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AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

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Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#211

Post by rfv6723 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #176
rfv6723 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive investment in power grids and data centers provides a permanent physical backbone that outlives any specific silicon generation. This infrastructure serves as a durable shell for the model design knowledge and chip architectural IP gained through each iteration. Capital is effectively funding a structural moat built on energy access and engineering mastery.

Seems like there’s a lot of resources being dumped into those data centers that will not be very useful. Saying it will all be worthwhile because we’ll have the buildings and the modest power grid updates (which are largely paid for by tax payers, anyway,) feels like saying a PS5 is a good long-term investment because the cords and box will still be good long ag after the PS5 has outlived its usefulness.

The "PS5" analogy fails to account for how "useless" hardware often triggers the next paradigm shift. For decades, traditionalists dismissed high-end GPUs as expensive toys for gamers, yet that specific architecture became the accidental engine of the AI revolution.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#212

Post by BobbyJo »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #170
BobbyJo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually being sold at a steep discount? Anthropic CEO has stated they have high margins on inference, so training is the big cost center.

> Anthropic CEO has stated they have high margins on inference, so training is the big cost center. I'm pretty sure that in corpo-speak "inference" excludes the cost of datacenter construction, GPUs and other hardware, manual data cleaning, R&D, administration, etc - basically everything except the power bill for inference. I have absolutely no problem with companies that run inference only - plenty of them offer ope…

They've raise 70-ish billion (which they have not spent all of) and have a run rate of 14 billion/y as of now. All said and done those are great economics so far, even accounting for those extra expenses.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#213

Post by georgeecollins »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics "

Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#214

Post by areoform »

I think analyses like these are motivated reasoning. In 2000, I'm sure you could have said that after infrastructure costs the internet, and the web, added "basically zero" to US economic growth. And there were people saying that!

Someone I deeply respect, Clifford Stollm wrote a book called “Silicon Snake Oil — Second thoughts on the information highway" in 1995. And while he was and is a brilliant person, Stoll was wrong.

Smart people are terrible at predicting the most consequential changes in our future – even when they're familiar with the technology. I wrote a bit about my thesis why here, https://1517.substack.com/p/inside-v-outside-context-problem...

Don't make his mistake. Don't look away from the change being wrought. The world has changed and our history now has a new, sharp dividing chapter "Before ChatGPT | After ChatGPT"

and that chapter will go down right next to "Before Trinity | After Trinity"; "Before PC | After PC"; "Before 'Internet' | After 'Internet'"†

† Yes, I know I'm referring to the Web. But we're still using the dark fiber from the .com boom.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#216

Post by andai »

ughitsaaron wrote: post #149
mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

I just want to call out how much I appreciate the comparison of “vibe coding” to the endless scroll.

They're both slot machines, in terms of the effect on the reward system.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#217

Post by kamaal »

georgeecollins wrote: post #213
mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics " Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.

Oh well had a talk with a director at office. He says, instead of using AI to get more productive, people were using AI to get more lazy.

1)

What he means to say is, say you needed to get something done. You could ask AI to write you a Python script which does the job. Next time around you could use the same Python script. But that's not how people are using AI, they basically think of a prompt as the only source of input, and the output of the prompt as the job they want get done.

So instead of reusing the Python script, they basically re-prompt the same problem again and again.

While this gives an initial productivity boost, you now arrive at a new plateau.

2)

Second problem is ideally you must be using the Python script written once and improve it over time. An ever improving Python script over time should do most of your day job.

That's not happening. Instead since re-prompting is common, people are now executing a list of prompts to get complex work done, and then making it a workflow.

So ideally there should be a never ending productivity increase but when you sell a prompt as a product, people use it as a black box to get things done.

A lot of this has to do with lack of automation/programming mindset to begin with.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#218

Post by mullingitover »

boxedemp wrote: post #92
mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

I've literally not met one person in tech who thinks LLMs will become sentient or conscious. But I always see people online claiming that there are lots of people who believe that. Where are they? Are we sure that's not a misunderstanding of the terminology? Artificial diamonds, such as cubic zirconia, are not diamonds, and nobody thinks they are. 'Artificial' means it's not the real thing. When will conscious, actua…

> LLMs will become sentient or conscious

I've always doubted it, but then again I've also been skeptical about claims that humans have these capabilities.

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#219

Post by paradox460 »

yifanl wrote: post #24
d_watt wrote: post #11

It took 20 years for computers to "add" to the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

The difference being that AI's marketing has been significantly more prevalent than any early computing efforts.

And early (electronic) computing paid immediate dividends, with the bletchley park code breakers

Re: AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

#220

Post by andai »

boxedemp wrote: post #92
mark_l_watson wrote: post #68

I’ll do the Minority Report here: I loved the article, the point being that rich people hyping AI for their own enrichment have somewhat shutdown rational arguments of benefits vs. costs, the costs being: energy use, environmental impact of using environmentally unfriendly energy sources out of desperation, water pollution from by products of electronics production and recycling and from water use in data centers, di…

I've literally not met one person in tech who thinks LLMs will become sentient or conscious. But I always see people online claiming that there are lots of people who believe that. Where are they? Are we sure that's not a misunderstanding of the terminology? Artificial diamonds, such as cubic zirconia, are not diamonds, and nobody thinks they are. 'Artificial' means it's not the real thing. When will conscious, actua…

Interesting. Artificial does have a negative connotation to it, I never considered that.

Synthetic sounds more neutral, aside from bringing microplastics to my mind.

I guess the field of artificial life has the same issue.

As another comment pointed out, you don't necessarily need consciousness for intelligence. And you don't need either of those for goal oriented behavior.

My favorite example is the humble refrigerator. (The old one, without the microchips!) It has a goal (target temperature), it senses its environment (current temperature), and takes action based on that (turn cooling on or off).

A cuter example is the dandelion seed. It "wants" to fly. Obviously! So you can display goal directed behavior as the result of natural forces moving through you. (Arguably electricity and glucose also fall in that category, but... Yeah...)

LLMs, conscious or not, moved into that category this year, in a big way. (e.g. Opus and Codex routinely bypassing security restrictions in the pursuit of the goal.)

Does it really have goals, or does it merely appear to act as though it has them? Does it appear to act as though it has consciousness?

(I forget who said it: it won't really disrupt the global economic system, it will merely appear to do so ;)

Also, here I am! :)

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