Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars • Hacker News Board

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#201

Post by SJC_Hacker » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:03 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #182

bix6 wrote: post #11

“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…

Fwiw universities are producing less talent. They have been getting hammered with budget shortfalls thanks to Trump cutting research funding and this manifests into programs accepting fewer students and professors being able to fund fewer students.

They are producing less talent as industry defines it. It is because a large percentage of the people who could teach them anything useful (to industry) are actually employed by industry, and don't want to work in academia.

Another complication is academia simply does not have the resources to remotely compete with the likes of Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, etc.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#202

Post by hellojesus » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #179

TeMPOraL wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Those smaller tribes were continuously at war over resources... It's exactly the behavior we observe in nature whenever resource scarcity presents.

A world without private property leads to a world of pure lawlessness. Sure... We could do that, but it would quickly devolve into forever warfare where only might wins, and even that for only fleetingly small timeslices.

History's progression has proven that exploited workers still prefer to exist in that system vs one of continual peril.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#203

Post by SJC_Hacker » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #110

Must be nice to be able to ride such a wave and take your share. The money investors are throwing around these days is just insane. I remember it was considered a lot of money when Webvan got 400 million as investment during the .COM bubble. These days this seems nothing.

The big irony with Webvan was they were right, they were just about 15 years too early.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#204

Post by ploxiln » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:09 PM UTC

bix6 wrote: post #11

“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…

> mega funds and giga corps throwing ridiculous cash for pay to win

> This is just M2 expansion and wealth concentration

I actually think "throwing ridiculous cash" _reduces_ the wealth concentration, particularly if a chunk of it is developer talent bidding war. This is money that had been concentrated, being distributed. These over-paid developers pay for goods or services from other people (and pay income taxes!). Money spent on datacenters also ends up paying people building and maintaining the data-centers, people working in the chip and server component factories, people developing those chips, etc etc. Perhaps a big chunk ends up with Jensen Huang and investors in NVidia, but still, much is spent on the rest of the economy along the way.

I don't feel bad about rich companies and people blowing their money on expensive stuff, that distributing the wealth. Be more worried of wealthy companies/people who are very efficient with their spending ...

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#205

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:10 PM UTC

Konnstann wrote: post #191

nradov wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird comment, so disconnected from reality. Norway is fully capitalist with income inequality similar to the USA. China, despite being nominally run by communists, is actually a fascist dictatorship. And "Ubuntu" isn't a real thing: South Africa is a failed state run by kleptocrats who can't even keep the lights on.

The income inequality in Norway is roughly half that of the US, and the quality of life of the bottom income bracket is much higher there, due to social policies. Why lie about things that can easily be looked up?

The Gini coefficient is similar so I have no idea where you're getting the idea that income equality in Norway is "half" that of the US. And the US has consistently had a positive net migration rate with Norway so regardless of your nonsense claims about quality of life people seem to be voting with their feet.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#206

Post by hellojesus » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #133

hellojesus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is bad like inheritance is bad. How is inheritance bad? Imo, estate taxes are more immoral. Why should the state be allowed a cut of my private assets? Gift taxes are also immoral. Why should I have to pay taxes for giving away assets?

Why should we accept assets can be owned? Your life is a meaningless speck of time in eternity.

My life, yes, but my genetic lifeline exists up to and including eternity if luck and good decision making are on the side of my generations of offspring.

Let's consider the most basic form of ownership: that over one's body. By your logic, my life is a spec on the eternal timeline, so why make it a crime to harm or murder my physically?

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#207

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

bix6 wrote: post #193

nradov wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People said the same thing about the printing press. When you look across human history it's tough to make a moral case that slowing down technology development was ever a net positive. We can't reliably predict or prevent the problems anyway and it's pointless to even try. Just move forward and deal with the actual problems (which are usually different from the expected problems) as they arise.

Slowing oil would've been a net positive given how unsustainable it is and all the negative externalities it forces onto society.

Nah. The alternative to oil was coal, or firewood, or freezing in the dark. The shift to intensive oil use enabled an enormous increase in human standards of living. If anything we should have accelerated it. The externalities have been minimal in comparison.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#208

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

hellojesus wrote: post #128

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking a nuanced view of fundamental thing and completely missing the point. Copyright is bad like inheritance is bad. Arguing about good and bad industrialists is missing the point.

> Copyright is bad like inheritance is bad. How is inheritance bad? Imo, estate taxes are more immoral. Why should the state be allowed a cut of my private assets? Gift taxes are also immoral. Why should I have to pay taxes for giving away assets?

To me the giver paying taxes is wrong mindset. Maybe they should be collecting them. But paying taxes on earned money seems reasonable and has long history. It can be earned from work, or inheritance or gift. Actually maybe paying income tax on inheritance would be best.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#209

Post by eastbound » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #107

blitzar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM" The icing on the cake is when all their competitors say "so will we".

The numbers are insane to me, relative to other "real" industries. E.g., making some inferences from a recent Economist article, the entire world's nuclear industry "only" generates something like $30bn/year revenue ( https://archive.is/WYfIG ).

If each French inhabitant consumes 500€ electricity per year and 73% is nuclear, that already makes 24bn€, $28bn.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#210

Post by TrackerFF » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

tagami wrote: post #149

How much do top professional athletes make? Soto, Ohtani, Mbappé, Messe… Multi-year contracts north of $500m. Perhaps this is the direction we’re headed in.. there will be many that won’t make it to the majors.

If it is anything like professional sports, then the leading companies should start hiring talent as early as possible. Might as well offer $1m to any and all fresh grads and researchers, before competitors can bag them.