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After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

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Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#201

Post by CuriouslyC »

grafmax wrote: post #194
CuriouslyC wrote: post #84

This is where we're headed: https://sibylline.dev/articles/2025-10-12-ai-is-too-big-to-f...

Im not convinced the geopolitical rivalry between US and China is a given. To a large degree it’s been manufactured - Friday’s antics a case in point. The US indeed seems destined to fall behind due to decades of economic mismanagement under neoliberalism while China’s public investment has proved to be the wise choice. Yet this fact wounds the pride of many in the US, particularly its leaders, so it now lashes out i…

I think prior to Trump, Europe could have been mediator to a benevolent China. Now the hawks are ascendant in Beijing. Trump has shown that his ego pushes him to escalate to try and show others who the "big man" is, this will not end well with China, and I'm not sure he's wise enough to accept that.

Do you really prefer brutal serfdom to the AI supremacy scenario? From where I sit, people have mixed (trending positive) feelings about AI, and hard negative feelings about being in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. I'd like to understand your position here more.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#202

Post by jayd16 »

logicchains wrote: post #78
rjh29 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to pay to run those models? They are currently running at a huge loss.

They're not running at a loss. Training runs at a loss, but the models are profitable to serve if you don't need to continuously train new models.

But you do or you're missing current events, right?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#203

Post by pixl97 »

alganet wrote: post #93

One key difference in all of this is that people were not predicting the dotcom bubble, so there was a surplus left after it popped. It was a surprise. This AI bubble already has lots of people with their forks and knifes waiting to capitalize on a myriad of possible surpluses after the burst. There's speculation on top of _the next bubble_ and how it will form, even before this one pops. That is absolutely disgustin…

> of _the next bubble_ and how it will form

This is how humans have worked with pretty much every area of expansion in at least the last 500 years and probably longer. It's especially noticeable now because the amount of excess capital in the world from technological expansion makes it very noticeable and a lot of the limitations we know of in physics have been ran into, so further work gets very expensive.

If you want to stop the bubbles you have to pretty much end capitalism, if which capitalists will fight you about. If AI replaces human thinking and robots human labor that 'solves' the human capital problem but opens up a whole new field of dangerous new ones.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#204

Post by CuriouslyC »

mike_hearn wrote: post #192
CuriouslyC wrote: post #84

This is where we're headed: https://sibylline.dev/articles/2025-10-12-ai-is-too-big-to-f...

Comparing to China is tricky because Chinese investment is almost by default bubbley in the sense of misallocating capital. That's what heavily state-directed economies tend to do and China's still a communist country. Especially they tend to over-invest in industrial capacity. China's massively overbuilt electricity grid and HSR network would be easily identified as a bubble if it were in the west, but when it's sta…

All fair points, and it's hard to know exactly how robust the Chinese system will turn out to be, however I would argue that their bets are paying off overall, so even if there is some capital misallocation, overall their hit rate in important areas has been good, while we've been dumping capital in "Uber for X, AirBnB for X, ..."

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#205

Post by mike_hearn »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #56

> GPUs that have a 1-3 year lifespan In 10 years GPUs will have a lifespan for 5-7 years. The rate of improvement on this front has been slowing down faster then CPU.

There's some telephone game being played here.

The three year number was a surprisingly low figure sourced to some anonymous Google engineer. Most people were assuming at least 5 years and maybe more. BUT, Google then went on record to deny that the three year figure was accurate. They could have just ignored it, so it seems likely that three years is too low.

Now I read 1-3 years? Where did one year come from?

GPU lifespan is I suspect also affected by whether it's used for training or inference. Inference loads can be made very smooth and don't experience the kind of massive power drops and spikes that training can generate.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#206

Post by jiggawatts »

gosub100 wrote: post #158
mikert89 wrote: post #4

I cant believe people still arent grasping the profound implications of computers that can talk and make decisions.

I can't believe I still have to do my own laundry and dishes. Like that's some how way more powerful than the models of a megawatt powered data center and millions of dollars in 3nm silicon can conquer.

… by hand? With water you heated on a wood fire, the ashes of which you turned into potash so you can make your own soap?

Or did you pop your laundry into a machine and your dishes into another one and press a button?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#207

Post by lxgr »

zirror wrote: post #155
ogogmad wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that modern LLMs are a just like crypto/Web3, except in all the ways they're not, so they must be useless. --- Less flippantly, they are excellent for self-studying university-level topics. It's like being able to ask questions to a personal tutor/professor.

But you need to verify everything unless it’s self evident. The number of times CoPilot (Sonnett 4) still hallucinates Browser APIs is astonishing. Imaging trying to learn something that can’t be checked easily, like Egyptian archeology or something.

The trick is to put them in contexts where they can validate their purported solutions and then iterate on them.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#209

Post by mrbungie »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #190
mrbungie wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think I'm being hyperbolic calling out a future of brutal serfdom. Keep in mind we basically have widespread serfdom now; a big chunk of Americans are in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. The only thing keeping it from being official is the lack of debtor's prison. Think about how much worse things will be with 10% inflation, 25% unemployment and the highest income inequality in history. This is fertile…

I'm not proposing and end of history, but things can remain in stable equilibrium for longer than you'd expect (just look at sharks!). If we slide into stable dystopia now, my guess is that there will be a black swan at some point that shakes us out of it and continues evolution, but we could still be in for 50 years of suffering.

> but we could still be in for 50 years of suffering.

I mean if you are talking about USA itself falling into dystopic metastability in such a situation, maybe, but even so I think it misses some nuance. I don't see every other country following USA into oblivion, and also I don't see the USA bending the knee to techno-kings and in the process giving up real influence for some bet on total influence.

The only mechanism I see for reaching complete stability (or at least metastability) in that situation is idiocracy / idiotic authoritarianism, i.e. Trump/his minions actually grabbing power for decades and/or complete corruption of USA institutions.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#210

Post by pizzly »

If there is a downturn in AI use due to a bubble then the countries that have built up their energy infrastructure using renewal energy and nuclear (both have decade long returns after the initial investment) will have cheaper electricity which will lead to a future competitive advantage. Gas powered power plants on the other hand require constant gas to convert to electricity. The price of gas would become the price of electricity regardless and thus very little advantage.
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