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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

#171

Post by conorcleary »

vlian2088 wrote: post #118
jrflowers wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“This is how the world should work” I say once I read that the handful of entities engineering global economic calamity are privately held. I interrupt my chat bot girlfriend’s detailed but deeply incorrect summary of yesterday’s news to type “Only a literal child would want to go to a school.” “That is so true! You’re really on to something brilliant there! To get a head start before we drill down on this further I’…

>my chat bot girlfriend you may think she's just your gal but she may be everyone's pal.

llm's are the town bicycle

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

#172

Post by thelastgallon »

expedition32 wrote: post #163
thelastgallon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100 manhattan projects. Lots and lots and lots of things that can be done. Reminds me of the quote "water water everywhere not a drop to drink" ==> Money, money everywhere, not a cent goes towards something remotely useful. 1) Could've added nifty features to roads (rf beacons?) and make it super easy to build autonomous vehicles. This would've solved so many problems, but most importantly 45,000 lives every…

It's private money. At least in my country the government isn't giving a single cent to AI outside of fundamental research projects. If companies want to bet all their money at roulette they are free to do so.

Its private money now. Then they get bailed out.

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

#173

Post by slumberlust »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #78
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.

You have to wait 20 years for the returns to society. Public education was enormously successful when it was introduced in the 19th century. There's just no profit in waiting for second order effects to kick in.

What makes you choose the 19th century for public education creation? It was my understanding the Puritans and thusly Yankees that spread through NE and the north Midwest were staunch proponents of schoolhouses and publicly funded education dating back to the to the early 17th century.

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

#174

Post by Havoc »

thot_experiment wrote: post #23

Surely this time we'll learn our lesson and disempower the parasites that create these situations, right? Right guys?

It’s a different crowd this time. Instead of bankers and traders with fin instruments its Silicon Valley growth first sane economics later playbook just scaled up to dangerous levels

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

#175

Post by civet_java »

scoofy wrote: post #159
thelastgallon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100 manhattan projects. Lots and lots and lots of things that can be done. Reminds me of the quote "water water everywhere not a drop to drink" ==> Money, money everywhere, not a cent goes towards something remotely useful. 1) Could've added nifty features to roads (rf beacons?) and make it super easy to build autonomous vehicles. This would've solved so many problems, but most importantly 45,000 lives every…

You are describing altruistic gifts, not investment meant to generate a return. All this money is being deployed to try and turn a dime into a dollar. The biggest area I can see where money could be deployed into building something useful -- while generating a positive return -- is real estate development in cities with massive housing shortages. That's basically not allowed in the same cities. In large part, because…

It doesn't generate private returns but investing in your worker population definitely nets returns for the public.

Also, some might say that upending the de facto copyright regime in favour of AI companies was an altruistic gift.

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

#176

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

scoofy wrote: post #159
thelastgallon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100 manhattan projects. Lots and lots and lots of things that can be done. Reminds me of the quote "water water everywhere not a drop to drink" ==> Money, money everywhere, not a cent goes towards something remotely useful. 1) Could've added nifty features to roads (rf beacons?) and make it super easy to build autonomous vehicles. This would've solved so many problems, but most importantly 45,000 lives every…

You are describing altruistic gifts, not investment meant to generate a return. All this money is being deployed to try and turn a dime into a dollar. The biggest area I can see where money could be deployed into building something useful -- while generating a positive return -- is real estate development in cities with massive housing shortages. That's basically not allowed in the same cities. In large part, because…

Typically the best return on investment is to build proper separated active travel infrastructure (e.g. cycle lanes).

From https://www.cyclinguk.org/briefing/case-cycling-economy:

> For every £1 invested, walking and cycling return an average of around £5-6. A ‘benefit to cost ratio’ (BCR) greater than or equal to 4 is considered to be ‘very high’ value for money. Putting this in some context, the predicted BCR for the HS2 (high speed railway) wasn’t nearly so impressive at about £2.30 for every £1 invested.

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

#177

Post by cindyllm »

civet_java wrote: post #175
scoofy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing altruistic gifts, not investment meant to generate a return. All this money is being deployed to try and turn a dime into a dollar. The biggest area I can see where money could be deployed into building something useful -- while generating a positive return -- is real estate development in cities with massive housing shortages. That's basically not allowed in the same cities. In large part, because…

It doesn't generate private returns but investing in your worker population definitely nets returns for the public. Also, some might say that upending the de facto copyright regime in favour of AI companies was an altruistic gift.

[dead]

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

#178

Post by goalieca »

neonstatic wrote: post #92
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.

Central planning in China is leading to many terrible problems from a collapsed real estate market to a debt that’s 300% of GDP and accelerating. Yes, they often deliver with focus and determination but this can work sideways too.

FWIW, we have a similar problem in Canada where the federal government makes large investments and plans that backfire terribly.

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

#179

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

skulk wrote: post #100
gruez wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 labo…

A better analogy would perhaps be to consider the land the farm uses as the commons (it was before becoming private property)

We can debate the just access to land (commons) and point to Henry George, John Locke, Thomas Payne and others, but still agree that the value produced by the farm comes from the labour put in to refine the common resource into something more useful.

There can be rent seeking and value produced at the same time.

Edit: One can provably extend the rent seeking parts of the analogy in terms of John Deere and Monsanto

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

#180

Post by piva00 »

spwa4 wrote: post #167
piva00 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) Money needs to support that. Which means for Math, the money for math teachers needs to be competitive with research departments of banks, and very different for different subjects, which seems offensive to schools and government in general. If teaching positions aren't competing with other professional careers in the subject matter, it will never work. This will, of course, mean that many science teachers make…

Doesn't change the fact that I have 2 daughters that are getting Math education from someone who is easily beat in math teaching quality by Google Gemini (I realize this is a specific strong point of Gemini, but still) And I do mean easily beat.

It doesn't change that fact, unfortunately it's a complex societal issue which presents quite heavily in your society, it requires decades of constant improvement to change anything.

I don't think American society has the appetite nor patience for the actions needed for this kind of change.

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