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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?

#391

Post by jhanschoo »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #84

This is where we're headed: https://sibylline.dev/articles/2025-10-12-ai-is-too-big-to-f...

A pillar of the author's argument is that

> Chinese will not pull back on AI investment, and because of their advantages in robotics and energy infrastructure, they don't have to.

> The gap matters because AI's value capture depends on having the energy and hardware to deploy frontier models in the physical world.

I understand energy infrastructure because of power-hungry GPUs and ASICs, but I was wondering about the nexus between AI and robotics. I have my own thoughts on how they are linked, but I don't think my thoughts are the same as the author's and I would like to know more about them.

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

#392

Post by grafmax »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #318
grafmax wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s say any of these would take off. Let’s put aside the US’ inferior energy picture, industrial base, or key natural resource access that would block the US from making some of these a reality. What are these new techs going to be used for? Many of them: war. Both internationally and domestically - the US is already invading its own cities. Deepfakes are regularly shared among some social media echo chambers already, and LLM propaganda farms have anlready seen documented use. Even pharmaceutical breakthroughs will be used to extract higher prices for the shrinking number of Americans who can afford it. The trends are all here already with no sign of abating. AI isn’t going to address the structural cause of these problems: extreme wealth inequality. AI is a tool to make it worse.

I think holding on to these beliefs about AI must give some people a sense of hope. But a hope based on reality and is stronger than one based in denial. The antidote I believe is solidarity founded on our shared vulnerability before this bleak future.

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

#393

Post by imtringued »

hattmall wrote: post #356
dcre wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that people will suddenly decide LLMs are useless after two years of exponential growth in usage is a fantasy.

That's essentially what was said about Tamagotchi in the 90s, and everyone of their "users" was a paying customer.

The problem with generative AI is that its economics are more like steel. Metals used to be extremely valuable due to the amount of effort needed to extract them from ores, but eventually the steel industry matured and steel turned into a commodity with hardly any differentiation. You won't be able to back up your trillion dollar valuations if a competitor is going to undercut you.

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

#394

Post by Our_Benefactors »

mmh0000 wrote: post #258
crote wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point things will mature and we’ll be left with plentiful, cheap, high end LLM access, on the back of the investment that has been made. Okay, and? What if the demand for LLMs plummets because people get disillusioned due to the failure to solve issues like hallucinations? If nobody is willing to buy, who cares how cheap it gets?

Have you seen the "average" users of LLM? They mostly don't care about hallucinations. It's like that joke[1] "Computer says no", it doesn't matter what is true or real, only that the computer said it, so now that's true in their mind. Personal anecdote: I work with beginner IT students, and a new, fun ( I find it highly doubtful that hallucinations, if unsolved, will have any real negative effect on LLM adaptation.…

> It's infuriating, the LLM is more believable than the paid professional who's been doing it for 30 years...

Swallow your fury, and accept the teachable moments; AI isn’t going away and beginners will continue to trust it when they lack the skills to validate its information on their own.

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

#395

Post by Our_Benefactors »

saubeidl wrote: post #386
CuriouslyC wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a US/China centered article, because that's the game, Europe is not a meaningful player and everyone else is going to get sucked into orbit of one of the superpowers. If you read the article carefully, I work hard to keep my priors and the priors of the people in question separate, as their actions may be rational under their priors, but irrational under other priors, and I feel it's worth understanding that nua…

I read your article. My cynical take is that this is the US committing economic suicide, based on a misguided belief in something that'll never happen. The new superpowers will be the EU, which was smart enough not to make the same gamble, and China, which will structurally survive it. I also disagree with your conclusion of a moral imperative to make sure that AI succeeds. I believe it's the opposite. AI failing wou…

> The new superpowers will be the EU

Not with how much pulling teeth is required to get them to invest in defense. I don't see how you can unironically make the claim that a written down investment would sink the ship that is the US economy.

