Am I missing something here? What AI products will actually give you $+100T investment returns or whatever investors dream about?
none. especially since once AGI is created the economy as we now it ceases to exist
Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
171–180 of 256 posts
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#172I think it's unfortunate that the term "capitalism" has been captured by the left to mean the bad kind of capitalism, where regulation is only used as a moat for the established players. Capitalism as a whole is the least bad economic system for prosperity, but the least bad version of capitalism is something like the Nordic model, with good taxation and redistribution policies and consumer protections. But the term…
But the term itself was created and captured by the left from the beginning; Proudhon first used it; Marx popularized it; so in the history of terminologies it always had the meaning that we associate with it.
I like the term "market economy" or "commercial society" more, because it does capture more of what's happening on the market and the society.
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
It relates to it because you chose an example specific to US government which we all know is not a good example.
How do you know it’s not applicable elsewhere? e.g. Plenty of countries have huge bills that no one fully reads and huge numbers of regulations.
There will always be something to complain.
People are also sick and tired of rules in the AppStore. Or the fact that when their Apple/Google/whatever account is unilaterally blocked they have no recourse. At least with a government there are some checks and balances.
Yes, some governments are more trustworthy than others. Doesn't mean the concept is bad.
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#174Also, the people being hired now for insane sums of money, are being hired because they have deep knowledge in design / implementation of AI models and infrastructure that scale to billions of users. In order to operate on a scale like that, you obviously need to have worked somewhere that has that magnitude of users. That makes the pool of candidates quite small. It’s like building a spaceship. Do you hire the peopl…
With all these mega-offers going out, I object when people saying that they’re paying for “talent”. These AI folks are good, but not orders of magnitude better than engineers and researchers already working in tech or academia. Lots of folks are capable of building an AI system, the reason they haven’t is that they haven’t been in a situation where they have the time/money/freedom to do it. These mega offers aren’t a…
As one of the many people who are fairly experienced in AI (but at small startups) and hasn't had Zuck personally knock on my door, I have had a few moments of "wait, 9 figure salary? Can I at least get 7 figures?"
But the truth is it's not "just" about experience. Most of these people have been pushing the limits of their fields for their entire careers. It's not like having "the time/money/freedom" to do it is randomly distributed even among talented, smart people. The people in this talent pool where all likely aggressive researchers in a very specialized field, then likely fought hard to get on elite teams working close to the metal on these massive scale inference problems, and they continued to follow this path until they got where they are.
And the truth is, if you're at least "good" in this space, you do get your piece of the pie at the appropriate scale. I'm still making regular dev income, but my last round of job searching (just a few months ago) was insane. I had to quit my job early because I couldn't manage the all the teams I was talking to. I've been through some hot tech markets over my career, but never anything like this. Meanwhile many of my non-AI peers are really struggling to find new roles.
So there's no reason to cast shade on the genuine talent of these people (though I think we all feel that frustration from time to time).
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#175“The AI capital influx means that mega-projects no longer seem outlandishly expensive. This is good for the world!” Is it? This whole piece just reads of mega funds and giga corps throwing ridiculous cash for pay to win. Nothing new there. We can’t train more people? I didn’t know Universities were suddenly producing waaaay less talent and that intelligence fell off a cliff. Things have gone parabolic! It’s giga mega…
If AI is important, speeding up development of it is good. > We can’t train more people? Of course people are being trained at Universities. Outside of The Matrix, it takes a few years for that to complete.
Speed of development of something important isn't necessarily good. Humans are bad at absorbing a lot of change at once and it takes time to recognize and mitigate second-order effects. There's plenty of benefit to the systems that disruptors operate within (society) to not moving as fast as possible... of course since our economic systems don't factor in externalities, we've instead turned all of society into a commons.
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#176“The AI capital influx means that mega-projects no longer seem outlandishly expensive. This is good for the world!” Is it? This whole piece just reads of mega funds and giga corps throwing ridiculous cash for pay to win. Nothing new there. We can’t train more people? I didn’t know Universities were suddenly producing waaaay less talent and that intelligence fell off a cliff. Things have gone parabolic! It’s giga mega…
> This is just M2 expansion and wealth concentration. I just want to point that there's no scientific law that says those two must move together. A government very often needs to print money, and it's important to keep in mind that there's no physical requirement that this money immediately must go to rich people. A government can decide to send it to poor people exactly just as easily as to rich. All the laws forbid…
All true of course, with a clarification: even if all the newly printed money is put in the hands of the poor, the resultant inflation raises the prices of hard assets which are overwhelmingly held by the rich (fueling wealth inequality)
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#177Am I missing something here? What AI products will actually give you $+100T investment returns or whatever investors dream about?
none. especially since once AGI is created the economy as we now it ceases to exist
But the way we measure money is by what it can buy (the basket of goods). Surely we'll still need food and clothing even after AGI, so can still measure wealth by number of burritos (1 burrito = $12 in 2025 USD)
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
however they do result in flows of capitals feeding into otherwise unfundable enterprise like R&D; science and engineering, or culture; writing, music, art. Where's the ROI if you invest millions into R&D and your competitor invests $0 and can then just reproduce your works with their logo ontop of yours? To sack off IP and copyright would significantly narrow innovation and result in many artists, scientists and eng…
We can get rid of copyright, patents, trademarks and only have a new right called branding - it allows you to name the thing you invented/created. In the new world that's incentive for enough people to create. Let knowledge rein free.. bellowing through the lands.
CC BY license for all?
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should we accept assets can be owned? Your life is a meaningless speck of time in eternity.
I suppose because we're wired this way. Can't think of any group or society that didn't have some notion of private property that wasn't just a huge (and brief) humanitarian tragedy.
Yes, private property enables human civilization, all the good and the bad. Before the agricultural revolution led to protected and exploited stores of grain, we were far smaller tribes of hunters and gatherers with far less technology
Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars
#180“The AI capital influx means that mega-projects no longer seem outlandishly expensive. This is good for the world!” Is it? This whole piece just reads of mega funds and giga corps throwing ridiculous cash for pay to win. Nothing new there. We can’t train more people? I didn’t know Universities were suddenly producing waaaay less talent and that intelligence fell off a cliff. Things have gone parabolic! It’s giga mega…
What does M2 expansion mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
I.e. "printing money"