> Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
Yes. Cheap, second hand, datacenters.
Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
321–330 of 668 posts
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Robots can take most of the jobs, but the feeling of power over other humans they likely cannot replace.
> Robots can take most of the jobs Not in our lifetimes and certainly not in our form of society. Robots will only drive down the price of labor. People will always be able to supply labor at costs below the price of materials for robots.
" People will always be able to supply labor at costs below the price of materials for robots."
Why? What critical materials do robots need that will always be more expansive than raising a human?
Also, from the point of "the rich" - the benefit of a robot is, that it will (stupidly) do as command, unlike a human. They don't have a family they want to take care first.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN said the same thing about Uber forever.
Uber didn't invent anything, they drove taxis out of business then jacked up the prices, squeezed the workers, and now everybody is riding around in regular people's crappy cars for more than a cab cost. And now I need a phone and to maintain my relationship with these two crappy companies rather than to wave at the street (which is what I used to do to get a ride.) That was literally what everybody said would happen…
I think you're definitely in the minority. For most of the world, Uber/Grab/Bolt have made transportation cheaper, safer, more convenient, and more comfortable.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
About 40% of AI infrastructure spending is the physical datacenter itself and the associated energy production. 60% is the chips. That 40% has a very long shelf life. Unfortunately, the energy component is almost entirely fossil fuels, so the global warming impact is pretty significant. At this point, geoengineering is the only thing that can earn us a bit of time to figure...idk, something out, and we can only hope…
Interesting. Do you have any sources for this 60/40 split?
And while I agree that the infrastructure has a long shelf life, it seems to me like an AI bubble burst would greatly depreciate the value of this infrastructure as the demand for it plummets, no?
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#325The 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?
That's a very relevant question. And as your question implies, we all know which society the billionaires talk about. But AI is just a technology like any other. It does have the potential to bring great benefits to humanity if developed with that intent. It's the corruptive influence of the billionaire and autocrat greed that turns all technologies against us.
When I say benefits to humanity, I don't mean the AI slop, deepfakes and laziness enabler that we have today. There are niche applications of AI that already show great potential. Like developing new medicines to devising new treatments for dangerous diseases, solving long standing mathematical problems, creating new physics theories. And who knows? Perhaps even create viable solutions for the climate crisis that we are in. They don't receive as much attention as they deserve, because that's not where the profit lies in AI. Solving real problems require us to forgo profits in the short term. That's why we can't leave this completely up to the billionaires. They will just use it to transfer even more wealth from the poor and middle classes to themselves.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#326The 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?
I don't understand this argument. Speaking as a kid who grew up middle-class as an 80's teen obsessed with (the then still new) computers, a non-rich person has access to more salient power today than ever in history, and largely for no or low cost. There are free AI's available that can diagnose illnesses for people in remote areas, non-Western nations, etc. and which can translate (and/or summarize) anything to any…
“Free ai” lol
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people.
> It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people. Yes: you'll be homeless and living under a bridge, but you'll have an LLM therapist on your phone to console you. That's a benefit!
No they don't want that, because it could lead to an uprising against them. They want us provided with the essentials in exchange for being dutiful workers, so we have something to lose.
Everyone should live in pods stacked together, eat insects, not drive our own automobiles around or fly places, we should be able to get our entertainment and everything to keep ourselves happy from their subscription entertainment services. Basically we are to consume as little as possible to barely keep ourselves alive and sane while they sail themselves around to pat one another on the backs at their climate and economic conferences on their billion dollar luxury yachts.
Actually no that would be stupid they don't have the time or patience to sail their yachts around. They have crew for that. They will fly in one of their handful of private jets and have the yacht meet them there.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#328The 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?
Counter prediction. AI is going to reduce the (relative) wealth of the tech companies.
AWS and Facebook have extremely low running costs per VPS or Ad sold. That IMO is one of the major reasons tech has received its enormously high valuation.
There is nuance to that, but average investors are dumb and don't care.
Add in a relatively high fixed-cost commodity into the accounting, and intuitively the pitch of "global market domination at ever lower costs" will be a much harder sell. Especially if there is a bubble pop that hurts them.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#329Earlier 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.
The first sentence is definitely. But, UBI is a nerd/socialist fantasy. It would nevet work and will never happen. Everyone with these sci-fi fever dreams of what will happen if AI collapses white collar jobs are coming from people that don’t know how the world or people actually work outside of their daydreams. People aren’t going to just be like “ok, well I guess it’s time for bread and water and Soviet style tenement housing, all this progress in livings was great while it lasted.” And other people are talking about using batteries for money or something. People need to touch grass.
Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN said the same thing about Uber forever.
Uber didn't invent anything, they drove taxis out of business then jacked up the prices, squeezed the workers, and now everybody is riding around in regular people's crappy cars for more than a cab cost. And now I need a phone and to maintain my relationship with these two crappy companies rather than to wave at the street (which is what I used to do to get a ride.) That was literally what everybody said would happen…
Uber definitely screwed the workers and probably existing taxi companies, but for the users it was a huge W, at least in many parts of the world. Taxi companies are notoriously scammy and it seems to be a very universal experience.