Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America is now one big bet on AI

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 193 posts

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#101

Post by tombert »

noosphr wrote: post #74

I read these articles about how much of a suckers bet AI is and start feeling existential dread about the coming market crash. Then I remember I just did a weeks worth of work in a few hours and feel a lot better about my prospects at least. AI won't replace people, but it will make people who know how to use it vastly more efficient. In the same way that a tractor made a farmer more efficient.

I am still a bit so-so on stuff like Codex and Cursor, but ChatGPT has undeniably helped me get more work done, if for no other reason than unblocking me with stuff.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s relevant. Most of my adult life has followed a pattern: I work on a personal project until I get blocked on some bullshit detail (e.g. some arcane Linux server error), get annoyed because I am not making money and the project is no longer fun, and give up on the project about halfway through.

Being able to paste server logs and weird error messages and having ChatGPT generate recovery scripts has been extremely valuable to me. I am not even sure it’s necessarily reducing my workload, but it has absolutely allowed me to focus much more interesting and fun parts, and I finish a much larger percentage of my projects.

I am probably not learning as much as I would if I had powered through the issue, but I am definitely learning more than if I had abandoned it.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#102

Post by tomrod »

lumost wrote: post #95
tomrod wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it isn't the economy, since the economy is how people allocate scarce resources -- that is and always will be normalizable by the time a person has in a day. Abstract AI utilization of data centers don't impact my garden directly, so at least in partial equilibria I can ignore what David Brin in Existence calls the Message Flood, or otherwise known as the Fermi-Paradox Arms Race. In Existence , Brin explores a s…

At the time of Adam Smith’s wealth of nations, there was a schism between eastern and Western Europe on the role of politics in the economy. Eastern Europe was influenced by much stronger aristocracies that exercised stronger control of the populace and thus lacked the small business competition that inspired smith. While many “small” businesses offering similar products compete on a marketplace subject to the law of…

> A state can simply order workers to work without pay or be punished, burn debt that they don’t want to pay, or lock traders into a room with orders to buy. There is still an economy, but it becomes one of political favor which is earned through multiple mechanisms.

Without irony, this is my observation for how corporations work internally. The currency between teams is backscratching.

The USSR was a big corporation with a license of coercive force.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#103

Post by tombert »

ses1984 wrote: post #100
noosphr wrote: post #74

I read these articles about how much of a suckers bet AI is and start feeling existential dread about the coming market crash. Then I remember I just did a weeks worth of work in a few hours and feel a lot better about my prospects at least. AI won't replace people, but it will make people who know how to use it vastly more efficient. In the same way that a tractor made a farmer more efficient.

Did you pay for that AI to work for you? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Tractors undoubtedly increase farmer efficiency, the evidence is clear to see, even when accounting for all costs necessary to design and produce tractors. There’s even room for farmers and tractor manufacturers to generate economic profit. That remains to be seen of AI.

Sample size of one, but I pay $20 a month for ChatGPT and I feel I get much more than that of value from it.

I would honestly probably be willing to pay $75-100 for ChatGPT if it came down to it. I feel it makes some tedious jobs a lot less horrible and in turn pays for itself.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#104

Post by throwaway290 »

cs702 wrote: post #39

Key quote: > The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year. In other words, investment in AI is a massive private-sector stimulus program, powering economic growth. Questions for which no one knows the answer include: * Will these AI investments earn a positive rate of return in the aggregate? * Without these investments o…

is this real? by first look USA only spent like 4% of GDP on space stuff at the peak of space race. 40% is insane.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#105

Post by orwin »

rtkwe wrote: post #43
cs702 wrote: post #39

Key quote: > The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year. In other words, investment in AI is a massive private-sector stimulus program, powering economic growth. Questions for which no one knows the answer include: * Will these AI investments earn a positive rate of return in the aggregate? * Without these investments o…

> Without these investments on AI and their second-order economic effects, would the US economy be growing? It's only 40% of the growth so.. yes.

