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AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#91

Post by fragmede »

overgard wrote: post #58

I'm not usually for arguments of "this money could have been better spent elsewhere", but here's a thought experiment. Lets say instead of injecting $2 trillion and counting into a few AI companies, we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization (I doubt most people on Hacker News venture ou…

I mean, you want to be annoyed at something, be annoyed at Apple for investing 3x the Marshall plan into China, instead of America.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#92

Post by neonstatic »

overgard wrote: post #58

I'm not usually for arguments of "this money could have been better spent elsewhere", but here's a thought experiment. Lets say instead of injecting $2 trillion and counting into a few AI companies, we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization (I doubt most people on Hacker News venture ou…

China is showing the world how it's done. Check out how many nuclear reactors they have built in the last 10 years. Turns out having a government that plans long term and actually delivers what they said they would makes a huge difference.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#94

Post by nativeit »

rayiner wrote: post #81
overgard wrote: post #58

I'm not usually for arguments of "this money could have been better spent elsewhere", but here's a thought experiment. Lets say instead of injecting $2 trillion and counting into a few AI companies, we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization (I doubt most people on Hacker News venture ou…

> we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization Even excluding military spending, US governments spend $2 trillion every 10 weeks.

How? The annual federal budget is roughly $7T.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#95

Post by watutalkinbout »

christiangenco wrote: post #76
overgard wrote: post #58

I'm not usually for arguments of "this money could have been better spent elsewhere", but here's a thought experiment. Lets say instead of injecting $2 trillion and counting into a few AI companies, we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization (I doubt most people on Hacker News venture ou…

My understanding of injecting money in education is that it's proven to be extremely ineffective at improving outcomes. Schools just hire more administrators and build nicer gyms.

Maybe don't just 'inject' it.

Maybe use it to increase outcomes.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#96

Post by didicndj3848 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #55

There’s no question we’re in a massive AI bubble, the only question is how do we get out of it without wiping out the broader economy.

I think it’ll be the printing press, not least because of moonshot executive pay tied to $price

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#97

Post by didicndj3848 »

Gigachad wrote: post #70
cmiles8 wrote: post #55

There’s no question we’re in a massive AI bubble, the only question is how do we get out of it without wiping out the broader economy.

It's ether going to be one catastrophic crash or decades of stagnation and decline.

living standards, but not asset prices

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#98

Post by rayiner »

saulpw wrote: post #83
christiangenco wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of injecting money in education is that it's proven to be extremely ineffective at improving outcomes. Schools just hire more administrators and build nicer gyms.

Well yes, you have to spend the money wisely. How could we construct a system so that we have 2x as many teachers (thereby halving the classroom size)? That would have a lot of good second-order effects beyond test scores.

So why has per-capita student spending doubled since 1990 (adjusted for inflation) without any increase in test scores? Why haven’t we been spending the money wisely?

Student to teacher ratios have continuously decreased and are about half of what they were in 1960. Data on the results is mixed: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/class-size-what-research-...

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#99

Post by ElProlactin »

rayiner wrote: post #81
overgard wrote: post #58

I'm not usually for arguments of "this money could have been better spent elsewhere", but here's a thought experiment. Lets say instead of injecting $2 trillion and counting into a few AI companies, we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization (I doubt most people on Hacker News venture ou…

> we instead injected $2 trillion dollars into things like infrastructure (real infrastructure, not GPU warehouses), education, helping out communities ravaged by globalization Even excluding military spending, US governments spend $2 trillion every 10 weeks.

Just to be clear: you're talking about federal and state non-military spending.

And about 10% of this is interest. So over the course of a year, the US is paying about $1.25 trillion in interest at the federal and state level.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#100

Post by skulk »

gruez wrote: post #59
skulk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tractor manufacturers or fertilizer companies didn't suck down the work of generations of predecessors in a questionably-legal fashion only to turn around and sell a heavily discounted version of that back to them. I'm not sure where "parasite" becomes appropriate, but your analogy is poor.

>in a questionably-legal fashion Maybe in the eyes of seething artists/programmers seeing their jobs getting automated, but courts have so far ruled that AI training falls under fair use. Moreover it's not hard to think of vaguely similar objections to fertilizers. They're often produced at some harm to society, as well as their use. They're also in some sense, a "heavily discounted" versions of that they replaced, b…

re: questionable legality https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...

> Moreover it's not hard to think of vaguely similar objections to fertilizers.

It's completely different. If LLM companies pulled this out of thin air it would be also different, but no; they've effectively plundered the commons and locked up all the profit for themselves. If intellectual labor goes the way of agricultural labor, I think humanity will have lost something valuable.

And don't come back with the "farmers would have said the same thing about the industrial revolution!" thing again if you're just going to terminate your thought there. Automating agricultural labor brings vast material benefits for all since it lowers the cost of tangible goods needed for life. I'd challenge you take this one step further and explain why automating intellectual labor will provide similar fruits and is therefore something to cheer for.

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