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AI Is Too Big to Fail

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Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#121

Post by sensanaty »

Fernicia wrote: post #14
terandle wrote: post #8

> Think of it like WWII, only only instead of planting victory gardens to beat the Nazis, we're building AI apps and finding ways to create the economic value needed to cover the reckless bets being made by the elites. LOL fuck this, the stock market deserves to burn to the ground.

When did the HackerNews comment section turn into this? Low quality, aggressive, fervently anti-establishment.

Since when are Hackers™ pro establishment? Also what's wrong with being anti-establishment exactly, especially the current one, or really most of the recent neoliberal ones?

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#122

Post by bayindirh »

tharmas wrote: post #90
nick__m wrote: post #11

Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom. When I say magic here, I mean it; because of the ~38T national debt bomb, a big boost is not enough. If AI doesn't completely transform our economy, the massive capital misallocation combined with the national debt is going to cause our…

We already live in a Plutonomy. Already 50% of sales in USA is by the top 10%. The top 1% make most of their money selling to the top 10%. The Elites don't need us for consumption to make money. Walmart is reconfiguring their sales model to carry more "luxury” items. And now with AI the Wealthy wont need human labor hardly at all. We are surplus to requirements. The sad thing is it doesn't have to be like this. AI co…

> AI could be used to reduce peoples working hours and give them more leisure hours.

I'm completely with you on this, but that won't create "value" for the right people, so it won't happen.

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#123

Post by bayindirh »

rwyinuse wrote: post #120
candiddevmike wrote: post #24

IMO, the backdrop to all of this is global warming. We're seeing so many warning signs and growth stagnating that governments need something, ANYTHING, to prop up their debt fueled economies and keep the music playing. In the face of impending GDP/population contraction due to global warming and the upcoming breadbasket collapses, GenAI isn't going to do shit for us. All of the money and effort being spent on it is m…

I think major breadbasket collapses can be avoided through geoengineering. Thanks to volcanoes and emissions from marine traffic, we know for a fact that climate change can be slowed down by spraying enough stuff reflecting sunlight high in the atmosphere. Of course some conservative US states are enacting laws against geoengineering, but thankfully they can't prevent rest of the world from doing it. I hope we'll eve…

I can accept some temporary geoengineering as long as we stop burning dinosaur juice. My reservations lie in unintended and non-reversible side effects like ecosystem disruptions.

Europe and even China show that renewable energy can be done. Greenhouse gas emissions stopped increasing after Paris agreement (I failed to find the article), and we can do iteratively better as long as we want to.

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#124

Post by Atomic_Torrfisk »

Title seems misleading. The quote below implies failure on multiple levels.

> Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#125

Post by Yoric »

jhallenworld wrote: post #82
Yoric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, last few times the US had a big recession, they took down the whole world with them. The biggest recession led almost directly to WWII, and that was before the US centralized that much power or money. I don't live in the US, but I'm rather worried.

On the Oct 10 drop, I made a list of a bunch country specific ETFs to see who is and who isn't so correlated with the US. oct 10 drop yield ytd total return mchi china -5.73 2.19 28.48 ewh hong kong -4.22 3.54 23.05 qqq nasdaq 100 -3.47 0.46 12.4 argt argentina -3.34 1.39 -16.04 currency problems ech chile -3.2 2.18 24.8 ewz brazil -2.98 5.42 26.49 spy USA: s&p 500 -2.69 1.08 9.15 epu peru -2.62 3.5 52.16 metals norw…

That being said, even if for some reason your money is invested in Finland (or somehow safe from the next collapse), that won't be sufficient to save your entire community.

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#126

Post by subjectivationx »

tim333 wrote: post #99
nick__m wrote: post #11

Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom. When I say magic here, I mean it; because of the ~38T national debt bomb, a big boost is not enough. If AI doesn't completely transform our economy, the massive capital misallocation combined with the national debt is going to cause our…

The "~38T national debt bomb" is not caused by AI and not that large compared to debts other countries have dealt with. It's about 100% of gdp and Japan is about 250%. The UK was about 270% after WW2 and that got paid down to 50% before running up a bit. Not ideal but doesn't have to make anything implode.

The problem is Debt to GDP is largely meaningless. It is the total debt that matters. I am sick of reading this bullshit. You don't know what you are talking about and it is just always repeated as a reason to spend more.

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#127

Post by rsynnott »

mcv wrote: post #53

I think this is mostly about the US, right? Most countries haven't invested all that much in AI. Even if all this new AI would completely vanish overnight, I'm pretty sure most of the world wouldn't care one bit. Of course many AI companies and investors would be bankrupt; they'd be the real losers here. Many other companies and organisations would have wasted a lot of money on nothing, but they'll write it off and m…

> Even if all this new AI would completely vanish overnight, I'm pretty sure most of the world wouldn't care one bit.

If the economic chaos in the US was sufficiently large (I still think this is _kinda_ unlikely, because exposure is pretty concentrated, but with the massive debt raises it's maybe less contcentrated than it used to be), there would likely be contagion.

> If it bankrupts Microsoft, that would have a tremendous impact on many companies using Microsoft products of course

It won't; in terms of publicly traded companies, it's probably mostly Oracle and Nvidia in the firing line. MS has plenty of money.

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#128

Post by conartist6 »

nick__m wrote: post #11

Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom. When I say magic here, I mean it; because of the ~38T national debt bomb, a big boost is not enough. If AI doesn't completely transform our economy, the massive capital misallocation combined with the national debt is going to cause our…

I was blown away by this passage.

Roko's Basilisk never felt so real. It is right and good to serve the Basilisk in hope that it will smile on you.

Seriously how can people say things like this and then say "put all your money on red with me and pray"

It'd be like if in The Big Short the protagonist realized there was a huge housing bubble so told his clients "Guys, the thing to do if you want to make money here is buy as many houses as possible right now to prop up the bubble, and just pray it never bursts"

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#129

Post by bigbaguette »

mcv wrote: post #53

I think this is mostly about the US, right? Most countries haven't invested all that much in AI. Even if all this new AI would completely vanish overnight, I'm pretty sure most of the world wouldn't care one bit. Of course many AI companies and investors would be bankrupt; they'd be the real losers here. Many other companies and organisations would have wasted a lot of money on nothing, but they'll write it off and m…

Europe is playing catch with a 200b investment

Re: AI Is Too Big to Fail

#130

Post by anon7000 »

subjectivationx wrote: post #126
tim333 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "~38T national debt bomb" is not caused by AI and not that large compared to debts other countries have dealt with. It's about 100% of gdp and Japan is about 250%. The UK was about 270% after WW2 and that got paid down to 50% before running up a bit. Not ideal but doesn't have to make anything implode.

The problem is Debt to GDP is largely meaningless. It is the total debt that matters. I am sick of reading this bullshit. You don't know what you are talking about and it is just always repeated as a reason to spend more.

Why is the raw total number the only or most important thing? BS example numbers, but if we have 50x the debt today, that’s not as scary as it sounds if we also have 50x the population and 50x the economic productivity (50x the tax base to pay off the debt). So it is about ratios. Maybe GDP isn’t the right number, but surely the raw number by itself is not very meaningful. (Maybe debt per capita, or debt per company tax dollar)

Inflation helps you increase GDP and keep the economy running, so it’s not surprising they’re mentioned together.

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