Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbh, it's not clear that if we all stopped drinking the world would be better.
Oh it definitely would
Hard disagree.
Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
281–290 of 668 posts
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which of those did the Internet benefit?
Is AI at the same level of global instant comunication and gigabites of bandwidth?
Probably. The the internet was more clear cut. Moores law all the things. Governments investing in pipe etc.
AI harder to tell. Will 2026 models kick 2025 ass or just be slightly better. Who knows.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Undeniably better off in every single way. Minimum is that the price of long distance phone calls is now zero, let alone video calls. Being able to speak to family and see them nonstop is incredible.
Why are people much less happy then? https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...
More precisely, Americans are more diagnosed with depression. In the five years prior to COVID it's shown as rising by 3.3 percentage points. Is that surprising? The trend isn't likely to be flat. Also, is this happiness? Also, does a graph starting in 2015 relate to the question about the 90s? Also, do you expect happiness to be driven by having new things, or for people to adjust their expectations and remain constantly unhappy? Isn't disruption the main cause of unhappiness?
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#284[dead]
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#285Earlier 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?
They will always want entertainment.
Whether it's gladiators or bum fights, the poor will ultimately be given a job. Robot wars was fun, but UFC has stayed.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bezos is a 0.0001-percenter. Most of people on HN are probably in the top 1% to 5%. You're in the top 10% in the US if you make $170k/yr.
are most people on HN making 170? I feel a bit less privileged now.
Midway through my career, these days I feel fortunate to be making 60k. But I'm in Canada.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#287He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.
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…
> the current debt fueled spending
Honestly I think the most surprising thing about this latest investment boom has been how little debt there is. VC spending and big tech's deep pockets keep banks from being too tangled in all of this, so the fallout will be much more gentle imo.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN said the same thing about Uber forever.
Uber sold something like $50 billion in equity and debt before it went public, and although they're profitable now, to me it doesn't seem like they have answer to Waymo coming up fast in the rear-view mirror. I think Uber is still a scam, just one where the earlier investors fleeced the later ones who are never going to see the returns they paid for.
Uber is still >$10bn net negative over its lifetime. Claude estimates about –$19bn.
It's still quite possible that Uber doesn't make that up in the near future.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is way cheaper and better than any cab ever was.
From my experience, this is not the case in many european cities. In those places the main benefit seems to be not having to interact with the cab driver.
You don't talk to your drivers? I've had a lot of genuinely good conversations in my rides. I always at least feel it out and see how much the driver wants to talk but it feels wrong to not say anything
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems the crux is that we needed X people to produce goods, and we had Y demand. Now we need X*0.75 people to do meet Y demand. However, those savings are partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. There is only so much marginal propensity to spend that rich people have, so that additional wealth is not resulting in an increase in demand, at least commensurate enough to absorb the 25% who are une…
> partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. Or, the returns on capital exceed the rate of economic growth (r > g), if you like Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century . One of the central points is about how productivity and growth gains increasingly accrue to capital rather than labor, leading to capital accumulation and asset inflation.
Yep, that’s the source of the point. The effort is in finding a way to make it easy to convey. Communication of an idea is almost as critical as its verification now.