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After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

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Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#311

Post by AstroBen »

fragmede wrote: post #247
AstroBen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..except they can't It's blatantly obvious to see if you work with something you personally have a lot of expertise in. They're effectively advanced search engines. Useful sure.. but they're not anywhere close to "making decisions"

In what sense? It seems entirely possible to have a computer program that calls ChatGPT with questions on what stocks to buy, and for that computer program to then trade stock based on the results, entirely autonomously. No matter your opinion of the idea itself, why wouldn't that count as "making decisions"?

Are you buying stocks based on ChatGPT's advice?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#312

Post by dangus »

voidfunc wrote: post #302
CuriouslyC wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gavin Newsom has shown himself to be a savvy operator, I think he has a legitimate shot in 28 if there are free and fair elections. That caveat is pulling way too much weight here though.

While I'd support a Newsom run, I feel like he's never going to get strong support from the Progressive side of the party and they'll sink one of the few viable candidates. Also thats 2028.. 2026 midterms look grim.

2026 midterms really don’t look grim at all so long as they actually happen and restricting doesn’t destroy the gains that the democrats will inevitably pick up.

And I mean inevitably in the strongest way possible. This happens at basically every midterm with the opposition party picking up seats and republicans barely control Congress as it is.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#313

Post by cindyllm »

mallowdram wrote: post #288

China has already won the game. We developed media and wealth management as invididualistic, they approached the problems institutionally and built infrastructure at the pivotal point renewables became affordable. They made an army of technical engineers, we scattered innovation in comp sci/VC acceleration/automation and sat on our asses as asset managers. AI works in secluded modules like robotics and revision. As a…

[dead]

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#314

Post by nuc1e0n »

Centuries ago, the building materials for castles was taken by the locals and reused to build their houses with. Those data centres have a lot of sheet metal in them. Air conditioning units as well. The upgraded power networks around those data centres will alter where people live too. Oh and there's a lot of electric motors with copper wire in all the fans and hard drives those computers have.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#315

Post by mrcwinn »

tim333 wrote: post #263
mrcwinn wrote: post #34

Without moralizing or assuming the worst intentions of oligarchs, globalists, evil capitalists, and so on, I still don’t understand how a consumption based economy continues to fund the build out (oil->Saudi Arabia->LPs->OpenAI) when the technology likely removes the income of its consumers. Help me understand.

Either it doesn't remove the income of its consumers like it's not doing at the moment, or we get universal basic income or something like that.

And how is UBI funded? Higher corporate taxes on (over time, as gross margins improve from inference cost deductions) more profitable companies?

Or rather than higher taxes, more money printing because inflation is just so incredibly low because of advancements in productivity.

That’s the only thing I can imagine so far. All other paths in my mind lead me thinking about uprising and political unrest.

(I’m not a doomer. I’m literally just trying to imagine how it will work structurally.)

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#316

Post by mrcwinn »

coderenegade wrote: post #164
mrcwinn wrote: post #34

Without moralizing or assuming the worst intentions of oligarchs, globalists, evil capitalists, and so on, I still don’t understand how a consumption based economy continues to fund the build out (oil->Saudi Arabia->LPs->OpenAI) when the technology likely removes the income of its consumers. Help me understand.

Nothing in capitalism suggests that consumers have to be human. In fact, the whole enshittification trend suggests that traditional consumers are less economically relevant than they've ever been.

So, okay, that’s interesting. Let’s play it out. Unilever buys a Facebook ad in hopes a robot will buy a razor and shave? And even if a robot needed to shave, what reason would a company have to pay it a wage where before it was only a capex?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#317

Post by checker659 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #272
ares623 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming 300M people will take it willingly. Though to be honest with Trump at the helm they're already ~50% there.

>Though to be honest with Trump at the helm they're already ~50% there. Those people have never felt real pain. They may say they have but they haven't. If this article is real and the whole shitbox falls apart, I don't think even loyalty to Trump will stop these people from finally reckoning with reality.

“Drinking the Kool-aid” you mean?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#318

Post by CuriouslyC »

grafmax wrote: post #303
CuriouslyC wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think prior to Trump, Europe could have been mediator to a benevolent China. Now the hawks are ascendant in Beijing. Trump has shown that his ego pushes him to escalate to try and show others who the "big man" is, this will not end well with China, and I'm not sure he's wise enough to accept that. Do you really prefer brutal serfdom to the AI supremacy scenario? From where I sit, people have mixed (trending positiv…

I just don’t think the AI supremacy scenario is realistic. I think it ignores our current context and postulates a clean break, almost a kind of magical thinking to be frank. AI is likely to intensify current trends not suddenly subvert and reverse them. Palantir, deepfakes, LLM propaganda. The seeds are all here today. To think otherwise - that’s just not how human societies work, not history, none of it. AI is like…

I'm still pondering the clean break of the AI supremacy scenario. I think there are a few:

1. Fusion 2. Pharmaceuticals (think Ozempic economic benefit X 100) 3. Advanced weaponry (if warlike, don't build just conquer) 4. Advanced propaganda to destabilize other nations (again, if warlike)

This is mostly off the cuff, given the success of AlphaEvolve and AlphaFold I don't think they're unreasonable.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#319

Post by mrcwinn »

dotnet00 wrote: post #113
mrcwinn wrote: post #34

Without moralizing or assuming the worst intentions of oligarchs, globalists, evil capitalists, and so on, I still don’t understand how a consumption based economy continues to fund the build out (oil->Saudi Arabia->LPs->OpenAI) when the technology likely removes the income of its consumers. Help me understand.

It looks like they're planning on funding it through circular purchase agreements and looting the rest of the world.

All of “circular” those bets only work if there are real purchase orders and real revenue. In fact the two major deals are literally tied to that.

So it doesn’t answer my question. Real GPUs are bought. Presumably because real consumption is taking place. Presumably because real value (productivity) is produced. Which in turn reduces knowledge work labor (maybe?). Which may destroy jobs. Which reduces excess income and consumption in… a consumer-driven economy.

My point is, it’s actually not rational for the worst actors you could imagine. There’s a link in the chain missing for me logically and I think “billionaires” actually isn’t the answer.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#320

Post by mrcwinn »

coderenegade wrote: post #164
mrcwinn wrote: post #34

Without moralizing or assuming the worst intentions of oligarchs, globalists, evil capitalists, and so on, I still don’t understand how a consumption based economy continues to fund the build out (oil->Saudi Arabia->LPs->OpenAI) when the technology likely removes the income of its consumers. Help me understand.

Nothing in capitalism suggests that consumers have to be human. In fact, the whole enshittification trend suggests that traditional consumers are less economically relevant than they've ever been.

Actually you made me think of a fun scenario.

A robot, who I will name Robort, over time becomes, say, 1/10th the price of human labor. But they do 10x the work quality and work 10x longer.

In that scenario, you could pay them the same wage but produce significantly more economic value. The robot, who won’t care about material possessions or luxuries, could make purchases on behalf of a human - and that human, overworked in 2025 or jobless - has a significant quality of life improvement.

Help, an economist or someone smarter, check my math.

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