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Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

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Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#211

Post by pedalpete »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #175
pedalpete wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time is always different, until it isn't. However, it is different from the internet bubble partially for the reason you describe. There have been a few IPOs, but they perhaps happened earlier in the cycle, or companies are pivoting into AI. I'm thinking companies like Palantir, which was always AI, or Salesforce which is making a big AI pivot. Most of the funding is not coming from public sectors. There is so m…

It may be true that OAI et al are raising money in private markets, but does that matter? Ultimately they are still just raising money. Ultimately returns need to show up. You cannot escape that. If you cannot do that nobody will eventually supply the funds to keep operating. The big advantage of staying private is controlling the narrative.

Because the comment was specifically pointing out that this doesn't seem like a bubble because there aren't many IPOs or public pure play AI companies.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#212

Post by amatecha »

ch4s3 wrote: post #82
zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure left behind from the Dotcom boom that laid the path for the current world (the high speed fiber) doesn't translate to computer chips. Are you still using intel chips from 1998? And the chips are such a huge cost, and being backed by debt but they depreciate in value exponentially. It's not the same because so much of the current debt fueled spending is on an asset that has ve…

There are probably a lot of cool and useful things you could do with a bunch of data centers full of GPUs. - better weather forecasts - modeling intermittent generation on the grid to get more solar online - drug discovery - economic modeling - low cost streaming games - simulation of all types

- cloud gaming service? :D

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#213

Post by tbossanova »

pmarreck wrote: post #162
akagusu wrote: post #97

The big question is what "society" he is talking about? Is it the "society" that includes all people, or the "society" that includes only rich people?

I don't understand this argument. Speaking as a kid who grew up middle-class as an 80's teen obsessed with (the then still new) computers, a non-rich person has access to more salient power today than ever in history, and largely for no or low cost. There are free AI's available that can diagnose illnesses for people in remote areas, non-Western nations, etc. and which can translate (and/or summarize) anything to any…

The problem is if the system leads to demotivating people more than motivating them on average, which risks a negative feedback loop where people demotivate each other further and so on

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#214

Post by tbossanova »

rafaelero wrote: post #158
uncomputation wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are billions of people doing on Facebook if it's harmful? I don't know. This is extremely naive and akin to asking "why do people drink if it’s bad for you then??" Popular != healthy

Tbh, it's not clear that if we all stopped drinking the world would be better.

Oh it definitely would

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#215

Post by grafmax »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
bko wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT currently has ~ 120 to 190 million daily active users ~ 800 million weekly active users ~ 450 million to over 800 million depending on the data source and methodology. Get a grip. Hundreds of millions of people are using it, most of them for free. I would say "society" has benefited. This has to be peak HN. Create the fastest growing consumer product in history. HN anon: yes, but who will benefit?

Facebook has more. Was it a benefit? Does the benefit outweigh the harms?

Facebook and many of these other VC companies have worked by building a moat through network effects by burning money to build something free and awesome. Then once you HAVE the network effect then it becomes hard to leave. Your history is on there, people know you through it, your friends and family are there; are you really going to leave? That’s when Facebook starts turning the screws. Ads. Manipulative algorithms. Polarizating recommendation algorithms. Social isolation. Making deals with dictatorships. Censorship of the worst crimes humanity can commit against itself (genocide).

Why? They are making money through all of it. It’s called rent extraction. You OWN something valuable. You no longer have to produce something of value. You can just charge people money for what you own. Rent. It’s various forms of rent. Sucking out money and souls into it. One of countless ways we’re leeched on by these companies and their billionaire owners.

Do the benefits outweigh the harms? Facebook and the VC playbook is boiling a frog and we are the frog.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#216

Post by blackoil »

yeasku wrote: post #70
arisAlexis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is AI hard to understand when you enter a cafe and everyone is chatting with their LLM?

Chat rooms webs were sold by millions in the dotcom era. And everybody used them. Nowdays everybody see them as useless.

They evolved into Instagram(8 billion), WhatsApp(20 billion) and FB(trillion)

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#217

Post by majormajor »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #186
irjustin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment - Startrek replicators are real. This basically means almost everything can be built without human involvement. The guy who owns the replicators is the richest. The wealth gap is so massive you get revolts (because we're educated, not serfs, right?) So then government needs to step in. Either tax->ubi?, socialize it, or make it a state asset? Regardless, that's the goal of AGI/robotics/etc.

If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. My gut says that _somehow_ the middle class will get screwed as always, but I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. Maybe because the very few that control the replicators will be able to cut people they don’t…

What does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency?

People would still want to be able to trade with lower friction than lugging batteries around, so don't you just re-invent money on top of it? orrrrrr just keep having the current money around the whole time?

--

The general limiting factor with the "one person controls the replicators, only they have income" idea is that they would rapidly lose that income because nobody else would have anything to trade them anymore. (If you toss in the AI/robotic dream scenario, they don't even need humans to manage the raw material.) But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off, or Star Trek utopia?

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#218

Post by majormajor »

lemonlearnings wrote: post #199
rogerrogerr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but why would we die on the vine? Wouldn’t we just… make a parallel economy without the AGI? The world works today without AGI.

Parallel economies are banned. Try making a new currency in the US.

Did we just ignore the last fifteen years of crypto?

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#219

Post by majormajor »

amscanne wrote: post #147
Retric wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the average person actually better off after the late 90’s internet is probably a harder question than it might seem. The long tail may be closer to what I want, but the quality is also generally lower. YouTube just doesn’t support a team of talented writers, Amazon is mostly filled with junk, etc. Social media and gig work is a mixed bag. Junk e-mail etc may not be a big deal, but those kinds of downsides do erod…

Are you being objective or just romanticizing the past? Just to use your example: YouTube is filled with talented writers and storytellers, who would have never been able to share their content in the past. *And* the traditional media complex is richer than ever. I don’t think average quality matters. Just what you want to consume. If anything, I’d be more open to the opposite argument. Media is so much richer and mo…

Does the answer to "is the average person better off" have a lot to do with "how many TV shows are out there"...

or does it have to do with:

- how often their boss bugs them after hours

- how much their boss uses technology to keep an eye on them, their friends, their political views

- how often random strangers might get mad at them and SWAT them, make false claims to their employers, etc

- how often their neighbors are radicalized into shooting up a school

- how hard they find it to talk to a real person to resolve an issue with a company or government service vs being stuck on hold because of downsizing real support staff relative to population size, or with an ai chatbot?

etc?

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#220

Post by AngryData »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #194
ok_dad wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a few billionaires pay big bucks to keep AGI to themselves and let the rest of us die on the vine.

Okay, but why would we die on the vine? Wouldn’t we just… make a parallel economy without the AGI? The world works today without AGI.

Or use any of the wonders of military technology invented in the last 200 years to take back society. These fuckers have lived in prosperity for so long that they don't even think it is possible. But so many people throughout history thought they were untouchable until the masses decided they had enough of their shit. Kings with professional armies, full plate knights, men with cannons, mens with guns, machine guns, bombs, planes, tanks, helicopters, and yet at the end of the day when enough random people are pissed off enough the mass of people with nothing to lose are the ones who "win" in the end with the powerful dead or hiding.
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