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Startups brag they spend more money on AI than human employees

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Re: Startups brag they spend more money on AI than human employees

#21

The argument that AI guys are making about the coming mass unemployment goes like this: those companies that are spending on AI rather than humans may have a huge competitive advantage that allows them to take marketshare from human run companies and thus there's less and less demand for human labor. But, how many businesses/sectors of the economy actually need to compete for marketshare? we assume it's nearly all of…

Without human labor, there’s no human economics. Without human economics, there is no market. So jokes on them.

But there are materials and power, something which is more fundamental than the market.

Re: Startups brag they spend more money on AI than human employees

#25
As someone who was deeply immersed in the crypto / NFT twitter scene in 2021 (yes I was an idiot, moving on…) it bears an uncanny resemblance to the current behavior of AI CEOs and speculators.

You kind of had to be there to understand. When you’re immersed in that stuff, the rational part of your brain takes a backseat, and the primitive social / visual parts start to run the show. You start to develop incredibly warped perceptions of value entirely driven by the predominant narrative and most importantly, price action. When you see prices go parabolic, you start to interpret that as confirmation of the narrative. This generates a positive feedback loop that can lead to unbelievable and insane valuations. And by extension equally insane narratives.

What makes it even more uncanny is that a lot of the same actors (tech CEOs, VCs) are involved in this. Make no mistake - they understand how to leverage mania to their advantage. They go on long soliloquies about how game changing this or that asset is, and how anyone not buying in NOW is “NGMI” (not gonna make it).

This will not end well. I’ll never forget the incredibly insane financial decisions I made - it really felt like being under the influence of a drug.

Re: Startups brag they spend more money on AI than human employees

#26

"Spending more on AI than humans" tells you nothing about whether it works. Cost per-output is the metric and by that I've watched startups do worse than last year, just more expensively. Feels like investor signal: "we're AI-forward, mark us up next round"

I’m so far removed from how that stuff works that it often sounds insane to me. Maybe someone who knows can explain it.

Do the people with money not actually care about making more money? Aren’t they first and foremost concerned with your chances of financial success?

These people can’t possibly be thinking, “Well they say they spent an absolute shit ton on inference… they’re definitely going to be big winners!” and cutting massive checks, right?

Re: Startups brag they spend more money on AI than human employees

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without human labor, there’s no human economics. Without human economics, there is no market. So jokes on them.

But there are materials and power, something which is more fundamental than the market.

who's going to get the materials? Robots?
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