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America is now one big bet on AI

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Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#161

Post by gooob »

righthand wrote: post #80
gooob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea is to use AI to build super productive farms and greenhouses, improve the capability to do that in urban areas, automated and super efficient transportation. but it's not just AI doing all that, it's someone who wants to start a business using AI himself to figure out how to best start up a greenhouse in his community and setup the tech infra needed including the API for people to be able to view available p…

Okay this is even more pie-in-the-sky. You can build productive greenhouses today, we don’t need AI to summarize the internet to figure out how to do it. There are no secrets hidden in the generative token tea-leaves that reveals better greenhouses. Urban farming will never be profitable or sustainable in a dense urban center. It’s been done. “Standard observability software” whatever that is also does not require AI…

i can't come up with all the examples. i'm not a farming or ecology expert. so thanks for the information. do some thinking

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#162

Post by gooob »

etblg wrote: post #156
gooob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea is to use AI to build super productive farms and greenhouses, improve the capability to do that in urban areas, automated and super efficient transportation. but it's not just AI doing all that, it's someone who wants to start a business using AI himself to figure out how to best start up a greenhouse in his community and setup the tech infra needed including the API for people to be able to view available p…

> the idea is to use AI to build super productive farms and greenhouses How? What are the mechanisms in which AI will lead to farms and greenhouses being more productive? How will AI improve the existing automation that already exists for the farming sector, and has existed for a hundred years?

fully automated with robots. the AI designs thousands of experiments and deploys them at scale. idk, i'm not an agriculture expert. it was just one example. what other possibilities are there?

electronics recycling, disassembling old computers to get the raw materials into a form that can be used again. we'll need programs to automate the production and testing and analysis of the robots that will recycle the components.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#164

Post by maxglute »

Borderline all or nothing bet. The distribution of AI capex investment and burnt/stranded assets is not like past bubbles.

Railroad boom. Most of spending moving heart to build out rail network that increase CONUS rail by +400%. US freight backbone. 50+ year infra. Upgrade signal etc and improve network capacity.

Dotcom Boom. Most of spending in moving earth to build out ~150m of fiber. Agnostic pipes for backbone of internet. Also 50+ year infra. Upgrade switches at nodes to increase network capacity.

AI boom. Most of investment going into chips with Looking like ~20% goes to eletricfication capex (if it gets built at all). That's the stranded asset i.e. consolation prize, ~10% (generous) increase in US electrification, which isn't nothing, but also not substantial.

Also consider Tulip mania. Tulips die in a few weeks. All value gone.

TLDR potentially bulk of AI investment is closer to tulips in terms of deprecated / stranded assets past medium term i.e. <10 years, than rail or fiber.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#165

Post by mdhb »

tim333 wrote: post #141
bgwalter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the tragic part. This administration ran on a platform of bringing back the real economy and manufacturing. Now they fuel the Bitcoin and "AI" bubbles, which are nonessential and non-tangibles. The GDP increases are fake. Mining Bitcoin produces nothing, in fact the money supply should not be increased to match the fake GDP increase. The same is true for "AI".

Bit unfair to "AI". It does produce some stuff.

A hell of a lot of absolute slop as well… it’s really not at all obvious that it’s a net win in any way at this stage.

Actual real life case studies that people can point to where they deployed it and it all went great are actually very hard to come by. It was only the other week that there was that study that said the number was as low as I think they said like 5% or something.

No shortage of excitement though, but a lot of things seem to be riding on some big breakthroughs coming down the pipeline that may never arrive.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#166

Post by [deleted] »

tim333 wrote: post #141
bgwalter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the tragic part. This administration ran on a platform of bringing back the real economy and manufacturing. Now they fuel the Bitcoin and "AI" bubbles, which are nonessential and non-tangibles. The GDP increases are fake. Mining Bitcoin produces nothing, in fact the money supply should not be increased to match the fake GDP increase. The same is true for "AI".

Bit unfair to "AI". It does produce some stuff.

[deleted]

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#167

Post by McAlpine5892 »

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…

> 1) the average American is heavily dependent on equities in their 401k for retirement,

> 2) so the stock market has to go up

This is why I've come to despise 401k's replacing old-school pensions. Yes, pensions had their problems but with 401k's workers must fleece themselves to have any sort of retirement opportunity.

Want a shot at retirement? Now we all have to run ourselves into the ground to make number go up. It's insane.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#168

Post by ffsm8 »

The most insidious thing about this bet isn't that it fails...

It's that it could succeed.

Loosing the bet will only mean lots of ultra rich people have wasted tons of money - winning it means the average person, wherever they're American, Chinese, Russian or European (or wherever else you wanna list) will be fucked... And the ultra rich will be the only beneficiaries.

But nothing makes me think AGI is achievable through LLMs alone, so I guess I don't mind that bet too much. It's just a question of time when it fails - and the failure will likely not be completely catastrophic, as there is actual value in LLMs, albeit much less then the market is valuing it.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#169

Post by missedthecue »

mdhb wrote: post #165
tim333 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit unfair to "AI". It does produce some stuff.

A hell of a lot of absolute slop as well… it’s really not at all obvious that it’s a net win in any way at this stage. Actual real life case studies that people can point to where they deployed it and it all went great are actually very hard to come by. It was only the other week that there was that study that said the number was as low as I think they said like 5% or something. No shortage of excitement though, but…

I feel like I am living in another reality when I hear about all these "studies" confirming LLMs have no value and how no one uses them. I am using LLMs all day. I have more ideas about how to use them than I have time to build out.

Re: America is now one big bet on AI

#170

Post by stronglikedan »

softwaredoug wrote: post #13

There is other emerging tech we could be investing in that other economies are doubling-down on. But the Administration has made green energy harder for American companies. And a lot of health tech too is tougher under the current administration. Tarrifs, affordability, etc also hit hard on small businesses, making growth there tough.

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