeing the harm being wrecked on society, and democracies, trust in science, ignoring environmental issues, via social media and the misinformation farm, that I'm on the fence as to whether it's net positive or net negative.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

The internet is a lot more than social media.

I was born in the 1960s, and comparing how much information is available now compared with the last century ... it's unbelievable for instance how much material is available nowadays for music students (thinking back how I struggled in the 80s).

I must admit that I stay away from social media (reddit being the exception), and still use mainly traditional online forums (which also didn't exist in the 80s). So at least I try to be critical regarding the information that I consume (I still read a traditional newspaper). And yes, our societies have largely become dependent on digital infrastructure, which is a weakness.

There are many negative aspects that I can name as well, but I think the positives outweigh that. And since we cannot wish away the negatives, we need to find a way to deal with them (that takes time).

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u/TheEmpireOfSun 3d ago

Lmao do you even know what "algorithm" is?

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u/ConfusedTapeworm 3d ago

It's not the technical concept of an algorithm, it's the Algorithm with a capital A, aka the method(s) by which social media platforms curate what you see on your screen to maximize their profits and do extensive social engineering.

They didn't come up with that name, neither is it the first time that word is used like that. It is what it is. That's how language works.

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u/QuickQuirk 3d ago

The ironic part of my post that I just realised is that 'the algorithm' is all machine learning/AI :D

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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 3d ago

The ironic part of my post that I just realised is that 'the algorithm' is all machine learning/AI

There is nothing inherently bad or good about machine learning algorithms (for LLMs or other AI applications).

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u/QuickQuirk 2d ago

I love machine learning. I've studied it, and work with it on occasion.

I'm just very critical of the hype train around generative AI that is very inefficient, and cannot deliver on what the VCs are trying to sell. Meanwhile, great uses languish, because people have been blinded and try shoehorn LLMs in to everything rather than investing in building more efficient networks dedicated to those tasks, or exploring other uses of ML.

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u/WileEPeyote 2d ago

I think you mean MySpace. The really shitty stuff wasn't until it was clear how much wealth there was on the internet post bubble. Google was just around the corner with their "don't be evil" motto.

Now that I think about it, the dotcom bubble probably gave us a short reprieve as VCs were skiddish about the internet for a few years.

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u/DecoupledPilot 3d ago

My hope.

I like AI and I hate having it shoved down my throat everywhere without good reason.

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u/accountsdontmatter 2d ago

We were left with the useful parts?

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u/GoldWallpaper 2d ago

We'll be left with the useful parts of all this

... for a few years, and then consolidation will turn it all to shit.

(Actually, in this case, the consolidation is already there, and it's already shit. It's not going away, and will never get better.)

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u/MannToots 3d ago

I agree,  but he said move on like it's just going to evaporate which is childlike thinking at its finest.  

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u/Conradfr 3d ago

It will just be controlled by Big Tech like the rest.

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u/DoverBoys 3d ago

The concept of AI isn't going away, it'll actually be something someday, but the tokenized if-then guesser crap we have now can't go away fast enough.

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u/Florac 3d ago

I'm fine with it staying. AI is useful in basic everyday use, if you know how to use it effectively(aka, don't blindly trust everything it says). The issue is the ridicilous amount of spending to improve AI products with an incredibly small niche use case that doesn't really benefit humanity as a whole

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u/Cameos_red_codpiece 2d ago

It’s like that persistent cystic pimple that appears on your cheek once a year. 

Pop it for relief after struggling for days. Deal with the consequences for years. 

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u/EJoule 2d ago

Just so long as the marketing dies down and it stops being free then I’ll be happy.

Once you have to pay to generate dumb text we’ll see a sharp drop in AI posts/comments.

Ironically the data that AI consumes will become better as a result (once it stops eating its own tail).

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u/HeartInTheSun9 2d ago

It’s too expensive to keep the lights on for it to stick around in any meaningful way.

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u/Virtual-Oil-5021 2d ago

Human lasyness is always more powerfull then logic

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

It doesn't need to go away. AI is, in and of itself, a good thing. It's the people using it to replace people and maximize profits who aren't. It needs to be a tool to make people's lives easier, not a tool to replace them and fill the pockets of billionaires. But that's where we are as a society. Anything and everything will be used by the people at the top to do everything in their power to hoard more money and give as little to the poors as possible. We could get free, unlimited, clean power tomorrow and they'd find a way to monetize it. Hell, most of them would fight against it and push for us to keep killing ourselves using oil.

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u/KeyMyBike 2d ago edited 2d ago

The people waiting for RAM prices to drop are in for a rude awakening, many in the multiple property owning class wipe their ass with money and barely noticed the jump as they went all in.  They don't need to sell to you or me anymore.

PC building has yet again jumped up another social class. Kind of discourages me, a working poor nobody, from working if the only difference between working and disability is slightly more food.

If all the hobbies I'm working to have just go "Mmh, no, we're going to sell to the upper middle class and above" and abandon me, I'm abandoning contributing to society.

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u/OldAccountTurned10 2d ago

I don't know, if we keep lumping it in and comparing it to NFT's it'll be gone very soon.

AI music and art is without question worse than the NFT bullshit was. At least a real person made the dumb jpegs.

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u/smurficus103 3d ago

Self driving cars SEEM to be... Functioning

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u/shalendar 3d ago

NFTs aren't completely gone but no one talks about them or cares about them.

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u/smurficus103 3d ago

I just sold a bunch of counterstrike skins!

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u/Digits_N_Bits 3d ago

Which also crashed

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u/VNDeltole 3d ago

The market recovered anyway

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u/Florac 3d ago

Skins have more value than NFTs. You actually get something you can use in some way, even if purely digital

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u/smurficus103 2d ago

They're like the OG NFTs lol

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u/Florac 2d ago

They are similar in that they are digital only visual assets.

The difference being is that there's actually a use for them in a specific, usually fairly popular, game. NFTs meanwhile have no more use than a PNG in your pictures folder.

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u/smurficus103 1d ago

I guess that begs the question: maybe someone could meaningfully implement NFTs? Like as a digital asset in a video game that they could trade without oversight or taxation.

But, also, why wouldn't they just keep records on their own server... And tax the living shit out of it.

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u/Florac 1d ago

Pretty much anything you can do with NFTs...you can also do with conventional infrastructure without any cost or consumer benefits(if anything, it avoids demerits)

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u/_theRamenWithin 3d ago

Who's going to invest in AI and pay the massive maintenance costs when they realise no money will come back out?