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Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

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181–190 of 249 posts

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#181
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to explain, from a systems point of view _why_ the gains must diffuse out as you suggest. We have analogs we can compare to: massive wealth injections through a natural resource such as oil. Now what happens to that wealth is not obvious; for some countries it's a curse with radical inequality and pernicious and robust power structures, in fewer it has been bestowed to the heritage of the people (think Norwa…

> You need to explain, from a systems point of view _why_ the gains must diffuse out as you suggest. Do we? I mean, isn't "because they always have" enough of an argument on its own? I am hardly a libertarian ideologue nor AI-first LLM jockey. But I do think people tend to catastrophize too much. Blacksmiths were killed dead by the industrial revolution. "Secretary" is a forgotten art. It's been decades since an actu…

The 1880s blacksmith didn't become a 1950s American suburbanite. They moved to shared housing in Manchester and a shorter lifespan working for poverty wages, lost fingers/arms in machines, maybe ended up on skid row, the section of town for failures who couldn't 'adapt' to the new modern world. Their children died in WW1 in a trench to industrial produced gas. Their children's children were transported around the world to die storming a beach in WW2. And their children's children's children lived on meager 1940-60 diets as the world rebuilt it's food stocks destroyed by industrialized war, eating new industrial food replacements like margarine and SPAM. There were hundreds of millions of industrial enabled deaths. There was industrial enabled famine and near famine.

That all gets waived away with 'always worked to society's benefit'. It took almost 70 years and the post WW2 destruction of the rest of the worlds economies/infrastructure to create that 1950s American suburbanite world. 'always worked to society's benefit over the long term' is just handwaving not based on the reality of adapting, or if those societies even wanted to join in.

Because not all peoples/nations even had a choice. Japan among many originally opted out. But they were forced to 'modernize'. Peoples around the world were forced into the industrial world by railroads and machine guns and the industrial need for rubber/banana whatever plantations or lumber or strip mines. Once one nation passed through the door, every nation had to follow or be subjugated.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#182
post #17

Why is oracle invested in ai at all? It seems entirely unrelated to the value they offer.

What value does Oracle offer?

AI Data-centers and AI Hardware at cost or cost plus. OpenAI's deal with Oracle is more or less at cost...

OCI's infrastructure design is just good enough to work well enough most of the time, and you can't get cheaper.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#183
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to explain, from a systems point of view _why_ the gains must diffuse out as you suggest. Do we? I mean, isn't "because they always have" enough of an argument on its own? I am hardly a libertarian ideologue nor AI-first LLM jockey. But I do think people tend to catastrophize too much. Blacksmiths were killed dead by the industrial revolution. "Secretary" is a forgotten art. It's been decades since an actu…

This pattern continuing indefinitely without the need for analysis would be certainly nice but we do need to confront recent data. In the US, multiple metrics of quality-of-life peaked around 2015 and have declined since then, with some showing 11% decline while US total wealth has doubled! (with the majority of that decline pre-covid and pre-AI) [0][1][2]. What forces act on this trend? How can we make predictions?…

>This pattern continuing indefinitely without the need for analysis would be certainly nice but we do need to confront recent data. In the US, multiple metrics of quality-of-life peaked around 2015 and have declined since then, with some showing 11% decline while US total wealth has doubled! (with the majority of that decline pre-covid and pre-AI) [0][1][2].

>- [0] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp

It's hard to take that metric seriously when the top city is Raleigh, NC. If that were the best city you'd expect people to vote with their feet and move their in droves.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#184
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on current trends why wouldn’t it be cheap?

Why would an artificial intelligence want to do what you tell it to?

I don’t think AI in its current form and current track wants much of anything.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#185
post #92

I'm pretty bullish on AI but Oracle's massive investments confuse me the most.

LLM are not real "AI", but are good at some types of problems like context search, and isomorphic plagiarism. Regulatory capture to manufacture a monopolistic position is what many are planning. As gambling with other peoples money still has few fiscal consequences (see 2008), but will hurt Americans when the bubble implodes. Note more cheap energy for home users typically means higher standards of living, and the We…

Oracle is building giant datacenters/cloud stuff for AI, not their own LLMs

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - if AGI is made, nearly immediately every knowledge worker’s labor value goes to zero over night. This may or may not include AI researchers.

And probably not much longer after that, the bloodshed

Unless the benefits of AI get communalized (UBI, or some other form of sharing), ya.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#187
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not according to the 30k Oracle employees, or Block, ... Wealth is only increasing for the top 0.1%. Milk (and other commodities) are still more expensive than in 2020. Young people's unemployment rate is way higher

The unemployment rate considers everyone laid off. Not sure what you mean 'not according to them'?

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#188
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Those numbers are fraudulently underreported by the US government. Smart people have sold their US backed holdings. I'm making bank on gold and the international market.

VTI (US equities ETF) was up 16% last year. No idea what you're talking about, but it's not grounded in reality.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#189
post #162

While this article is old, there’s more and more noise that the lay offs is this month. That being said, I can’t help but wonder if the paramount deal accelerated these plans.

A friend was about to start this Monday. Last week Oracle called to rescind their offer

Wow that’s terrible. This is why people don’t give notices anymore. It’s safer to give no notice and start the next job the day of. You burn some bridges but is the safest option.

Re: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

#190
post #138
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of them famous for top heavy bureaucracies meddling in industry and highly political byzantine rules for business, which is the current drumbeat the west is following.

Lumping "the West" as one thing in this argument is just wrong. The West is composed of so many different countries with their own legal systems, cultural baggage, bureaucratic and political processes which evolved differently over time that it makes your sentence meaningless. From my own experience moving from Brazil, having ran businesses there, and later in life moving to "the West" (Sweden) there's simply no comp…

That are exceptions but there is a noticeable trendline. The freedom of business index ranks Scandinavian countries pretty high. Norway, Sweden, and Finland tend to rank highest among Singapore and South Korea. Ireland tops it because it's a giant tax shelter but there's not much notable innovation there. Meanwhile UK, France, Italy, Spain are ranking poorly. The US has been declining there slowly, which is much more obvious when you factor in local/state/housing etc, federally it's long been more permissive but fiscally irresponsible.

My personal indicator is how many young (<50) entrepreneurs are building real stuff vs announcements of ex-bigco executives partnering with the government to jump on a new bandwagon.

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