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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

#521

Post by nr378 »

m000 wrote: post #407

"During bubbles, every experiment or idea gets funded, the good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas. ... But that doesn't mean anything that is happening isn't real." Remind me again why we need investors to fund bad ideas? The whole premise of western capitalism is that investors can better align with the ne…

> Remind me again why we need investors to fund bad ideas?

Early stage investors generally fund a portfolio of multiple ideas, where each idea faces great uncertainty - some investments will do tremendously well, some won't. Invstors don't need every investment to do well due to the assymmetry of outcomes (a bad investment can at worst go down 100%, a good investment can go up 10,000%, paying off many bad investments).

> The whole premise of western capitalism is that investors can better align with the needs of the society and the current technological reality.

This is not the premise of capitalism, it's the justification for it - it's generally believed that capitalism leads to better outcomes over time than communism, but that doesn't mean capitalism has 0 wasteage or results in 0 bad decisions.

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

#522

Post by james_oofou »

mgol94 wrote: post #452
james_oofou wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more productivity at same cost = more stuff, cheaper

Soo where is that deflation? Bc from what I see all of that extra productivity is landing in the pockets of shareholders

Right, so not a bubble then

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

#524

Post by AtlasBarfed »

By society, he means the oligarchy will get more power and control.

Yeah, sure some side benefits to people. AI is still a nuclear weapon against labor in the capital - labor (haves - haves not), and will start pushing wealth inequality to the Egyptian pharoah.

The only good news for plebians is that virtual reality entertainment means you just need a little closet to live in.

Overall, this just leads up to further demographic decline, which as an environmental malthusian I would welcome in the initial stages to get us down from our current level, but I also suspect it would turn into an economic downward spiral, especially with AI, where the oligarchs have such total authoritarian control and monopoly on resources that humanity basically stops having kids at all.

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

#525

Post by squigz »

prewett wrote: post #487
neel8986 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple hypothesis. Top 5percent of US wealth now belongs to top 50 richest American. Even if you ignore corruption, lobbying and any ill intent you can definitely conclude that this top 50 individuals have better way of getting return from money than rest of the population. Even if if their delta of return is 5% we can assume that withing next 50 years there is a high probability that these guys will own 30-50% of we…

But all your numbers (except maybe top 5% one) are completely made up. Strong beliefs don't prevent one from being completely wrong. Neville Chamberlain has a strong belief that he had ensured peace; Einstein had a strong belief that quantum theory's "spooky action at a distance" was incorrect. Both were wrong. Fifty years is a long time, and anything could happen. The last fifty years had the fall of Communism, the…

Not to mention that 50% of US wealth is only 15% of the world's total wealth - a far cry from "literally all wealth"

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

#526

Post by james_oofou »

muldvarp wrote: post #465
james_oofou wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more productivity at same cost = more stuff, cheaper

More productivity at same cost = More profit for companies. Also, the cost of most of the stuff I (have to) buy (i.e. rent, groceries, ...) is not dominated by the wage of knowledge workers. Or to put it differently: If AI makes me lose my job but doesn't decrease my rent, I'm in a really bad position.

> More profit for companies

Agreed. So I don't think it's a bubble.

Will also be good for consumers in the long-term: much faster pace of drug discovery and new tech generally.

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

#527

Post by kakacik »

watwut wrote: post #463
kakacik wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do this to themselves and willingly, no spooky evil capitalists behind the curtains are necessary. People love money and what they can bring on the table, people often hate each other ie within families stiffed by peer pressure and expectations of mentalities formed in another very different era, people love discovering new countries and cultures. And so on and on. Ie me - I love my parents, my childhood was n…

But kids in those strict societies stay with parents more, help them and treat them better. Meanwhile, you dont care about them except for them being potential resource of free work. And I mean, you idea of local comunity is all about other people doing free work for you and then tolerating your peculiarities with no reciprocation. So, I dont think that is much of an argument here.

Maybe I phrased wrongly (not a native speaker) but what you say is incorrect. I am not free coasting on parents, in contrary my first years all my earning went into providing them a good home for rest of their lives, while living in tiny rental rooms. You have no idea from sort of poor background I come from, most western kids have no clue. It was a massive improvement of QoL for them that they would never be able to afford themselves and they still appreciate it massively. Since we live 1500km from them they help with kids literally few hours per year, not a burden for anybody involved.

But freedom to chose with whom we spend our time is a thing, no matter how much people like you try to force their righteous values that are the only proper true way (TM) on everybody else. I am old enough and over time met plenty of folks like that, be it religious or other forms, they are at the end the same as your comment.

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

#528

Post by muldvarp »

james_oofou wrote: post #526
muldvarp wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More productivity at same cost = More profit for companies. Also, the cost of most of the stuff I (have to) buy (i.e. rent, groceries, ...) is not dominated by the wage of knowledge workers. Or to put it differently: If AI makes me lose my job but doesn't decrease my rent, I'm in a really bad position.

> More profit for companies Agreed. So I don't think it's a bubble. Will also be good for consumers in the long-term: much faster pace of drug discovery and new tech generally.

> Agreed. So I don't think it's a bubble.

I'm not arguing it's a bubble. I'm arguing it's not going to be a "gigantic benefit" for society.

> Will also be good for consumers in the long-term: much faster pace of drug discovery and new tech generally.

Medicine and tech that knowledge workers won't be able to pay for without a job. I also don't think "new tech" is necessarily a good thing societally.

The calculus is easy, really: AI makes 100% of my income worth less but only decreases the cost of a fraction of my expenditures. AI is bad for anyone that works for a living. That's pretty much all of society except for the top x%.

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

#529

Post by dsamarin »

shiandow wrote: post #514
mountainriver wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe once we get another architecture breakthrough, it won't feel so slow.

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

#530

Post by danans »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #417
pyrale wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at industrial revolution I really don't see how one can separate the industrial revolution from colonialism, considering we have chiefs of government in colonial countries on the record saying that colonies are a necessary outlet for industrial goods [1]. Once you've established that link, it's hard to explain that "everyone" benefitted from the industrial revolution. Even disregarding that, the working condit…

Places that luckily avoided colonialism haven’t improved a zilch.

> Places that luckily avoided colonialism haven’t improved a zilch

Thailand and China would like a word.

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