AI versus Marshy 58 - making money, stealing power, and switching apps

Hello! And welcome to another belated edition of AI versus Marshy, I needed a week off - and took it! - so enjoy this bumper edition instead.

This week we look at:

• AIs and companies making money - are things going to burst?
• A deeper-dive on AI’s impact
• Making the switch - from ChatGPT premium to Perplexity Pro

Lots to dig into so let’s make like a mole and delve into it ⛏️ -Marshy

AI investment versus profit.

Via Business Insider and Fortune 500.

I’m not a financial expert and my eyes tend to glaze over whenever someone talks stock, but last week was weird in AI and tech land.

Things dropped for Alphabet (formerly Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla at once with $600m being wiped off at peak.

Poor guy next to the dark computers always looks stressed. Source: Business Insider

There’s many reasons why this could have happened, and it looks like they’re on their way to recovering now.

Moving on the up (maybe)

But the reason I’m interest in the most is that these tools aren’t really making money yet.

So far, there’s been an eye-watering $1T spent on AI infrastructure by big technology companies to ensure they’re prepared for what’s to come.

The challenge however - is that Generative AI isn’t making these companies money.

Business Insider shared an amusing coverage about a pharmacy CIO (chief information officer) cancelling their $180,000 AI tool subscriptions (paywalled).

​

Really just do not see the value 😬

Why pay double for something that’s sh*t?

There’s an indomitable belief from these leaders that this will eventually be solved.

But there’s another big issue that this level of data centre creation unloads - which is impact on the environment via inordinate amounts of energy and water consumption.

How AI might destroy our planet.

Via Per Capita Podcast and other sources linked below.

I’ve mentioned the AI is an existential threat doom mongering before (and I’ll do it again!)

So here’s a snippet from OpenAI’s original launch story:

​

But is i?

This “we could be doomed so trust us to help” schtick has carried throughout AI’s trajectory.

I’ve already mentioned that fuelling this interest is very expensive.

But its also bad for other reasons:

• Despite being one of the most visible and hyped technologies of all time - it’s surprisingly hard to find data on energy usage/cost from the largest companies. This paper has a go at categorising things based on type of tasks generative AI completes, compared against energy usage and emissions.

Generating images, generates the most emissions

• It also looks like its taking a lot of water. The reason is the data centres that power AI require water for cooling.
• But this is all powered by cleaner energy right? RIGHT? Well in the US some old coal plants are being kept open to accommodate the extra demands on power that data centres are creating.

Love a good excuse to use a meme

Do you know what else is powered by data centres?

Bitcoin, and this article from TIME investigates sound pollution and its health impacts on a small town in Texas (just to add to the above noise ;).

​

Locally, there’s a podcast called Per Capita which featured some great discussion on how this follows in Australia.

Here 5% of our energy consumption is data centre-led, and this number could double in the future.

One of the best points from the podcast is that the bet on AI isn’t just a financial one.

Technology companies can afford to speculate because of their healthy balance sheets.

But they’re also gambling on the environmental impacts as the energy and water consumption questions are currently running mostly unchecked.

It’s worth a listen.

Making the switch

For as long as this newsletter has been going, I’ve been a paying customer for ChatGPT.

That changed last week as I’ve been keen to test Perplexity Pro.

The latter does a better job of citations and research-led activities which is important to me as someone who writes a lot.

Like all AI tools - this one is not without controversy but I was due for a change.

It wasn’t easy to change over though.

There’s a known issue with Perplexity and Stripe affecting Australian cards (their words) and I had to go through the Apple App Store to onboard and sign up.

It’s still early days using the tool but will write up a bigger review in the weeks to come.

---

That’s another week done!

On other fronts I’ve been drumming up interest for my GTM Accelerator - a training and coaching offer I’ve built for helping startups ready to pour fuel on their marketing and gain larger clients.

I’m also enjoying the slightly warmer weather we’re receiving in Melbourne - more of this please.

As always if you’ve got questions or comments about AI please reply and shoot them through - I love talking with my readers and missed this cadence last week!

Remember - AI alone isn’t going to destroy us, but we better figure out how to team up with AI to solve some of this stuff - and fast!

-Marshy