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Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
151–160 of 668 posts
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the average person actually better off after the late 90’s internet is probably a harder question than it might seem. The long tail may be closer to what I want, but the quality is also generally lower. YouTube just doesn’t support a team of talented writers, Amazon is mostly filled with junk, etc. Social media and gig work is a mixed bag. Junk e-mail etc may not be a big deal, but those kinds of downsides do erod…
Undeniably better off in every single way. Minimum is that the price of long distance phone calls is now zero, let alone video calls. Being able to speak to family and see them nonstop is incredible.
And yet, when we are with family and friends, we’re on the damn phone!
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you being objective or just romanticizing the past? Just to use your example: YouTube is filled with talented writers and storytellers, who would have never been able to share their content in the past. *And* the traditional media complex is richer than ever. I don’t think average quality matters. Just what you want to consume. If anything, I’d be more open to the opposite argument. Media is so much richer and mo…
Media is rich but not in proportion of the thousands of new creators doing very well. An extreme example is playboy vs only fans creators
show business and things like it are famously pyramidal in shape. there are decades' worth of people who couldn't make it in previous generations in Los Angeles and New York.
i think what is relatively new is the unaffordability crisis making it so doing such pursuits and not being that successful is no longer a way to make a living on its own.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…
And a lot of the gains from the Dotcom boom are being paid back in negative value for the average person at this point. We have automated systems that waste our time when we need support, product features that should have a one-time-cost being turned into subscriptions, a complete usurping of the ability to distribute software or build compatible replacements, etc.. The Dotcom boom was probably good for everyone in s…
If you're ever been to a third world country then you'd see how this is completely untrue. The dotcom boom has revolutionized the way of life for people in countries like India.
Even for the average person in America, the ability to do so many activities online that would have taken hours otherwise (eg. shopping, research, DMV/government activities, etc). The fact that we see negative consequences of this like social network polarization or brainrot doesn't negate the positives that have been brought about.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#155I see that my Echos want me to enable the new Alexa. I confess a great deal of trepidation on these. Fairly confident that this is not going to go smoothly.
And again I'm baffled on how they would light such good will and functionality on fire.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#156Until costs of utilities, food, medical, insurance are dropped by technology, there are no societal gains, just loss of human jobs.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#157Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Facebook is a benefit. Among other things, it gave me React which much of the modern web is built on, and React Native, PyTorch, GraphQL, Cassandra, Presto, and RocksDB just to name a few. The question is, what are billions of people doing on Facebook if it's harmful? I don't know. My daycare sends me updates, my barbershop tells me when they're closing and I used it to sell my fridge. This hole Facebook irratio…
> what are billions of people doing on Facebook if it's harmful? I don't know. This is extremely naive and akin to asking "why do people drink if it’s bad for you then??" Popular != healthy
Tbh, it's not clear that if we all stopped drinking the world would be better.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#159The big question is what "society" he is talking about? Is it the "society" that includes all people, or the "society" that includes only rich people?
ChatGPT currently has ~ 120 to 190 million daily active users ~ 800 million weekly active users ~ 450 million to over 800 million depending on the data source and methodology. Get a grip. Hundreds of millions of people are using it, most of them for free. I would say "society" has benefited. This has to be peak HN. Create the fastest growing consumer product in history. HN anon: yes, but who will benefit?
It’s fast because there already gobs of people on the internet because of all the other products that came before. Facebook didn’t grow as fast because there weren’t as many people on line then. Gmail didn’t grow as fast because there weren’t as many people online then.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true for the GPUs themselves, but the data centers with their electricity infrastructure and cooling and suchlike won't become obsolete nearly as quickly.
This is true. It’s probably 2-3 times as long as a GPU chip. But it’s still probably half or a quarter of the depreciation timeline of a carrier fiber line.
Even if the building itself is condemnable, what it took to build it out is still valuable.
To give a different example, right now, some of the most prized sites for renewable energy are former coal plant sites, because they already have big fat transmission lines ready to go. Yesterday's industrial parks are now today's gentrifying urban districts, and so on.