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Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

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Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#231

Post by TSiege »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #221
seydor wrote: post #76

- If AI and robots are as good as Bill suggests , one can infer that AI will signal the end of cities, at least the end of megacities. If the home robot can clean and cook and also do my taxes, hair, and diagnose my health , one is more likely to escape unemployment by moving to a small town where he can find land and resources, and use robots to exploit them, just like humans have always done when economy was based…

Humans like cities. It brings people together for mating. It wasn't only industrialization. Even today, before AI, once you find a mate, THEN, you move to the suburbs.

They're also much cheaper from an infrastructure perspective to maintain

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#232

Post by ihumanable »

BenzeneDream wrote: post #212
miyoji wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all of us waiting for government bureaucrats to realise that UBI is a right You'll be waiting forever, then. This isn't something that you can wait to be given to you, it must be taken . Or, put much more eloquently by one of the greatest Americans: "This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a deman…

How do the gears of capitalism keep turning without UBI in such a scenario? Who is buying from Amazon? Mega yachts don't make the world go round. UBI is how capitalism keeps going, else a new system will be needed. UBI will be given but we should take even more control and take a % of ownership.

We've seen in the K-shaped economy of late a new kind of consumerism.

The top 10% of consumers accounted for half of all spending in the second quarter of 2025.

Capitalism will happily chug along while leaving a massive number of people desperately poor.

There's a reason the AI CEOs have all become obsessed with the concept of a "permanent underclass."

If a UBI is ever "given" it will be just enough to keep the underclass from rising up and killing the owner class and not one cent more.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#233

Post by lanfeust6 »

Gud wrote: post #199
lanfeust6 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a post-scarcity society, having a meagre policy to keep people alive and not-unruly is cheap. It's also getting way ahead of ourselves, since it's nowhere in sight. Software hiring was up this year.

Not really. The planet is crowded, currently with mostly productive members of society. For the ultra rich psychos who run the show, do you really think they want poor people hanging around? When we can be wiped out in a few months? Consider the pure greed Donald Trump is displaying. Now imagine that the 1000 most powerful people are the same, except they are smart enough to at least not rub it in peoples faces on li…

Motivated reasoning. You want to believe it.

> do you really think they want poor people hanging around?

Which by your rationale would include everyone who isn't rich (and tautologically would mean "no one is rich anymore"). They do not care whether we're hanging around, the same way they do not care now whether poor people exist. It has no bearing. All that does is whether they remain rich and powerful, and last I checked, that's relative. Being the only one left on the planet won't make you feel rich, and there being poors on a piece of land won't have any bearing on you.

> When we can be wiped out in a few months?

Lol

Also, on the population front, growth is poised to completely stall in less than 100 years. The fertility rate is terrible in developed countries, and falling quickly in developing ones as they get richer

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#234

Post by lanfeust6 »

psadauskas wrote: post #203
lanfeust6 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever-growing wealth disparities Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times. Real-wages are still growing, which is what we care about qua improvements in our well being (and what attracts immigrants). The key risk though is regulatory capture from consolidation of tech companies (much of this "wealth" in question is stock valuation, which tends to get reinvested in…

> Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times. That's a very clinical way to put it. Usually when its "dissipated", its through war or economic depression or both, and a great many people who never had any wealth suffer needlessly, while the wealthy rarely do. It would be nice if we could like, _not_ do that, and try something different for once, instead of throwing u…

You're forgetting anti-trust. Standard Oil controlled 90% of the oil production in the U.S. until it was splintered into numerous companies. We're not really at the point where this needs to be done for tech.

Also, dynastic wealth itself doesn't sustain itself well, and dwindles in a generation. See: the aforementioned Rockefeller, whose grandchildren are nowhere near as rich. Notwithstanding that many of the wealthy (in particular, Bill Gates) are donating the majority of their wealth when they die.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#235

Post by lanfeust6 »

swed420 wrote: post #177
lanfeust6 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever-growing wealth disparities Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times. Real-wages are still growing, which is what we care about qua improvements in our well being (and what attracts immigrants). The key risk though is regulatory capture from consolidation of tech companies (much of this "wealth" in question is stock valuation, which tends to get reinvested in…

> This is about consumer products, not government policy. You speak as if these things are unrelated. > Buy an alternative, you have those choices. Increasingly, we don't: "Modern Capitalism Is Weirder Than You Think: It also no longer works as advertised" https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-h... ( https://archive.is/wSmtd )

> You speak as if these things are unrelated.

