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America is now one big bet on AI

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121–130 of 193 posts

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#121

Its not a bubble because the economy isnt actually about trade any more, its about power. The people in power now know that control over technology is the name of the game. It doesnt have to have a return on investment, it has to enable control of public opinion and eventually, robots.

Someone has to pay interest on that debt still however.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only two ways it could: either power cost increases which only make up a small portion of cost of living or somehow believing it responsible for inflation. But the latter doesn't make any sense, especially as they believe the money spent to be 'lost'.

How does that not make sense? Inflation is lost money from a consumer viewpoint.

Money spent on AI is taking GPUs and software engineers off the market, as well as the energy needed to drive AI data centers. AI doesn’t need food, well, beyond the SWEs, it shouldn’t be inflating food at all. The only thing I could think of is AI investment drawing away agriculture investment or something. Or maybe AI data centers replacing farmland?

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#123
post #9

> No nation has seen an immigration boom-bust cycle near the scale of the one roiling America. Net immigration nearly quadrupled after 2020 to peak at well over 3mn in 2023, but the backlash led by President Donald Trump sent that figure into freefall. This year only around 400,000 net new arrivals are expected, and that could be the trend in the coming years. If true, that's <1% of the population?

Using 2020 as a comparison basis for anything should be illegal. “Hey look after immigration dropped a lot because all work dried up, immigration increased a lot relative to that!”

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#124
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.

40% of growth, not 40% total

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#125
post #105
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wouldn't that just mean it's less of the actual GDP growth? Either way if it's only 40% of the calculated figure double counted or not I have a hard time seeing how the secondary effects would account for the remaining 60% too, which would be 150% of the original first order effects.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#126
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, maybe not, it mostly wasn't a problem for the first 300 000 years of modern human history, now it's our main issue... I think it's worth questioning your "objective" definition

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#127

Sloppy opinion piece. Stock market increases are bad because it makes rich people happy, but select US sectors are lagging behind Europe which is somehow also bad. Low immigration resulting in a labor force squeeze is bad, but this is offset by reduced demand because of AI, which is, you guessed it, also bad lol

Stock market increases are bad if they are being put to something unprofitable, whuch AI seems to be. Lagging behind Europe is bad because the US loses its competitive advantage, which can become a vicious cycle and kill the sector entirely. Low immigration causing a labor force squeeze is bad because critical industries like farming have crops rot on the field, causing food waste. Reduced demand because of AI is bad because it lowers employment, causing people to become destitute, desperate, and/or dead.

None of this is contradictory.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#128

Its not a bubble because the economy isnt actually about trade any more, its about power. The people in power now know that control over technology is the name of the game. It doesnt have to have a return on investment, it has to enable control of public opinion and eventually, robots.

Something like 70-80%+ of US stock market ownership is institutional, which ultimately means overwhelmingly pension and insurance funds. I'd imagine much of the rest is individual investors' pension savings. Bubbles can grow fine so long as no one wants their money back. But eventually they will, and then valuations will be real. When all these boomers draw their savings and buy themselves annuities, what's going to…

This is a good point and perhaps is driving the point further. With demographic decline, there's less and less folk able to actually generate value for the pensioners, perhaps it's a sign go all in on AI. If it doesn't work out we were screwed regardless.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#129
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.

I think its 40% of growth, not gdp?
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