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

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541–550 of 668 posts

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

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political instability that came with social media isn't great, either.

I question this narrative. While social media is certainly having a negative impact, most democratic societies have relatively short life spans historically speaking. There’s also a tendency for economies to falter, for irrationality to increase, for birth rates to drop, and so on. It would seem that the same trends (roughly) occur in every democracy as it starts to fail.

Yes. The meta problem is the trend toward “I dont’t like X, and I don’t like Y, therefore X is causing Y” thinking.

It’s always been the reactionary’s argument: immigrants cause crime, inter-racial marriage causes poverty, etc, etc.

The real collapse we’re seeing is the liberal / progressive adoption of these fallacies. Social media causes fascism (nevermind the absence of social media in previous collapses into fascism), etc.

Many of the people rightfully dismayed by trends are unwittingly contributing to the changes they dislike.

The correct answer to “I think social media leads to fascism” is not “let’s ban social media”. The correct answer is “let’s study the problem and see what science says”. Abandoning that is giving up.

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

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undeniably better off in every single way. Minimum is that the price of long distance phone calls is now zero, let alone video calls. Being able to speak to family and see them nonstop is incredible.

Why are people much less happy then? https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...

Because they have lost the ability to distinguish correlation from causation?

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

#543
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- cloud gaming service? :D

Eh not really. Maybe retro cloud gaming services. But games haven't stopped getting more demanding every year. Not only are the AI GPUs focused on achieving clusters with great compute performance per watt and dollar rather than making singular GPUs with great raster performance; even the GPUs which are powerful enough for current games won't be powerful enough for games in 5 years. Not to mean that we're still nowhe…

> But games haven't stopped getting more demanding every year.

This is not particularly true.

Even top of the line AAA games make sure they can be played on the current generation consoles which have been around for the last N years. Right now N=5.

Sure you’ll get much better graphics with a high end PC, but those looking for cloud gaming would likely be satisfied with PS5 level graphics which can be pretty good.

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

#544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entry-level total comp for SWEs in the SF Bay Area is probably $250k. A senior dev at a public tech company can easily clear $400k. Really senior engineers at FAANG routinely clear $1M.

I need to move back to the Bay

For senior engineers with some fiscal discipline, it's great, although it's more great to work remotely.

On the more junior end, that $250k goes about as far as $100k in a less expensive region. Keep in mind that the average 1-bedroom rent is $3k+/mo, the average home for a family with kids is $2M, the average PG&E bill for a house is probably $400+, any repairs or remodels will cost you 2x as much as in most other places... and state income taxes are 10% on top of federal.

Most CoL estimates put the cost of living in San Jose at 2x the national average. And that's San Jose.

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

#545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that’s the source of the point. The effort is in finding a way to make it easy to convey. Communication of an idea is almost as critical as its verification now.

I just need to read it one of these days. I keep reading parts of it but never sitting down with it.

You're in luck! A couple years ago he released an "abridged version" of sorts. A Brief History of Inequality is the name. Much more accessible than the 700 pages of Capital in the 21st Century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/97806742...

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

#546
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…

We need investors to fund ideas to find out if they are good or bad. It is called testing.

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

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Uber invented (or at least made widely available) taxi-by-app. Having scores of cab companies, accessed by telephone call, was supremely user-hostile. If the cab companies had gotten together on an app, they might have shortcut Uber and all of its many dubious practices. They finally are starting to but it's much too late.

Taxi-by-app existed pre-Uber, the innovation was making the taxi actual show up. Austin had the apps, and I would order one, and the taxis would get distracted on the way to my house and pick up other fares, so I couldn't go where I wanted. They had every chance to not be outcompeted by Uber, but they couldn't stop being taxis. And, here we are.

> the innovation was making the taxi actual show up

Uber regularly doesn’t show up, just playing with “4… 3… 6… minutes left”. I always have to wait half an hour at a certain location, with a message “Just book a few minutes before your trip.”

I’ve had a friend miss his flight because of Uber not showing up!

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

#548
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Food can also indirectly enhance opioid signaling. What's your point?

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

#549

I'd love to see those "gigantic benefits". Currently, the only positive thing about LLMs I hear regularly is that it made people more productive. They don't get paid more (of course), they're just more productive.

more productivity at same cost = more stuff, cheaper

I don't think I need email marketing spam or useless apps to be cheaper.

The hard trades and manual labor services we consume for everything that matters daily? That's not going to be made cheaper by AI.

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