I wouldn't be so sure, especially since we know a lot of it is actually vendor financing/circular financing (Nvidia give money to OpenAI who buy dedicated datacenter from oracle who buy GPUs from Nvidia), so a part of the growth might have to be counted twice, or more.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#106

Post by a_red_horse »

ses1984 wrote: post #100
noosphr wrote: post #74

I read these articles about how much of a suckers bet AI is and start feeling existential dread about the coming market crash. Then I remember I just did a weeks worth of work in a few hours and feel a lot better about my prospects at least. AI won't replace people, but it will make people who know how to use it vastly more efficient. In the same way that a tractor made a farmer more efficient.

Did you pay for that AI to work for you? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Tractors undoubtedly increase farmer efficiency, the evidence is clear to see, even when accounting for all costs necessary to design and produce tractors. There’s even room for farmers and tractor manufacturers to generate economic profit. That remains to be seen of AI.

> Tractors undoubtedly increase farmer efficiency, the evidence is clear to see, even when accounting for all costs necessary to design and produce tractors. There’s even room for farmers and tractor manufacturers to generate economic profit.

Aren’t small independent farms struggling because of debt loads are really small returns?

Is this what AI will do as well? Enable large players consolidate while anything bigger than hobby work becomes very difficult and expensive for individuals.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#107

Post by surgical_fire »

sdenton4 wrote: post #85
DebtDeflation wrote: post #77

We're in this weird situation where: 1) the average American is heavily dependent on equities in their 401k for retirement, 2) so the stock market has to go up, 3) but the stock market is already at record valuations and it's difficult to see how forecasted growth levels justify the current valuation let alone an increased valuation, 4) without revenue growth, the only way for companies to sustain EPS growth is massi…

Option 3, nothing changes: people (and institutions) still have income they need to put /somewhere/, and continue putting it in 401ks and index funds because that's the system. Stonks continue to go up, completely unmoored from any behavior in the actual world.

"I know the game is rigged, but it's the only game in town"

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#108

Post by thmsths »

Spivak wrote: post #88
goalieca wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 40% investment could presumably go into jobs and infrastructure that might be more durable.

I think you would find a large political block that would be more than supportive of economic stimulus taking the form of a public jobs and training program to improve infrastructure, landscaping, and other public works. I personally would implement it as a "civilian military" to make it a cool high-status line of work that people might choose for a few years out of civic duty. Uniforms, ranks, bases, parades, you ge…

And there is a precedent for that the Civilian Service Corp, which was created as part of the new deal. If you go to a national/state park there is a good chance they built some of that infrastructure.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#109

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #84
reustle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people actually buy into the absurdity of humanoid robots and robotaxis? Have you ever taken a Waymo? You see them on every street in SF now.

I've never even seen a Waymo and I haven't left North America for half a decade. Popular in SF does not mean inevitable everyhwere. It remains to be seen whether robotaxis can 1. scale outside of certain cities 2. make a profit given the apparent teams of actual human remote drivers that robotaxi companies employ to get their robots out of trouble. I would love to see it, but the lack of speed and momentum points to…

I rode a few in SF and can’t wait for them to come to Seattle. They don’t use actual human remote drivers, and the support person I spoke to when I had an issue had a Filipino accent, so I’m not sure they were even in the usa (although that totally could have been California also). I don’t think they wound need that many people anyways to do live support. Waymo is definitely being cautious, but the cities they move into seem to all be success stories.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#110

Post by logicchains »

rkomorn wrote: post #99
lm28469 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a little frustrating how we as a society have just decided that corporations don’t need to make money Making money was already a problem, what we should strive for is creating value. You can make big bucks selling cigarettes, leaded gas or PFAS riddled products... the money is made but you're still a net negative for society

It's too bad we also can't really agree on what value is. A decade or two ago, I'd have told you the companies that are building new technologies (smartphones, streaming services, etc) were creating value. I don't think that at all anymore, even retroactively.

>It's too bad we also can't really agree on what value is.

This is fortunately a problem that economics has already solved: value is what people are willing to pay for. Any other definition involves imposing someone's own subjective judgement on what's valuable.

Post reply on HN