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

#396

Post by mike_hearn »

inkyoto wrote: post #358
mike_hearn wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing to China is tricky because Chinese investment is almost by default bubbley in the sense of misallocating capital. That's what heavily state-directed economies tend to do and China's still a communist country. Especially they tend to over-invest in industrial capacity. China's massively overbuilt electricity grid and HSR network would be easily identified as a bubble if it were in the west, but when it's sta…

> […] because the Chinese government has started massively distorting the economy in favor of automation projects. It's widely known that one of the hardest parts of planning a factory is figuring out what to automate and what to use human labour for. … or it is an early manoeuvre – a pre-emptive measure – to address the looming burden of an ageing population and a dearth of young labour that – according to several d…

Robots installed now will be obsolete and broken by 2050. Demographic change is the sort of thing where market mechanisms work fine. You don't build out assets like those ahead of demand, you wait until you need them at which point you get the latest tech with economies of scale as demand ramps up everywhere.

The most optimistic reading of this move is that it's just more of the same old communism: robotic factories seem cool to the planners because they're big, visible and high-tech assets that are easily visitable on state trips. So they overinvest for the same reason they once overinvested in steel production.

The actually most gloomy prognosis is that they're trying to free up labour to enter the army.

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

#397

Post by nebula8804 »

ares623 wrote: post #279
nebula8804 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

As someone who grew up in a very religious country (not the US), Trumps followers will endure any suffering if it means being in service to him (or if it means their enemies will suffer more, or is portrayed to be suffering more).

I don't really know. I think a lot of them migrated off of Bush. I don't have the clip right now but I had old interview videos showing how high and mighty Bush supporters were and how they supported the Iraq war all in going into his second term. They went so far as to act like Trump supporters against anyone who didn't support the "commander in chief" (ie. those people should be put in jail or kicked out).

The GFC really set those people straight. Enough of them got desperate enough that they switched sides and voted for Obama.

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

#398

Post by nebula8804 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #341
nebula8804 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

This is written by somebody who’s never been to Louisiana and Mississippi. The saying in Russian that they never had it any good in the first place comes to mind. Where’s thriftwy when you need them?

The south is pretty modern all things considered. You wanna see real pain? Go ask Chinese people who had to sacrifice these past few decades to make China the powerhouse it is today. Its the reason why they can tolerate anything the US throws at them. Their pain threshold is much higher than whatever the west has.

These southerners could have lost their culture, the local industry has long since left, and fentanyl is the name of the game. Yet thats still nothing compared to what Chinese (or even Russian people post USSR) had to go through.

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

#399

Post by saubeidl »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #395
saubeidl wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your article. My cynical take is that this is the US committing economic suicide, based on a misguided belief in something that'll never happen. The new superpowers will be the EU, which was smart enough not to make the same gamble, and China, which will structurally survive it. I also disagree with your conclusion of a moral imperative to make sure that AI succeeds. I believe it's the opposite. AI failing wou…

> The new superpowers will be the EU Not with how much pulling teeth is required to get them to invest in defense. I don't see how you can unironically make the claim that a written down investment would sink the ship that is the US economy.

The EU moves slowly, but is unstoppable once in motion.

A written down investment thats four times the size of the mortgage crisis.

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

#400

Post by taurath »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #335
taurath wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this reads like someone's been inside the echo chamber too long. > For you AI skeptics, this is going to be rough to hear, but given the suffering that will occur if AI fails, I believe we have a moral imperative to make sure it succeeds. What if, and hear me out here, the prediction is that it will fail because it can't succeed. It hasn't proven it is capable of producing the results that would justify itself.…

I'm actually from a science, government and defense background, I've never worked in the valley. It might be possible that it can't succeed, but we don't know that and the evidence in terms of what happens if it fails is pretty compelling, so I think morality dictates we have to at least try, at least until we have more information or another path emerges.

Morality would dictate that we stop spending enough money to end hunger in not just our country but the entire planet on this stupid venture. We are gutting our future entirely on our own and hoping that AI will save us. That’s moral suicide, not an imperative.
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