Yesterday a very interesting to discuss situation have happen. While StackOverflow still suffer a lot, because of chat bots, but yesterday was not the end its of the story. However things are completely different for Phind service which, also offered a paid subscription Phind Pro, is shutting down first. Previously small companies were having problems after replacing humans with LLM, but now we see an entire service dedicated to “vibe search” dead. Hype at start and shutting down very soon.

Changes on the market

I think that 2 things are happening at the same time:

1. “AI” hype finally slows down - looks like people are starting to see that LLM would not do literally everything for them especially in the quality to which they are used to. This is nice, but I guess that’s a lot too late, because of point no. 2 …

2. Consolidation on the market - simply the big tech makes money on both providing LLMs and delivering chat bot services. They have the best experts for it, so their business is rather considered to be always safe. On the other side 3rd-party services while getting money were also in fact sponsoring the market consolidation in long term.

This would mean that people are getting used to LLMs and the situation finally stabilises. However that “stability” is based on a very few companies (which are owned deeply by one corporation/holding company btw.). What things would look like? We don’t need a huge changes from now on. We already have the new “game rules” and that’s all it matters …

It’s easy to count …

Almost everyone is paying for LLM service and at the end those money always goes to BigTech. Not need to be smart to notice that 3rd-party services would temporarily fill their niche until the “official support” would be added to “GPT” and other models. As same as LLMs tend to replace search engines they also tend to be the first source for most (if not all) information. It’s just a matter of the time when other services would be sold or just shut down.

However before owners would realise it, it would be too late for them. I believe it’s already too late like … just look … we have “LLM” integrated in almost everything. Would you “drop everything” and start with nothing? I could, but I would do nothing alone. Few times I tried that the fear or over hype are edge reactions and we should take things with a clear mind, but well … I guess that I just can’t agree with other people opinions (that are based on said fear/hype).

It reminds me …

Again rich people are getting more rich while others are paying the bills. Hooray for the virus hype! Hooray for the aliens hype! Hooray for the “AI” hype! “The time is close”. The time to pay all the bills that people kept on the debt. People really did the best to see what’s coming next. It just reminds me one video called: “I pet goat 2”.

The below screenshot does not look like something made 12 years ago, but something that was made recently to comment current situation:

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FIreworks (new year), undead (people/civilisation) and that “wish” to “not disturb the fun”. I need to consider it as a new wallpaper.

Summary

One 3rd-party service is shutting down. Other services could be in similar case in next months/years. However for me not much would change (if any) … With or without Phind (and many other services) I just live day after day and chill watching all of this without any surprise.

How about you? Are you scared that your favourite service may shut down too? Or maybe you completely ignore it because of hype? Don’t tell me you are not scared or over-hyped as that’s not correctness or polite at all as others “feel” bad about it! “Shame on you!”.

Enough of fun, now more seriously … Maybe you would like to recommend some 3rd-party service that’s worth to use? After all while StackOverflow is dealing with a huge damage I don’t see such a big drop in activity on our forums … Maybe there is a chance for some lucky ones, hopefully those who would provide a high quality products/services … Things always like to change, but in a way we usually don’t expect. One thing I know for sure: we definitely live in the most “interesting times”.