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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

#301

Post by 7952 »

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.

Ultimately labour goes and works on something else instead. And the availability of free labour makes that possible. New industries and markets develop as a result. But a huge number of people will be left behind. But people will focus on things that were a lower priority before.

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

#302

Post by AlecSchueler »

twoodfin wrote: post #168
bluefirebrand wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're not talking a 51-49 disproportion, we're talking about a 99.9999 percent of the benefit will go to the richest people

How so?

Continuing current trends presumably.

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

#303

Post by gitaarik »

padjo wrote: post #294
blast wrote: post #29

He'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.

And what were the societal benefits of the internet?

That everybody all over the world can instantly connect with each other?

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

#304

Post by lemonlearnings »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36
blast wrote: post #29

He'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…

I am not still using the same 1Mbps token ring from 1998 or the same dial up connecting to some 10Mbps backbone.

I am using x86 chips though.

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

#305

Post by lemonlearnings »

lomase wrote: post #124
hibikir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at year over year chip improvements in 2025 vs 1998, it's clear that modern hardware just has a longer shelf life than it used to. The difficulties in getting more performance for the same power expenditure are just very different than back in the day. There's still depreciation, but it's not the same. Also look at other forms of hardware, like RAM, and the bonus electrical capacity being built.

In 1998 to transfer a megabyte over telephone lines was expensive and 5 years later is was almost free. I have not seen the prices of GPUs, CPU or RAM going down, on the contrary, each day it gets more expensive.

But why not measure $ per intelligence. In 2020 you'd need a billion dollars to get your computer to write good code, now it is practically free.

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

#306

Post by lemonlearnings »

majormajor wrote: post #218
lemonlearnings wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did we just ignore the last fifteen years of crypto?

No I had the speculative ponzi front of mind when making that comment.

Governments love crypto because it lets you seize lots of money from criminals across borders. And it is legal gambling where you can tax the winnings without reimbursing the losers (unless they can offset it but most probably can not)

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

#307

Post by flanked-evergl »

javierluraschi wrote: post #142
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?

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

It will not benefit the rich as disproportionately as the covid pandemic did.

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

#308

Post by flanked-evergl »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #165
javierluraschi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And we're not talking a 51-49 disproportion, we're talking about a 99.9999 percent of the benefit will go to the richest people

Cite?

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

#309

Post by scotty79 »

irjustin wrote: post #190
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.

This is why revolts happen. If you scratch under the hood of UBI, it's a mechanism to keep revolutions at bay. The balance of tax the ultra wealthy vs giving people enough to "live comfortably" is always the job of governance.

> If you scratch under the hood of UBI, it's a mechanism to keep revolutions at bay.

It's also putting money in the hands of the consumers so the rich can compete between themselves at how much each can scoop back up.

Something like feeding animals in the forest to compete with your friends at who can hunt better.

When poor have nothing then you have to shift to taking money of the other rich, but they are clever, so it's easier to take a little bit from the hands of all rich equally, give that money to the poor and reduce the new problem to the old one, how to extract as much as you can from the poor.

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