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c/nottheonion · by return2ozma@lemmy.world · 129d

Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI compute in sign of a totally normal and healthy economy

https://www.engadget.com/ai/shoe-company-pivots-to-ai-compute-in-sign-of-a-totally-normal-and-healthy-economy-161449196.html

322 points · 50 comments · view on lemmy.world

50 Comments

Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 67 pts · 129d (1 reply)

It’s like when Dunder Mifflin started selling tablets

hopesdead@startrek.website · 22 pts · 129d

That was actually a Sabre product. They just used the acquisition to pivot to a Apple-style electronics company for a business oriented costumer base.

iamthetot@piefed.ca · 53 pts · 129d (4 replies)

Wow. I just honestly don't know what else to say. Headline is spot on.

tauisgod@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 129d (3 replies)

I'm not shocked. I used to love their shoes but the last couple pairs I bought dropped noticeably in comfort and quality. The enshitification rolls on

iamthetot@piefed.ca · 3 pts · 129d (2 replies)

This isn't enshittification, though.

wavebeam@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 129d
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huppakee@piefed.social · 4 pts · 129d

I'm with you, but the end user's experience is rather similar either way

jedibob5@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 129d (1 reply)

Echoes of when the Long Island Iced Tea company rebranded to "Long Island Blockchain" back during that particular craze.

Tikiporch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp

lordnikon@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 129d (14 replies)

I mean Tandy Leather was a thing and they expanded into Tandy Corporation for Tandy Computers. So there is precedents but yeah this screams bubble and pets.com level of stupid.

forrgott@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 129d

AFAIK the ColecoVision is from the same company that made plastic sleds. Think they're gone now - at the very least I know they did nothing about the video game copyrights expiring, making it one of the rare cases where emulating "pirated" copies of their games is perfectly legal.

merc@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 129d (12 replies)

precedents

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 129d (3 replies)
  1. There is precedence
  2. There are precedents

One is a countable noun (like 'letters') while the other is an uncountable mass noun (like 'e-mail')

merc@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 129d

They mean different things.

khannie@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 129d (1 reply)

"There is precedent" is actually correct in this instance. Precedents is not though as it would be plural.

merc@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 129d

Note that the original has been edited. It used to say "precedence".

khannie@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 129d (7 replies)

Bruh. If you're going to correct, be sure you're correct.

merc@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 129d (6 replies)

I am.

khannie@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 129d (5 replies)

There are precedents. There is precedent.

Edit: changed i to e.

merc@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 129d (4 replies)

Before OP edited the comment it used "precedence". They mean different things.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/usage-of-precedent-vs-precedence

https://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/precedence_precedent.htm

https://languagetool.org/insights/post/precedence-or-precedent/

https://www.thoughtco.com/precedence-precedents-and-presidents-1689468

What's next, are you going to claim "presidents" is another alternative spelling that means the same thing?

khannie@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d (3 replies)

I understand that. You used plural when you should have used singular.

They said "there is precedence" which you corrected to "prescedents" but the correct form in the example is "there is precedent".

Edit:

What's next, are you going to claim "presidents" is another alternative spelling that means the same thing?

There was fuck all need for that. I actually mostly backed you up in another comment.

merc@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 129d

The original version of the comment said, I believe "So there is precedence". That could be fixed as "there is a precedent" or "there are precedents". I suggested "precedents" because it seems like OP used the homophone for that one. So, "precedents" is correct, "precedence" is not.

There was fuck all need for that. I actually mostly backed you up in another comment.

Bruh, you said "Bruh. If you're going to correct, be sure you're correct.", when I was correct and OP was incorrect.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 129d (4 replies)

Sooooooo, do people not remember the dot com bubble burst? Yes the internet still exists, but the companies that led the burst aren't.

Remember the pet food commercial with the sock puppet?

Or the super hero who was obviously superman, but for legal reasons wasn't superman who saved you money from travel by sticking you on his back and flying you places?

Yeeeaaaahhhh........those don't exist anymore.

Hell, even the big names like Juno and Compuserve are gone. Is AOL even still a company? ICQ is dead. Yahoo still exists, but only because they got bought by Verizon. Altavista, Ask Jeeves are both gone.

So yeah, some companies will survive the AI bubble, just as Google survived the dot com bubble. But the majority of the big names from 1998 do not exist post 2002.

Do these countless companies NOT see this?

merc@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 129d

We don't know if this bubble is going to be more like the dot-com bubble where the bubble burst but left useful things behind, or if it's going to be like the NFT bubble that left nothing useful behind.

As for whether the companies see this or not, of course they do. But, what are they going to do, go out of business intentionally before the bubble pops? It's really the investors who don't seem to see it. Why do they keep pumping money into the companies that are obviously ridiculously overvalued?

TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 128d (1 reply)

Do these countless companies NOT see this?

Western companies tend to chase short term profits at the expense of the long term.

scott@lem.free.as · 2 pts · 128d

So disappointing.

huppakee@piefed.social · 1 pts · 129d

Aside from whether these companies see simularities with the dot com bubble, nobody knows for sure when the bubble will burst nor what policies will help you get to the other side unharmed. If for example their shoe business is not performing well right now, they might already not survive the economic downturn that'd hit them if the bubble bursts. It is definitely possible that this company is run by blind idiots, but it could also be imperfect human beings trying to keep their workers employed.

jqubed@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 129d (7 replies)

Allbirds isn't the only company pivoting to compute in an effort to feed the hungry goblin called AI. Boom Supersonic is a startup trying to build the world's fastest airliner but has begun selling gas turbines to AI companies to power data centers. Many Bitcoin mining centers have pivoted to AI and it's worth remembering that NVIDIA's GPUs were once used primarily for PC gaming.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 129d (4 replies)

Aircraft company manufacturing gas turbines seems perfectly sensible.

skyline2@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 129d (2 replies)

It does, except their execs are on LinkedIn sucking Trump's cock on the regular

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 128d

linkedin became very pro-right wing after thier purchase, and when start blocking profiles if they cant datamine you. it used to be able to track people you know(through thier careers) if they are trying to bs thier CV/RESUMES.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 128d

That's also a very sensible business decision, to be fair.

jqubed@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d

Yeah the rest of the examples besides the shoe company don’t seem like a big stretch

Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d (1 reply)

That's a business model that makes some sense.

tauisgod@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d

Fads gonna fad. At least pogs didn't wreck the environment

brynden_rivers_esq@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 129d

the announcement that Allbirds was transitioning from shoes, a product category it has a decade of experience in, to AI compute, a product category it has no experience in, shot the stock up by over 400 percent.

This is preying on boomers being really goddamn dumb. It's basically elder abuse!

nialv7@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 129d

bro, trust me bro, it's totally not a bubble bro

Lodespawn@aussie.zone · 10 pts · 129d (3 replies)

Never heard of them but their shoes look shit house so no biggie.

BadlyDrawnRhino@aussie.zone · 16 pts · 129d (2 replies)

They're a company that made environmentally sustainable shoes out of wool and eucalyptus gum. The looks were never really the main selling point, but I've been buying from them for a few years now and I always liked them, very comfortable and I like the simple style. Unfortunate that I'm now going to have to find an alternative.

JackFrostNCola@aussie.zone · 12 pts · 129d (1 reply)

environmentally sustainable

And then they decide to use AI to generate new designs... Do they know how AI runs?

anguo@piefed.ca · 16 pts · 128d

They're not generating new designs, they are no longer a shoe company and now run AI.

HubertManne@piefed.social · 10 pts · 129d (1 reply)

we literally saw this not so long ago with blockchain.

Agent641@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 129d

Back in my day the blockchain was a chainwith one end embedded in a block of concrete. It was our favourite toy.

humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 129d
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TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 128d

Pivoting towards a different industry is okay. Japanese companies do it a lot. But of course, the concern is going towards a sector that is in a bubble to chase the hype.

daannii@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 129d (2 replies)

I'm pretty sure sometimes what happens is they don't want to pay their quality designers. So they bring in cheap foreigners to use the og designs and modify them or build from them.

But then claim it's "AI" so it's not theft of design or style from og designers.

AI can't even handle fingers. It can't do high quality design work. Especially 3d.

Lots of ai 3d stuff floating it around. Looks okay in the render photo but when you open the file it's crap and poor quality.

Taco2112@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 129d (1 reply)

It’s not that they’re using AI to replace designers, that would at least make a little sense. They sold off the shoe designs and manufacturing to a Venture Capitalist company and Allbirds is now purely an AI company, they have nothing to do with shoes anymore.

daannii@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 129d

Well a few legit game review websites were sold off. Fires all staff writers and now all content is AI.

The reason is you can't make a reputation if you start as AI. You need humans to make something good first and establish reputation.

So the whole point is to buy legitimacy by buying out existing established companies.

Do you think that's what is going on here ?

It's a dumb strategy. People quickly learn and reputation can literally tank in 24 hrs. No matter how big the company's reputation and following was.

Once it comes out it's all AI garbage. It's over.

criticon@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 129d

Was this supposed to be released 15 days ago?

Maeve@kbin.earth · 2 pts · 129d

with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider." It's also changing its name to NewBird AI.

Nope!