Does anyone else feel incredibly nostalgic for the time when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were the richest people on earth? I remember feeling pretty good about the fact that they were trying to do so much good, and about the giving pledge. Things feel so different now.
The turbulent AI era is here
51–60 of 243 posts
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gates is worth about $100B, Elon Musk about $850B. Let's call it $1T altogether. That would be at most about $115 per human on Earth (~8.5B humans). Not sure that is sufficient to "end hunger and homelessness."
let's set aside for a second the fact that this is not how things work, but you are off by an order of magnitude EDIT: parent comment was edited: it used to say $15
Not sure which number you're questioning, but it all looks right to me:
$852.7B[0] + $109.9B[0] = $962.6B ~= $1T ($1,000,000,000,000)
World population ~= 8.3B (8,300,000,000)[1]
$1,000,000,000,000 / 8,300,000,000 people = $120.481927711 per person[2]
[0] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=%241%2C000%2C000%2C000%2C000...
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#53If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.
Gates is worth about $100B, Elon Musk about $850B. Let's call it $1T altogether. That would be at most about $115 per human on Earth (~8.5B humans). Not sure that is sufficient to "end hunger and homelessness."
It’s not like giving that money to people is the only option. you can spend it in projects that produce food, build low cost houses, etc.
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#54We should not be listening to a man who drugged his wife with Epstein supplied antibiotics after getting an STD (among many, many other bad things he's done). https://www.btimesonline.com/articles/176578/20260201/epstei...
Moral absolutism to apply a 1-bit value judgment to a human being is a pretty sad way to have a worldview, friend.
Looking at the exceedingly long history of someone's immoral actions and deeds isn't a "1-bit value judgement". The guy literally teamed up with a pedophile pimp foreign spy to drug his wife. I'll pass on hearing his thoughts about literally anything.
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#55All of this is truly bizarre, I hope that we can make sense of this craze in the future. Maybe it will be seen similarly to the dancing crazes of the Middle Ages.
I think it will be seen similar to the crypto craze to be honest. People on this very site, with an actual reputation, were telling us non stop how we were losers who were going to be left behind and stay poor. They never had to apologize for being obnoxious when that didn’t happen
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gates is worth about $100B, Elon Musk about $850B. Let's call it $1T altogether. That would be at most about $115 per human on Earth (~8.5B humans). Not sure that is sufficient to "end hunger and homelessness."
let's set aside for a second the fact that this is not how things work, but you are off by an order of magnitude EDIT: parent comment was edited: it used to say $15
> you are off by an order of magnitude
On which figure?
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#57I'm sorry. I absolutely do not trust Bill Gates. His history of ruthless, cutthroat tactics in the 90s is not easily forgotten and when he proposes things like international organizations to audit everyone's AI[1] I can't help but question his motives. I also don't understand what gives him the moral standing to propose a solution at all. He's not the fucking pope but a ruthless tech businessman with vested financial…
> ruthless tech businessman with vested financial interest in the technology involved
Isn't that past-tense? What's his financial interest these days? He still owns a small amount of MSFT, but he doesn't exactly have control over the corporation any more. I imagine Nadella always answers his calls, but I'd bet most CEOs will make time to take a call from Bill.
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#58Does anyone else feel incredibly nostalgic for the time when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were the richest people on earth? I remember feeling pretty good about the fact that they were trying to do so much good, and about the giving pledge. Things feel so different now.
No because Bill Gates was hanging out with Jeffery Epstein that entire time. I also feel like people forgot his insanely evil business practices from the 80s and 90s? Bill Gates has always been one of the worst people out there. Every bit as bad as Musk. It's a big club, we're just not in it.
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#59If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.
> It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.
I wonder how the hell did you arrive at this conclusion from this text.
Re: The turbulent AI era is here
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe it's not just a craze and we'll soon look back and think "I wonder what we might've done differently if we'd been clear-eyed about what was happening."
Unless there's another significant breakthrough, LLMs will only get incremental improvements.
Do they need more than incremental breakthroughs to transform society?