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Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

blog.johnluttig.com

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Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#91

Post by aziaziazi »

satyrun wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is made possible by the people. If it does not serve them well, it should be fixed or abolished.

[flagged]

Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades:

- socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

- Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland

- cooperative economics: Japan, Spain

- market socialism: China, hungaria

- Parecon: brasil, Argentina

- Ubuntu: South Africa

- Anarcho-syndicalism, The third way, Islamic economic…

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#93

Post by aspenmayer »

entropi wrote: post #90
aspenmayer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher the line goes, the higher the expected value of return on investment. It’s a virtuous cycle based on a bet on all horses, but since the EV is so high for first mover advantage for AGI, it might be worth it to overleverage compared to the past for your top picks? These are still small sums for Zuckerberg to pay personally, let alone for Meta to pay. This is already priced in.

There are quite a few assumptions in your message. But here is, I think, the most crucial one: > but since the EV is so high for first mover advantage for AGI is it? why? I cant see why this should be the case. where exactly do you think the "moat" for AGI will come from?

At this level, you probably don't need a moat to recoup your surplus sunk costs due to AI talent acquisition. You just need a good day in the market, likely the same day you announce you've achieved AGI. It's kayfabe accounting.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#94

Post by Quarrelsome »

aaa_aaa wrote: post #78
Quarrelsome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're all a bit immoral, like how Hollywood made it big by avoiding patents, how YouTube got its mammoth exit via widespread copyright infringement and now LLMs gather up the skills of people it pays nothing to and tries to sell. However we could also argue that most things in human society are less moral than moral (e.g. cars, supermarkets, etc). But we can also argue that dropping some hundreds of millions in VC…

Patents and copyrigt laws are immoral.

however they do result in flows of capitals feeding into otherwise unfundable enterprise like R&D; science and engineering, or culture; writing, music, art. Where's the ROI if you invest millions into R&D and your competitor invests $0 and can then just reproduce your works with their logo ontop of yours? To sack off IP and copyright would significantly narrow innovation and result in many artists, scientists and engineers having their income severely suppressed if not eradicated. Instead that money would temporarily go to a bunch of hacks that do nothing but copy and chase the bottom, before vanishing into thin air as the works become entirely unprofitable.

I don't think its as simple as calling them immoral. Rather the immorality comes on them being poorly regulated. With regulated term limits on patents and copyright we create a world where an artist can create licensed product and protect themselves during the course of their career, and people are them able to riff on their works after some decades or after they pass on.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#95

Post by johnecheck »

muzani wrote: post #88
gnz11 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if QoL improves for some but goes down for others?

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

The full quote is less bleak.

Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

~Winston Churchill

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#96

Post by TrackerFF »

aziaziazi wrote: post #91
satyrun wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades: - socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden. - Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland - cooperative economics: Japan, Spain - market socialism: China, h…

Because they have been conditioned to do so. The ultra-wealthy have been fighting the war against socialism for over a century, and part of that strategy is to polarize the topic. If you’re not explicitly pro unfettered capitalism, you must be a communist.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#97

Post by johnecheck »

aspenmayer wrote: post #93
entropi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few assumptions in your message. But here is, I think, the most crucial one: > but since the EV is so high for first mover advantage for AGI is it? why? I cant see why this should be the case. where exactly do you think the "moat" for AGI will come from?

At this level, you probably don't need a moat to recoup your surplus sunk costs due to AI talent acquisition. You just need a good day in the market, likely the same day you announce you've achieved AGI. It's kayfabe accounting.

Any announcement of AGI will be immediately controversial. Valuation increases will depend on whether people actually believe it and what they're able to sell. Expect public opinion to be fickle and share prices to be volatile.

Decent odds we see some pretenders make that announcement before the real deal. A company with the real deal would probably make bank, but I don't pretend to know when that will come or who that might be.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#98

Post by torginus »

Isn't this just shitty capitalism fighting shitty capitalism?

If I hire a bunch of super smart AI researchers out of college for a (to them) princely sum of $1M each, then I could go to a VC and have them invest $40m for and 1% stake.

Then since these people are smart and motivated, they build something nice, and are first to market with it.

If Google wants to catch up, they could either buy the company for $4B, or hire away the people who built the thing in a year, essentially for free (since the salaries have to be paid anyway, lets give them a nice 50% bonus).

They'd be behind half a year recreating their old work, but the unicorn startup market leader would be essentially crippled.

You might ask what about startup stock options, but those could easily end up being worthless, and for the researchers, would need years to be turned into money.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#100

Post by aspenmayer »

johnecheck wrote: post #97
aspenmayer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this level, you probably don't need a moat to recoup your surplus sunk costs due to AI talent acquisition. You just need a good day in the market, likely the same day you announce you've achieved AGI. It's kayfabe accounting.

Any announcement of AGI will be immediately controversial. Valuation increases will depend on whether people actually believe it and what they're able to sell. Expect public opinion to be fickle and share prices to be volatile. Decent odds we see some pretenders make that announcement before the real deal. A company with the real deal would probably make bank, but I don't pretend to know when that will come or who th…

I don't think that price movement is necessary to make money as an outsize shareholder, especially during high volatility. Zuck knows how to buy the market leader early, so we might have already seen the creator of AGI be poached by Meta, they just haven't realized what they know yet until they work with others in the org.

It's possible that they won't be the early bird to catch the AGI worm, but sometimes the investment squeeze required to be the first mover isn't rewarded in market juice, especially if the second mouse can use your AGI to create their own AGI cheese.

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