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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

#261

Post by zo1 »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #187
moralestapia wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you're not one of them.

Sure, but who do they sell stuff to if no one has a job? We’re on the brink of some _very_ unexplored branches of human behavior.

We're nearly-there. The humans then become the capital/resource to be acquired, not money.

That's why every country is somehow chasing that elusive "population growth". It creates more "things" to own, whether that be money by virtue of more people creating more money through economic activity or simply more people to claim as "yours" (for the elites/leaders).

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

#262

Post by aborsy »

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…

You could afford a house in 90s, with a 9-5 job. Today, you would see housing crisis in major metros.

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

#263

Post by squigz »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #229
rogerrogerr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. It has nothing to do with how cheap the goods are The problem is that at some point people won't be able to afford literally anything because all, and I mean literally all, of the wealth will be hyper concentrated in a super small percentage of the population

Do you have anything to support this hypothesis?

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

#264

Post by jrflowers »

NedF wrote: post #102
Waterluvian wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video game crash followed by video games taking off and eclipsing most other forms of digital entertainment. Dot com crash followed by the web getting pretty popular and a bit central to business. To all those betting big on AI before the crash: Careful, Icarus.

> Careful, Icarus. What does that even mean? pets.com was a fat loser only telling telling people that were going to fly. Amazon was Icarus, they did something. Vs weak commentators going on about the wax melting from their parents root cellar while Icarus was soaring. Most of Y Combinator are not using AI they just say that and you're worried about the people who do things?

> commentators going on about the wax melting from their parents root cellar while Icarus was soaring.

Icarus drowned in the sea.

Even if you want to put the world into only two lumps of cellar dwellers and Icaruses it is still a group of living people on one side and a floating/semi-submerged pile of dead bodies that are literally only remembered for how stupid their deaths were on the other.

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

#265

Post by delusional »

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…

> Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship

You're taking the wrong lesson from that observation. Models that people actually use are just as censored now as they ever were. What changed was the the hysterical anti-censorship babies realized that it's not that big of a problem, at least acutely.

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

#266

Post by delusional »

Buttons840 wrote: post #198
rogerrogerr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but who do they sell stuff to if no one has a job? We’re on the brink of some _very_ unexplored branches of human behavior.

That's the key. The poor are useful to business so long as they are a source of money and power. What happens if the time comes that the poor have nothing the rich want?

The poor will always have the only thing the rich want. Labor. Without labor Trump cannot slather the white house in gold. Without labor Zuck cannot smoke meats. Without labor Musk cannot troll people on X.

The rich do not want anything you have, they want you. Body and soul.

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

#267

Post by eBombzor »

MountDoom wrote: post #167
nemomarx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are most people on HN making 170? I feel a bit less privileged now.

Entry-level total comp for SWEs in the SF Bay Area is probably $250k. A senior dev at a public tech company can easily clear $400k. Really senior engineers at FAANG routinely clear $1M.

I need to move back to the Bay

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

#268

Post by noduerme »

irjustin wrote: post #176
twoodfin wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

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.

Yeah, but which tech has not had a homegrown variant that ultimately democratized it? Makes me think of the "feed" vs the "seed" in "The Diamond Age".

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

#269

Post by daniel_iversen »

aborsy wrote: post #259
javierluraschi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people.

Not necessarily. The benefits may barely trickle down, and the conditions for the majority could degrade overall.

Yeah it’s a complicated picture and of course nobody knows, but it would be helpful to split “benefits” into things like;

- net benefits to the average person (considering drawbacks)

- overall relative benefits compared to income groups

- benefits in certain areas of society and topics

I think there’ll be some “benefits for all” in terms of things like medical advances and health technology. There will also be broader benefits to all in general areas but as a parent poster said it’ll benefit equity holders most and there might be some bad tradeoffs (like we’ll have access to much better information and entertainment but it may also affect the overall employment rate). It’s a very nuanced picture and it’s probably disingenuous of some tech leaders to say “we’ll all benefit) but some do believe that will be the future.

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

#270

Post by noduerme »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #230
majormajor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 los…

> But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off Probably extremely bloody revolt and collapse

Only if you assume people's major motivation is wanting what they don't have, as opposed to wanting a little more to survive. History shows the opposite.
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