IMO the Silicon Valley startups are the miners, and companies like Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI are the shovel sellers. And from that perspective there aren't that many shovel sellers.
Goes further up the pike than that. The phrase is "in a gold rush, sell picks and shovels". The real shovel seller is NVIDIA, with their graphics chips.
Really, this is just an extension of the graphics chip boom crypto started. A lot of "mining" server farms transitioned smoothly into renting server time for AI training. It's always been the same bubble: overproduction of graphics cards.
I get your point, and mostly agree, but the companies developing closed models are sometimes selling data center services to the real miners - the SV startups that are building products with AI, who are burning a ton of money on tokens. The data centers are making a profit, and will mostly be fine when the bubble pops. So Nvidia is clearly a shovel seller, and SV startups are clearly miners, but the analogy starts to break down when you look at Google, MS, etc.
For real, here is a super shitty approximation of the same image. It took me roughly three minutes to make. And most of that was simply remembering how to get ProCreate to do the things I wanted it to do, because I don’t use it regularly:
And they didn't even give it the same handle to show any kind of continuity that might at least allude to all those handles being representative of a shovel... Love the meme making fun of AI has a "Made with AI" badge on it... wtf are we doing?
The California gold rush. This was an actual, legit thing where there were more people trying to score bigtime selling supplies to prospectors and miners than there were prospectors and miners trying to score bigtime with striking gold.
It's not a local joke, I wish it was a joke, it's a nugget of wisdom in tech world: when there is rush for gold, sell shovels.
The biggest example today is proliferation of LLM services. There are some uses, some success stories, but a lot of companies are selling services, use my tools bro, you'll save so much money bro, you'll vibe-code the next Uber bro...
A few years ago it was blockchains and NFTs. There is no proven use case but so many startups selling crypto wallets and NFT services to "help customers".
San Francisco is still relevant I guess, for being home to Silicon Valley and tons of tech companies.
This phrase has been around for much longer than the tech sector has existed as an industry. Depending on how close you need the actual phrasing to be to the currently most common wording of the idiom, it goes as far back as the 1890s and has been common parlance in investing, manufacturing, and even the practice of divorce law for a century.
During the "Gold Rush" era (Wild West 1800s), there were plenty of people descending onto California to try and make their fortunes by staking out land to mine and pan for gold.
However, the first millionaire wasn't anyone who got lucky staking out a mine. It was the largest store owner in the area selling all these prospective miners their shovels to dig with.
The "AI industry" has a lot of parallels here, but everyone wants to be the store owner, and hardly anyone has a genuine need for their tools.
It's quite wild. He's also considered the first to publicize that there is a gold rush, much like these modern AI companies hype up their products to no end.
ironic, make fun of ai with ai
and in twitter of all places
The formatting of this joke is divine
"Yet you use AI to criticize AI. Curious!"
At least they’re honest about it, one small step up I guess
100% divine formatting
And this wasn’t ironic was it?:
If OOP was a miner they might be tired of shovel sellers but loveeee the handful of shovels they already have, including the one that made this comic
Pennsylvania political rallies be like
Disappointing?
That roof-shovel guy looks like he’s up to something suspicious.
He's heard of undermining and thinking outside the box
Using AI to make a stick figure comic is peak laziness.
When all you have is a shovel everything you make looks like dirt
Nah, aside from the general look&feel - I ain't seein it. There's no artifacts as far as I can tell.
EDIT: Oops, you're right guys, there's an explicit helper text at the bottom
It says "Made with AI" at the bottom left. It also just looks so AI generated I would've bet $50 even if they're wasn't the disclaimer
"Made with AI" at the bottom aside, you need to brush up on your AI detection skills. There's plenty of AI weirdness here.
Nowadays you tell by the lack of creativity.
The main tell in non-realistic photos are the colors and excessive gradients. There's a lot of gray midtones in the shacks and rocks.
there are artifacts but they are becoming more and more subtle, pay attention to the background
Almost all billboards in the Silicon Valley area are for AI and related services, it really does look like selling shovels to shovel sellers.
IMO the Silicon Valley startups are the miners, and companies like Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI are the shovel sellers. And from that perspective there aren't that many shovel sellers.
Goes further up the pike than that. The phrase is "in a gold rush, sell picks and shovels". The real shovel seller is NVIDIA, with their graphics chips.
