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Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

blog.johnluttig.com

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Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#231

Post by BurningFrog »

nradov wrote: post #184
SquirrelOnFire wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed of development of something important isn't necessarily good. Humans are bad at absorbing a lot of change at once and it takes time to recognize and mitigate second-order effects. There's plenty of benefit to the systems that disruptors operate within (society) to not moving as fast as possible... of course since our economic systems don't factor in externalities, we've instead turned all of society into a comm…

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.

The printing press was a main reason behind the reformation and the extremely bloody Thirty Year War. Because now people could read bibles themselves.

On balance I'm sure that was very useful progress, but millions of people also died in the resulting wars.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#232

Post by muzani »

harimau777 wrote: post #83
muzani wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say if there is a decline in society, the normies are wrong. And if there's steady improvement in quality of life, then the normie zeitgeist is correct. But there's always a delay in these things, at least a generation.

I don't think that applies when the normies lack power; which is precisely the problem with wealth concentration. That would be like blaming the serfs for the failures of feudalist governments.

There's a reason we don't have feudalist governments. It's a "solved" problem.

The normies may have much less power, but it's never zero. Wealth isn't the only form of power. There's law/politics and there's military power. Whenever a group oversteps, you get the Magna Carta, you get secularism, you get civil wars and your Second Amendment. This is why the French Revolution and The Civil War(s) are in the textbooks.

When Venezuela's economy collapsed, a South American friend said that they deserved it. Every other South American country fought corruption and died for independence.

We never want violence, but it is there as an option. Laws and economic policies are there to make sure the violence is never the best option. Non-democratic capitalism doesn't work because it puts the law and the wealth in the hands of a few and leaves force as the only option. The world didn't suddenly convert into communism because Marx and Lenin were handsome demon lords; they converted because capitalism pushed them into a corner.

When you have this decline, it's because a society had weak and corrupt lawyers, statesmen, and economists. These may not be your normies, but they're pretty close to the middle class.

But you don't get to praise capitalism for the cheap air conditioning and then criticize it when low costs push production overseas. You can't negotiate for the high salaries then blame greedy CEOs when you get replaced by someone cheaper. You don't get to charge "as high as possible" and then wonder why your doctor is charging your life savings to save your life. The normies built a culture around winning and lopsided power, then are shocked when power is used against them.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#233

Post by smohare »

adventured wrote: post #161
emsign wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about LLMs because it's the trillions being sunk into this bubble instead of more important issues like climate crisis and a pressing need to address the transformation of the energy sector or tackling the wealth inequality gap. These are all causing real world osues that are much bigger than beating (or rather faking to beat) some LLM benchmarks to impress investor.

What bubble? If anything it's 10x too small for the value it'll provide over the next century. The same exact premise was proclaimed about the Internet circa 1999-2003 (boom and bust). Then the entire global economy and nearly all electronic communication was rebuilt on top of the Internet. For the coming century AI is more important than the Internet.

[dead]

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#234

Post by bmitc »

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…

I agree with your sentiment.

> This is just M2 expansion

What is "M2 expansion"?

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#235

Post by pyuser583 »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #139
TeMPOraL wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about compound interest? After all, inheritance is merely letting wealth continue to compound across generations. But at first glance, the same arguments against inheritance would apply against letting a single person earn interest.

Inheritance is about coming into the world unequal.

So is citizenship. Should we do away with that as well?

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#236

Post by tomhow »

systemvoltage wrote: post #30
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…

[flagged]

> simply because opposite of this is the prevailing normie zeitgeist

We'd love to be able to have reasoned discussions about economics and the pros and cons of wealth concentration vs redistribution here. But this is not the way to do it, and the comment led to an entirely predictable flamewar. Please don't do this on HN, and please make an effort to observe the guidelines, as you've been asked to do before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#237

Post by aspenmayer »

walterbell wrote: post #103
aspenmayer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers of the world unite?

Neo-monks at cognitive gyms.

> Neo-monks at cognitive gyms, https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-class-of-2026

What in the white supremacy? Not on my HN.

Flagged, emailed to mods, named and shamed on my bio.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#238

Post by torginus »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #229
torginus wrote: post #98

Isn't this just shitty capitalism fighting shitty capitalism? If I hire a bunch of super smart AI researchers out of college for a (to them) princely sum of $1M each, then I could go to a VC and have them invest $40m for and 1% stake. Then since these people are smart and motivated, they build something nice, and are first to market with it. If Google wants to catch up, they could either buy the company for $4B, or h…

VCs aren't going to give $40m to a startup for a 1% stake

My numbers might not be accurate but the point stands, there's 'salary' kind of money, and 'startup valuation' money.

Hiring away key researchers costs tens to hundreds of millions of dollars (an eye-watering never before seen amount of money before AI), but buying the startup costs billions.

Then again, I'm merely a pundit when it comes to this, there's money (the cash Apple has locked in its vaults), and 'money' (Google executes a merger with a stock swap arrangement, essentially costing them nothing, and the stock jumps 5% at the announcement, even making them money)

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#239

Post by nradov »

bix6 wrote: post #225
nradov wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Killing the earth is minimal? I said slow not prevent. Tech accelerationists think tech fixes everything when it really just lets them abuse everyone for decades before regulations catch up, if they ever do.

Calm down, no one is killing the Earth. Slowing the adoption of oil would have condemned millions of people to misery and poverty. Speed it up.

Re: Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

#240

Post by nradov »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #185
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.

I don’t really disagree with you. I think there really is no stopping progress. For better or worse, it’s happening and there ain’t no slowing down. But, I wish people would shut up about the printing press in these discussions already. AI disrupting literally everyone’s job at the same time is not the same as a printing technology disrupting the very niche profession of scribe. Or electric lamps putting some lamp li…

Everyone? I think HN users sometimes forget that the world isn't just software. There is no immediate prospect of AI disrupting much blue-collar work. We're going to need huge upgrades to the electrical grid and someone has to install all the new transmission lines. I doubt that we'll see a robot that can do the work in our lifetimes.
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