Live data from Hacker News

America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

washingtonpost.com

41–50 of 753 posts

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#41

Instead of industrial base for national security priority, Americans are served extra slop with a side of spammy content once these AI are done ingesting.

It all drives ads

All we're doing is building platforms for ads, pits for advertisers to pitch dollars, nothing is getting made, all it does is drive consumerism. Google, Meta, Amazon, aside from now NVidia the whole economy is increasingly built around selling slop that we decreasingly know how to make anymore.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#42
post #28
post #21

Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can manage that, but the most can’t. Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

Should hire us autists and allow us to program via voice commands and augmented reality.. i would love something almost automate-able while doing something that also needs higher brain functions.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#43

Wait. What if the AI gold rush contributes to better industrial robotics and ushers in an AI industrial revolution? China already has dark factories with no humans on the assembly line. Isn't that a possible outcome of the AI gold rush? (I mean omitting the fact that ChatGPT 5 Pro still says stuff like: "You’re right. I made a bad inference and defended it. That’s on me." We don't want that behavior on the assembly l…

> factories with no humans on the assembly line. Not an American myself, but why should that be good for ordinary American citizens? Few people make loads of money, some Gen-Xer secure the value of their 401k and the younger ones are out of job?

we're talking about what really matters here, the investors

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#44
The US spent decades transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, deliberately.

Now there's a populist making political hay, throwing out numbers about trade deficits, which ignores revenue from services. Yes, there is have a trade deficit on goods, that was a long-term strategy because services were a superior investment.

Manufacturing is an inferior way to make money unless you're planning to go to conventional war, and since the US is a nuclear superpower it's never going to get into an existential boots-on-the-ground Serious War again unless it just wants to cosplay. Nukes make conventional war for survival irrelevant.

So: it took decades to burn the boats with manufacturing, and trying to rebuild them in a few years is a hilarious folly. It absolutely will not go anywhere, and honestly shouldn't anyway. There is real danger, however, that the US burns the boats on the carefully crafted service sector as well.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#45

Wait. What if the AI gold rush contributes to better industrial robotics and ushers in an AI industrial revolution? China already has dark factories with no humans on the assembly line. Isn't that a possible outcome of the AI gold rush? (I mean omitting the fact that ChatGPT 5 Pro still says stuff like: "You’re right. I made a bad inference and defended it. That’s on me." We don't want that behavior on the assembly l…

I'm unclear on what people see in the current AI tech advancements that makes them think it will contribute to better manufacturing. The new feature of LLMs that makes them so interesting is their ability accept input and flexibly follow arbitrary instructions, meaning they're really good for varied work, especially when there are a wide range of acceptable answers ("creative work"). Everything I know about manufactu…

I'm not even clear on what people mean when they say 'AI' anymore

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#46
post #28
post #21

Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can manage that, but the most can’t. Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits.

Q: Do you ever use an online job service to advertise jobs and collect applications?

Asking because my 5 sons all learned that job portals auto-trash applications w/o a job history (1st time job seekers).

Other viable but never-seen applicants: Minimal or sporadic job history, the most minimal of criminal records, the wrong zip code.

Seen but never hired: Fully qualified people who are awful at job interviews.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#47
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. Better pay + benefits than the most rock bottom lowest possible pay + benefits is really pathetic. And based on the vagueness of your claims, we can assume full-time hours are also out of the picture, meaning no health insurance. On top of that, tyranical small business owners are usually a nightmar…

It's all full time 4x10 work with the employer covering 100% of health insurance premiums.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#49

The US spent decades transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, deliberately. Now there's a populist making political hay, throwing out numbers about trade deficits, which ignores revenue from services . Yes, there is have a trade deficit on goods, that was a long-term strategy because services were a superior investment. Manufacturing is an inferior way to make money unless you're planning to g…

A service economy is an utopia or a scam if you wish. You don't have to be a conservative to understand this. That being said, maybe you shouldn't burn bridges with the biggest producer in the world when you're trying to be a "service economy".

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#50
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. Q: Do you ever use an online job service to advertise jobs and collect applications? Asking because my 5 sons all learned that job portals auto-trash applications w/o a job history (1st time job seekers). Other viable but never-seen applicants: Minimal or sporadic job history, the most minimal of cr…

I have no involvement with the plant directly. My understanding is the best luck they had was getting in good graces with local probation officers & craigslist classifieds. Job portals were pretty useless from my understanding.
Post reply on HN