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Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

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Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#511

Post by throwzasdf »

donmcronald wrote: post #108
zerosizedweasle wrote: post #36

Earlier 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…

And a lot of the gains from the Dotcom boom are being paid back in negative value for the average person at this point. We have automated systems that waste our time when we need support, product features that should have a one-time-cost being turned into subscriptions, a complete usurping of the ability to distribute software or build compatible replacements, etc.. The Dotcom boom was probably good for everyone in s…

I know HN and most younger people or people with otherwise political leanings always push narratives pointing at rich people bad but I feel a lot of tech has made our lives easier and better. It's also made it more complicated and worse in some ways. That effect has applied to everyone.

In poor countries, they may not have access to clean running water but it's almost guaranteed they have cell phones. We saw that in a documentary recently. What's good about that? They use cell phones not only to stay in touch but to carry out small business and personal sales. Something that wouldn't have been possible before the Internet age.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#512

Post by mountainriver »

blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

The analogy to the dot com bubble is leaky at best. AI will hit a point of exponential improvement, we are already in the outer parts of this loop.

It will become so valuable so fast we struggle to comprehend it.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#513

Post by UncleMeat »

squidbeak wrote: post #478
sokoloff wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically possible? Maybe (but still an extremely slim chance). Practically possible? No. People (and countries) own land. Raw materials for robots comes from land. Energy for robots consumes land. Farming food requires massive inputs beyond just the land and energy (but also needs those). I don’t imagine we’ll get to a world where my great-great-great^20-grandkids can hold out their hand and have a plate of stea…

'Not ever' is a broad statement. Would you rule out off-planet mining and manufacturing? Or the scaling of artificial meat production?

Why would off-planet mining and manufacturing make things easier?

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#514

Post by shiandow »

mountainriver wrote: post #512
blast wrote: post #29

He's (unsurprisingly) making an analogy to the dotcom bubble, which seems to me correct. There was a bubble, many non-viable companies got funded and died, and nevertheless the internet did eventually change everything.

The analogy to the dot com bubble is leaky at best. AI will hit a point of exponential improvement, we are already in the outer parts of this loop. It will become so valuable so fast we struggle to comprehend it.

While this remains possible my main impression now is that progress seems to be slowing down rather than accelerating.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#515

Post by slaterbug »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #501

It's very hard to find anything other than half saying AI is in a bubble, and we will pop any day now, and the other half declaring AGI by 2029, when a new revolution will begin. If you follow the hard science and not the money, you can see we're somewhere in-between these two takes. AI datacenters requiring new power plants is unsustainable for long-term growth. Meanwhile, we have LLMs accepting bullshit tasks and c…

> Meanwhile, we have LLMs accepting bullshit tasks and completing them.

Would you mind elaborating on that? I’m not quite sure what you mean.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#517

Post by gloosx »

Foxhuls wrote: post #179
gtowey wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and maybe it would be better still if we all tried heroin!

Are you legitimately trying to compare alcohol to heroin?

I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but ethanol is actually a very reactive molecule — and in some ways, it acts similarly to opioids like heroin. It, among other things, stimulates endogenous opioid pathways, leading to the release of β-endorphins and activation of mu-opioid receptors. So, alcohol works indirectly, heroin directly – but both enhance opioid signalling. If you’re curious, this study explains it really well:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3728478/

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#518

Post by lukan »

akk0 wrote: post #387
stinkbeetle wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I'd actually love to eat insects but to my dismay I found out they're actually really expensive...

Just go outside for a while with a survival book if you are into it.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#519

Post by acdha »

mountainriver wrote: post #505
akagusu wrote: post #97

The 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?

It is all society as long as they have access, and they do. Even if the big labs get more closed off, open source is right there and won’t die. AI increases everyone’s knowledge and ultimately productivity. It’s on every person the learn to leverage it. The dynamics don’t need to change, we just move faster and smarter

> AI increases everyone’s knowledge and ultimately productivity. It’s on every person the learn to leverage it. The dynamics don’t need to change, we just move faster and smarter

This is incomplete in key ways: it only increases knowledge if people practice information literacy and validate AI claims, which we know is an unevenly-distributed skill. Similarly, by making it easier to create disinformation and pollute public sources of information, it can make people less knowledgeable at the same time they believe they are more informed. Neither of those problems are new, of course, but they’re moving from artisanal to industrial scale.

Another area where this is begging questions is around resource allocation. The best AI models and integrations cost money and the ability to leverage them requires you to have an opportunity to acquire skills and use them to make a living. The more successfully businesses are able to remove or deprofessionalize jobs, the smaller the pool will be of people who can afford to build skills, compete with those businesses, or contribute to open source software. Twenty years ago, professional translators made a modest white collar income; when AI ate those jobs, the workers didn’t “learn to leverage” AI, they had to find new jobs in different fields and anyone who didn’t have the financial reserves to do that might’ve ended up in a retail job questioning whether it’s even possible to re-enter the professional class. That’s great for people like Bezos until nobody can afford to buy things, but it’s worse for society since it accelerates the process of centralizing money and power.

Open source in particular seems likely to struggle here: with programmers facing financial downturns, fewer people have time to contribute and if AI is being trained on your code, you’re increasingly going to ask whether it’s in your best interests to literally train your replacement.

Re: Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits

#520

Post by james_oofou »

JCM9 wrote: post #485
Archonical wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has gone the other way than OOP: Anecdotally, I have had VCs ask me to review AI companies to tell them what they do so they can invest. The VC said VCs don't really understand what they're investing in and just want to get in on anything AI due to FOMO. The company I reviewed didn't seem like a great investment, but I don't even think that matters right now.

To be clear when I said “finance folks” I wasn’t really referring to VCs. I’m talking more family office types that manage big pools of money that you don’t know about. The super wealthy class that has literally has more money than the King but would be horrified if you knew their name. Old money types. They’re well aware of the “dumb VC” vibe that just throws money after hype. The finance folks I’m talking about are…

And what is it that you believe about these old money types' knowledge of AI and why is it that you believe it?
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