Really, this is just an extension of the graphics chip boom crypto started. A lot of "mining" server farms transitioned smoothly into renting server time for AI training. It's always been the same bubble: overproduction of graphics cards.
Ed Zitron has a recent post showing that NVIDIA is the only company making money in the AI gold rush.
I get your point, and mostly agree, but the companies developing closed models are sometimes selling data center services to the real miners - the SV startups that are building products with AI, who are burning a ton of money on tokens. The data centers are making a profit, and will mostly be fine when the bubble pops. So Nvidia is clearly a shovel seller, and SV startups are clearly miners, but the analogy starts to break down when you look at Google, MS, etc.
A look at San Francisco billboards (“past month” plus “anytime“):
It's actually a good analogy, where the shovel manufacturer is Nvidia/semicon industry
They are selling shovel blades and handles, so the shovel sellers can put them together and believe they are providing a unique and valuable product.
There's only one shovel in that slop. The rest are all just handles.
For real, here is a super shitty approximation of the same image. It took me roughly three minutes to make. And most of that was simply remembering how to get ProCreate to do the things I wanted it to do, because I don’t use it regularly:
Not sloppy enough. Needs more disembodied stick figures.
At first glance of the original I didn't even notice the giants in the background or the one guy pretending to be a shovel.
It was the shovel handles stabbed straight through the stall countertops for me.
And the only one with a blade is, ironically, missing a handle.
And the handles are on shafts that are long enough you wouldn't want a handle.
Does it count that there are an inconsistent number of fingers when it's stick men?
And they didn't even give it the same handle to show any kind of continuity that might at least allude to all those handles being representative of a shovel... Love the meme making fun of AI has a "Made with AI" badge on it... wtf are we doing?
Nvidia sells shovels, the people that push AI are the miners.
The people that push AI are the mine owners.
The California gold rush. This was an actual, legit thing where there were more people trying to score bigtime selling supplies to prospectors and miners than there were prospectors and miners trying to score bigtime with striking gold.
It's a metaphor being applied to AI companies. A major one in SF has ads literally saying "stop hiring humans."
I didn't get this, thank you for the explanation
It's not a local joke, I wish it was a joke, it's a nugget of wisdom in tech world: when there is rush for gold, sell shovels.
The biggest example today is proliferation of LLM services. There are some uses, some success stories, but a lot of companies are selling services, use my tools bro, you'll save so much money bro, you'll vibe-code the next Uber bro...
A few years ago it was blockchains and NFTs. There is no proven use case but so many startups selling crypto wallets and NFT services to "help customers".
San Francisco is still relevant I guess, for being home to Silicon Valley and tons of tech companies.
This phrase has been around for much longer than the tech sector has existed as an industry. Depending on how close you need the actual phrasing to be to the currently most common wording of the idiom, it goes as far back as the 1890s and has been common parlance in investing, manufacturing, and even the practice of divorce law for a century.
It's an astute observation. I don't watch TV except for the playoffs and they have zero ads for AI, just for AI integration services.
Which playoffs?
penis fencing
Huh, thought that was more of a double elimination tournament.
Including the headline of this post, you can't manage to figure out the context?
During the "Gold Rush" era (Wild West 1800s), there were plenty of people descending onto California to try and make their fortunes by staking out land to mine and pan for gold.
However, the first millionaire wasn't anyone who got lucky staking out a mine. It was the largest store owner in the area selling all these prospective miners their shovels to dig with.
The "AI industry" has a lot of parallels here, but everyone wants to be the store owner, and hardly anyone has a genuine need for their tools.
Said first millionaire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan
It's quite wild. He's also considered the first to publicize that there is a gold rush, much like these modern AI companies hype up their products to no end.
The actual store owner is nvidia and they make filthy money right now
Boy, I can't wait to buy two 5090s so I can play Starfield and make that black guy white with postprocessing.
"prospective"
You sly dog.
And that image? Made with AI.
Or Seattle.
I was in both cities very recently and Seattle is nowhere near the level of insanity that SF is at.
This is about the cities' history.
yes but SF stays insane as an homage to our Emperor
Nitter source
He needed AI to make a stick figure comic?
Its all shovel ware
Where was this when there was 36" (91.44 cm) of snow?
Sloperators and their lackeys will be blocked.
Shameful.