Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 753 posts

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#211

Post by nxm »

shawn_w wrote: post #157
ryandrake wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people romanticize 1950-style manufacturing jobs so much, like they are some kind of objectively ideal job. These jobs really weren't great. Bunch of dudes standing at an assembly line all day physically busting their asses and sweating it out. Sometimes in a physically hazardous environment. Sometimes breathing stinky and/or harmful chemicals. Sometimes surrounded by ear-damaging loud noises. Someti…

Back then a couple could buy a house and raise a few kids on the paycheck that factory job of the husband's earned. These days even someone with a 6 figure tech job has trouble with that goal, but I think a lot of people think they can go back to the good old days.

Back then before manufacturing jobs were sent overseas

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#212

Post by nxm »

profsummergig wrote: post #152
fair_enough wrote: post #84

Just a friendly reminder: The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. Of course he doesn't want people to think that tariffs can bring back middle class manufacturing jobs, and naturally he would want to publish propaganda intended to demoralize pro-labor causes like import tariffs and worker protection laws. I'm not saying he's wrong just yet, I'm just pointing out that he owns a propaganda mouthpiece and is willing…

It's intriguing to me how people assumed that Bezos would never interfere with WaPo and then he did. "We superior Westerners with our moral billionaires would never... Hey! What're you doing!"

When the ship is sinking the captain has to intervene

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#213

Post by nxm »

bluGill wrote: post #97
vkou wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is great for ordinary Americans. If that's true, why isn't unrestricted immigration[1] good for them? It means that the citizens don't have to do the boring immigrant jobs, but still get the benefits for vast amounts of immigrant-produced goods and services. The only ones who will lose out are ones who 'want to'[2] do the boring immigrant jobs. AI can't just handwave all this shit away because 'technology good…

Unrestricted immigration is good - they just want a 'boogyman' to blame unrelated problems on.

Sarcasm much I hope

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#214

Post by wmwmwm »

alsetmusic wrote: post #189
EdwardDiego wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think you understand how primitive American society is compared to Asia. Lol, Asia is a big and diverse place. Are you really claiming that American society is more primitive than that of farmers in the arse end of Gansu? Hint, one of those areas is more likely to have flush toilets.

Access to contemporary luxury does not a genius make. There was that bit in the film, "Goodwill Hunting," about an Indian man who found a math book and went on to define groundbreaking math from what he extrapolated. I don't know the details, but I don't think the film made that up.

I’m guessing Ramanujan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#215

Post by YetAnotherNick »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #186
atleastoptimal wrote: post #178

Whoever gets AGI first owns the future though, any GDP put into manufacturing not essential to that goal is a geopolitical opportunity cost

Why is that the case? If a company gets to AGI a month later, why does that matter so much? We’re not talking super intelligence here, just human level intelligence. OpenAI was first to ChatGPT yet other companies are still in the game.

The argument is something like AGI or its owner wouldn't want other AGIs to exist. So it would destroy the capabilities of other AGI before it could evolve(by things like hacking, manipulation etc.).

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#216

Post by nvader »

DannyBee wrote: post #203
nvader wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing with your overall conclusion. However, the hardware situation you described sounds very brittle to me. If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation. Unless that was your overall point, that capacity in hardware manufacturing has rotted away to the point where things are hanging on by a thread.

"If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation." This is the opposite of brittle. You say this as if those things are desired here. Those things would be a net negative to a well known production process for complex parts. After years, that process has been refined to basically the limits of the machines and the physi…

This is fascinating. I really don't know much about the world you're describing, so thank you for sharing your perspective.

Don't customer needs change over time? How would one adapt to shifting demand, or new materials becoming available, or old materials going out of supply.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#217

Post by deadfoxygrandpa »

bluGill wrote: post #81
jimt1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like Milton from Office Space: I was told there would be a manufacturing boom.

There might have been. Labor in manufacturing is way down - a trend going back to the 1950s. However manufacturing in the US has been booming all along. What used to take 2000 people in manufacturing now takes less than 200.

thats not true. in most manufacturing industries we produce fewer units than we did 20 or 30 years ago, and in most of those industries the total value produced has been pretty flat. this is something a lot of economists have known about all along. you can read about it here:

https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/10/03/how-gdp-hides-indust...

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#218

Post by niek_pas »

mNovak wrote: post #26

The article is implying throughout that these two things are mutually exclusive, and while that makes some intuitive sense (only so much money to invest after all), the last chart [1] doesn't give any indication that data center investment comes at the expense of industrial investment. [1] "Private sector spending on equipment, adjusted for inflation"

I'll admit I have not read this article incredibly thoroughly, but I don't see what you're claiming. The article is contrasting the growth of the AI industry with the slump in manufacturing. I don't think it's positing any causal link between the two.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#219

Post by thundoe »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #193
rhubarbtree wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the case? If a company gets to AGI a month later, why does that matter so much? We’re not talking super intelligence here, just human level intelligence. OpenAI was first to ChatGPT yet other companies are still in the game.

My argument is based on 1. The first company to get AGI will likely have a multitude of high-leverage problems it would immediately put AGI to task on 2. One of those problems is simply improving itself. Another is securing that company's lead over its competitors (by basically helping every employee at that company do better at their job) 3. The company that reaches AGI for a language-style model will likely do so d…

Unless AGI includes a speed requirement, AGI is not sufficient to win the market. Take any genius in human history, the impact they had has been hugely limited by their lifespan, they didn’t solve every problem, and each discovery took them decades. The first AGIs will be the same, hyper slow for a while, giving competitors a chance to copy and stay in the race

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#220

Post by bob1029 »

nvader wrote: post #180
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

I'm not arguing with your overall conclusion. However, the hardware situation you described sounds very brittle to me. If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation. Unless that was your overall point, that capacity in hardware manufacturing has rotted away to the point where things are hanging on by a thread.

> If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic

Isn't the entire point of a machine shop to be these things?

> capacity in hardware manufacturing has rotted away to the point where things are hanging on by a thread.

You cannot make a profit on a manufacturing line that is not being utilized. Keeping spare tools around and functional just in case is very expensive insurance policy.

Semiconductor manufacturing follows these rules as aggressively as possible. The entire line is built based on the speed of the highest cost tools. There are cases where having redundant tooling would definitely prevent some scrap events, but the premium on this options contract is never worth it on average.

Post reply on HN