AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power • Hacker News Board

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#321

Post by fragmede » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

d4rkn0d3z wrote: post #289

The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power appears below:

how about

    the wheel
    bicycles
    sewing machines
    hand tools
    musical instruments
    open radio bands like CB and FRS
    ham radio (licensing exists but not corporate control) 
    meshtastic
    blacksmithing
    glass blowing
    garden tools
    propane camp stoves
    mechanical clocks and watches
    open source software (the ecosystem overall, not specific projects)
    email as a protocol
    RSS
    SMS as a protocol
    USB storage devices
    SIP based VOIP
    mesh networking gear
    3d printers in the hobby market
    drones under 250g
    amateur astronomy gear
    microcontrollers like Arduino
    LED strips and controllers
    bicycles
    composting tech
    sourdough starter culture tech (yes really)

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#322

Post by dangus » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:32 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #242

lomase wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an old SWE and claude 4.5 has not changed a thing on how we work. The teams that have embraced AI in their worlflow have not increased their output compared with they ones that don't use it.

I'm like you. I'd say my productivity improved by 5-10%: Claude can make surprinsgly good code edits. For these, my subjective feeling is that claude does in 30 min what I'd have dont in one hour. It's a net gain. Now, my job is about communicating, understanding problems, learning, etc. So my overall productivity is not dramatically changing, but for things related to code, it's a net 5-10%

Which is where the AI investment disconnect is scary.

AI Companies have invested a crazy amount of money into a small productivity gain for their customers.

If AI was replacing developers it wouldn’t cost me $20-100/month to get a subscription.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#323

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:35 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #306

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did, just not the usual people. If you go to yandex, you can see that the russian mafia makes good money with trackers. I love torrent, but it's legal used are cripple by corporate infra, so it's mostly florishing thanks to illegal stuff paid by shady ads.

> If you go to yandex, you can see that the russian mafia makes good money with trackers What's the business model though? Most Russian torrents are about giving away copyrighted stuff for free.

Have you ever seen what kind of ads they run?

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#324

Post by oytis » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #323

oytis wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you go to yandex, you can see that the russian mafia makes good money with trackers What's the business model though? Most Russian torrents are about giving away copyrighted stuff for free.

Have you ever seen what kind of ads they run?

So their business model is good old conextual ads? That's pretty innocuous by modern standards.

UPD: I've checked what ads it shows me on Rutracker - it's VPN services and online gambling. Youtube and Facebook have shown me worse

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#325

Post by twoodfin » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:39 PM UTC

nacozarina wrote: post #112

The safety regulations for every new technology are written in blood. Every time. AI won’t be any different, we’ll push it as hard & fast as our tolerance for human suffering allows.

I find that framing difficult to apply to the last few big waves of technology: Mobile, broadband Internet telecommunications, personal computers, integrated circuits, …

It seems glib, rather than insightful.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#326

Post by ben_w » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:41 PM UTC

MangoToupe wrote: post #312

pjc50 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. most of the coins are held in giant blocs by unknowns, and the price is largely driven by a couple of funds issuing tokenized dollars?

The proportion if wealth consolidation that bitcoin poses if it can consume fiat currencies makes all other coercive powers in history look like they weren't even trying.

If.

BTC itself can't do that: the transaction rate would be borderline even just for a low-ball estimate of all the once-a-month payments happening in just the city of Berlin.

The various proposals for layer-2 stuff makes it look like a bunch of banks using a funky currency without any of the controls that exist because weird currencies are bad for business, but AFAICT because of that, the BTC part itself works like interbank balancing transactions, and the BTC transaction rate isn't sufficient to cover once-a-day interbank balancing transactions.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#327

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:42 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #137

scottlamb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're describing technology that has existed for 15+ years and is already pretty accurate. It's not even necessarily "AI"/ML. For example, I think OpenALPR (automated license plate recognition) is all "classical" computer vision. The most accurate facial/gait/etc. recognition is most likely ML-based with a state-of-the-art model, admittedly, and perhaps the threshold of accuracy for large-scale usefulness wa…

The difference is that AI makes annotating/combing through all that data much more feasible.

[deleted]

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#328

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:53 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #129

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This notion of a hard takeoff, or singularity, based on self-improving AI, is based on the implicit assumption that what's holding AI progress back is lack of AI researchers/developers, which is false. Ideas are a penny a dozen - the bottleneck is the money/compute to test them at scale. What exactly is the scenario you are imagining where more developers at a company like OpenAI (or maybe Meta, which has just laid o…

Agreed. To me the hard take off won't happen until a humanoid robot can assemble another humanoid robot from parts, as well as slot in anywhere in the supply chain where a human would be required to make those parts. Once you have that you functionally have a self-replicating machine which can then also build more data centers or semi fabs.

Humanoid robots are also a pipe dream until we have the brains to put into them. It's easy to build a slick looking shell and teleoperate it to dance on stage or serve drinks. The 1X company is actually selling a teleoperated "robot" (Neo), saying the software will come later !!

As with AGI, if the bottleneck to doing anything is human level intelligence or physical prowess, then we already have plenty of humans.

If you gave Musk, or any other AI CEO, an army of humans today, to you think that would accelerate his data center expansion (help him raise money, get power, get GPU chips)? Why would a robot army help? Are you imagining them running around laying bricks at twice the speed of a human? Is that the bottleneck?

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#329

Post by dudeinjapan » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #321

d4rkn0d3z wrote: post #289

The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power appears below:

how about the wheel bicycles sewing machines hand tools musical instruments open radio bands like CB and FRS ham radio (licensing exists but not corporate control) meshtastic blacksmithing glass blowing garden tools propane camp stoves mechanical clocks and watches open source software (the ecosystem overall, not specific projects) email as a protocol RSS SMS as a protocol USB storage devices SIP based VOIP mesh netw…

the wheel --> chariots, pottery (see Sumeria), Roman roads, siege weapons (play Civ!)

bicycles --> police forces, see the Japanese in Malaya 1941

sewing machines --> factory labor, mass production of clothes

hand tools --> Guild systems

musical instruments --> organized religion, national anthems, cultural soft power

open radio bands --> policing, surveillance

blacksmithing --> weapons

etc. etc. we can do this all day :)

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#330

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #324

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen what kind of ads they run?

So their business model is good old conextual ads? That's pretty innocuous by modern standards. UPD: I've checked what ads it shows me on Rutracker - it's VPN services and online gambling. Youtube and Facebook have shown me worse

Online gambling, most of which is about good ol’ money laundering, and thepiratebay seems to not censor their ads at all, so you may get all kinds of scams and malware spread via ads.