State the connection, because it seems like your next argument is going to be "the government didn't stop them", as though that's their job.

> Increasingly, we don't:

Think of a single enshittified product that matters to you for which there is no alternative but to use it.

This also all pales in contrast to the conveniences and improvements afforded over time. You can now access and stream basically any music you want for free, for example. Television sets are now commodities, which tend to be cheaper adjusted for inflation. Etc etc. So the rhetoric about enshittification doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#236

Post by lanfeust6 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #191
lanfeust6 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notwithstanding that this sum is smaller than people think, seeing bipartisan stances does not in itself reflect a failure; it can just as easily be a good thing. All this reveals is that you have a pet issue that isn't being serviced well currently by the 2 parties, but tides and voter sentiment change; within a few short years most people have soured on Israel, and this will be reflected in forthcoming elections.

I don't have a single "pet issue", I care about a great deal of issues that neither party actually cares about addressing, and it's well-established that both parties push conservative, right-leaning neoliberal policy. I don't see these changes occurring overnight or fast enough to be acceptable.

lol Trump's party has not been the least bit neoliberal, it is populist and protectionist. Brutal immigration crackdowns and tarrifs are the opposite of neoliberal. Even Biden was a departure, with tariffs and CHIPS act. None of that is neoliberal, which peaked in the Clinton era.

Incidentally, among the most effective remedies for what ails us now, like zoning reform, would be derided as "neoliberal" by progressives, though the evidence speaks for itself, and YIMBYs are making in-roads.

That doesn't mean that state capacity doesn't have it's place. We historically would spend more on innovation, on NASA, DARPA and the like, and that matters a great deal. But it doesn't preclude removing red tape that hinders govt and private sector efforts.

> a great deal of issues

Ok, name some. Realistically, there aren't many.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#237

Post by lanfeust6 »

watwut wrote: post #205
lanfeust6 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever-growing wealth disparities Higher concentration of wealth is not new, it's happened many times and dissipated many times. Real-wages are still growing, which is what we care about qua improvements in our well being (and what attracts immigrants). The key risk though is regulatory capture from consolidation of tech companies (much of this "wealth" in question is stock valuation, which tends to get reinvested in…

> Based on polling, the most salient issues seem to reflect economic anxieties. Even stances on immigration are really about that. Meh, the economic anxiety voters are systematically voting for economically worst performing parties. They may say "it is economy" in polls, but it is hardly believable. The difference between men and women in voting patterns is not about economy.

Average voters don't understand much about the economy, but that doesn't mean they aren't reacting to externalities like housing costs, prices, or other worse outcomes.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#239

Post by arretevad »

seydor wrote: post #76

- If AI and robots are as good as Bill suggests , one can infer that AI will signal the end of cities, at least the end of megacities. If the home robot can clean and cook and also do my taxes, hair, and diagnose my health , one is more likely to escape unemployment by moving to a small town where he can find land and resources, and use robots to exploit them, just like humans have always done when economy was based…

> If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.

Many people like living next to other people purely for social reasons.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#240

Post by toomuchtodo »

33e wrote: post #230
toomuchtodo wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” —- John Maynard Keynes What does the data and observations tell us so far, in this context?

The real blame lies at the door of the folks who created a lot of things who were incredibly naive that others wouldnt come in to profit from it.

That’s certainly a component, but I think the biggest issue is that people have this religious fervor that capitalism is the only way to structure a socioeconomic system, even when the data shows it is exceptionally bad at ensuring a good quality of life for the majority of citizens.

It’s changing in the US with Democratic Socialists over performing, and with high support for them with the under 35 cohort, the question is if this momentum can be sustained for years through various election cycles (as ~2M 55+ voters age out every year, and ~3M voters turn 18 and age into the electorate every year).

“Progress occurs one funeral at a time.” — Max Planck

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