Brewing brand love: how AI startups are reaching subscribers through coffee — the cappuccinos are camouflage.
Heehee, well they have to make a profit somehow.
Coffee slops?
I know i sound like a doomer but…
maybe the bubble is about to burst and this is just panic diversification of assets? it sure is funny to attribute it to that.
I mean LOL maybe???
I love how the photo of the inside of the place looks like it’s ai generated
There surely will be microphones to train the AI.
We get so many free digital services from mega corps. If it weren’t for the physical costs involved, we’d already be getting physical goods like that.
Imagine a possible future of Meta, Google, and Microsoft shops. Selling under cost to bind customers.
Reminds me of that uWink restaurant lol
asked via touchscreen if they’re Perplexity Pro subscribers. A “yes” earns them 50% off drinks; a “no” triggers a QR code for a one-month free trial of the $20 service.
Look at how desperate they are to get a return before the bubble bursts. It’s hilarious.
It’s like the dotcom bubble in that everyone is striking out in every which direction on this neew tech, hoping they’re the last man standing.
This one is far worse though. Not sure how I’ll survive it, but I sense my IT career is over.
the dotcom bubble saw us build out thousands of miles of fiber that didn’t get lit for a decade. still was fine tho after that time.
tell me aibros, how many of those AI specific accelerator cards will be useful in a decade?
lol
Text and image generation will keep existing in the long run.
Other aspects may collapse, but those tools are too useful for many businesses and individuals.
I suspect materials science and broad biology will eventually enormously benefit - but yeah. otherwise…
Worked at company, forget the name (Williams something?) but they were the peak IT when I started my career in Tulsa, 2000 or so. They were laying fiber, but mostly lighting dark fiber. They were the future! Best employer in town! Crashed and burned, hard.
But as you said, those resources were laid to be exploited. Guess whoever figures out how to exploit the coming AI wreckage will lead the next wave of tech. Is that even going to be possible?!
Funny story; My camp is outside a town of 900 souls, most of those in the surrounding countryside. The ISP just ran fiber! There’s a stub-out at the end of my “block”! Totally uninhabited but for my weekly visits, but imagine that. Fiber everywhere now.
also must add:
fuuuuuck oklahoma has fiber to the block and I can’t get it here? goddffffuuuuuuckking damnit comcast sucks so much balls
But as you said, those resources were laid to be exploited. Guess whoever figures out how to exploit the coming AI wreckage will lead the next wave of tech. Is that even going to be possible?!
that’s the thing, gpus age like hot piss on a texas summer day. gonna be very interesting to see how these corpses are picked over.
I sense my IT career is over
Me too. Honestly, even if it never deflates I think long term I’m out.
Is there anything we can do with these skills other than enrich billionaire tech bro assholes? I tried very briefly tonight to look for nonprofits that are looking for software people and saw nothing but search engine mismatches.
A former colleague of mine started a farm 5 years ago. He wrote a few apps to help him with the process and even launched one to help reach customers directly.
I do not use iOS devices and could not take a look, but if you are curious, here is the app page: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/arivon/id6742965675
And here is his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karunanithi-ranganadhan-65a60028/
More than a decade of programming. Few years of farming. I am wishing him success - as I might be asking for a framing job from him if this trend continues…
Create a Open Source project for something that bothers you personally (something useful) and apply for one of the Open Collective, Nlnet, Prototype Fund, Techcultivation, …
All I got is to start a small business consulting, fixing and installing for small business. Did that on the side 12-years ago and it was amazing how fast business owners jumped when offered services for a reasonable price.
We could go on-call for a monthly fee. $200/mo. per customer stacks quickly. But you have to get a feel for your customers, set expectations and fire the skinflints. If you don’t have people skills, this is a non-starter. I got people skills, no business skills.
Been there, done that, know myself, not motivated enough. Give me a time and place to be, give me work, give me a paycheck and benefits, I’ll knock it out the park. But if I gotta get out of bed and knock doors, again, I got the people skills, but I can’t self motivate.
Yes, the market right now is bent toward large existing players. There is room for competition for Lyft and Uber for example. If you can find workarounds for regulatory obstacles.
People will be very surprised when they are wrong about this, and the IT field actually grows because of Ai.
Hang in there, I think you will be fine.
I sense my IT career is over.
The IT grunt work is going to get 10x easier (need 1/10th the head count for grunt work).
If you do more than grunt work, as most “computer” people actually do, your job should be safe from AI for a while.
Capturing all network traffic for training.
I bet they’ll eventually get caught using coffee shop cameras and conversations for AI training, say it’s for training a security product or something.
It seems like there are probably ways they could do that without calling so much attention to themselves.
Free WiFi!
This is 100% the answer, the only solution to the model decay from LLM outputs overwhelming the web is to start collecting data IRL.
This is also why companies like OpenAI are desperately investing in ‘AI wearables’ that no-one wants. They have to get the unpolluted data from somewhere, and recording real conversations will at least mostly have come from actual humans instead of AI.
since coffe shops also free wifi, they would want access to the data of laptops, and phones as well.
I don’t think it’s for training really.
It’s way more likely they want to get people together and talking about AI in the hopes they hear literally any plausible method of monetizing it. And stealing that idea.
With the added bonus when you check out, if you subscribe to it’s AI you get 50% off the drinks, if you don’t you get a month of the AI service with you’re drinks.
The way AI effects your brain is kind of like drugs. It’s feels fun and novel at first, and a lot of people get tired and let it go. Certain people are wired different and get hooked.
Maybe it’s because I just re-watched Snowfall, but it feel like when Franklin cooked up his first key and just gave it away. They’re trying to hook people who would never intially buy it, because some of them won’t be able to stop.
They need to start making money somehow. Overpriced coffee sounds like a good start
The first hint that this place is run by an AI company comes at checkout, when guests are asked via touchscreen if they’re Perplexity Pro subscribers. A “yes” earns them 50% off drinks; a “no” triggers a QR code for a one-month free trial of the $20 service.
I’d have said “fuck off” and left without my coffee.
They must be competing for markethare - they need more users. If those AI companies really are getting by with VC and other crap debt only this MO can only be propped up by increasing user numbers.
A billboard costs money. A cafe also has your brand name on it but can be operated at a profit.
I don’t know what this is really all about but I’m just thinking through possibilities. It could definitely just be a stupid marketing fad. The number of eyeballs a cafe will get in a metropolis like Seoul is tremendous. If they had a cafe in every town across bumfuk suburbia that would be another story.
The article makes it sound like it’s marketing, I’m going to guess it’s because internet advertising doesn’t work with the audience they want or they got some diminishing returns. Sounds expensive though.
Never thought that my dislike for the taste and smell of coffee would become something that actively makes me glad.
