Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 753 posts

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

#611

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

mullingitover wrote: post #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 g…

"Services" are actually fake and it turns out you need to be able to make things to survive. Not for ROI or for trade deficits, but because the world manufacturer sets the rules.

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

#612

Post by chasd00 »

nikanj wrote: post #245
nebula8804 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homer Simpson exemplifies this. Heres a guy that never went to college being the lead safety inspector for a nuclear power plant. He owns his home with three kids a stay at home wife and two cars and two pets(with the occasional elephant that comes and goes). A lot has changed since the writing of these characters and the world now. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2Ey0H7OUE

My go-to example is Al Bundy. He was a loser, but most zoomers can only dream of having a house, a few kids, a car project in the garage et cetera

you guys understand that was a fictional comedy show right? It had no resemblance to reality on purpose.

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

#613

Post by youngtaff »

Spooky23 wrote: post #489
youngtaff wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope… the US has been relying on the rest of the world to fund it's deficit, provide land for military bases to project it's 'power'

There’s interdependence, which is a system that benefits the world and the US. The US taxes the world with inflationary currency, and most of the planet has been relatively peaceful.

> and most of the planet has been relatively peaceful.

People from Vietnam, Iraq and many other countries would probably disagree with you

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

#614

Post by marcosdumay »

Fergusonb wrote: post #436
tclancy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.

Roller coaster tycoon is good. The business software I have to work with from the 80s is a straight up nightmare. And I'd say most old software is in this camp.

Well, most new software is a nightmare too. And recently a lot of it started to try to do the wrong thing by design, what's an extra step into nightmare scenario beyond anything from 80s.

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

#615

Post by tracker1 »

augstein wrote: post #604
therealpygon wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples that might blow my mind?

Public transportation is on a different level and all mayor cities are connected via a high speed rail network. The latter probably will never happen in the US.

Considering the US has far fewer people far more spread out, with two major sets of mountain ranges just in the continental US probably not. It might be possible to have high speed rail on either coast with a single rail line following along a route near I-10 east=west. Even then it's a lot of nature to overcome.

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

#616

Post by Knork-and-Fife »

toephu2 wrote: post #599

What many Americans don't realize is that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of development (developing country vs developed country sense of the word). Obviously both are 'developed' countries at this point but compare Chinese tier 1 cities vs American tier 1 cities. I would argue Chinese tier 1 cities are 10-20 years ahead of their American counterparts. source: visit any Chinese tier 1 city (Be…

I agree with your assessment on the high end of China's development and the lack of awareness of that from people in the US. But I think the story on the low end /lower class is more interesting and I think there is lack of awareness there too.

Even within the US a lot of upper class people don't know what it's like for lower class people here. It's so easy to slip into homelessness because there aren't reasonable options available to many people to live anymore.

In China they still have a huge amount of their population in a developing stage so they still have ample tools and options and knowledge for how to maintain a reasonable life in a less developed state. So it's easier to fall back to a cheaper lifestyle, and culturally it's easier too.

But in the US were generations removed from these other ways of life, so there's no options or cultural acceptance of not living a highly developed way of life. So people just go straight from a nice house or apartment with modern stuff to being homeless with little to no tools to survive.

Just my probably naive thoughts. Would love to hear others takes on this.

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

#617

Post by the8472 »

codyb wrote: post #579
mrinterweb wrote: post #505

Investing in AI infrastructure seems very risky to me. With how short of a lifecycle computing hardware generally has, does it make sense to blow billions on hardware that will need to be replaced in a few years? AI companies have been burning billions on hardware. Will the costs of that hardware be covered by profits before the hardware lifecycle is up? That's a big gamble. We used to talk about AI as having no moat…

Considering we're two years in and everyone's still... talking about chatbots pretty much. Yea, I'd say that's a hell of a gamble. Of course the hardware can probably be repurposed towards crypto mining afterwards, so hey!

The chatbot focus may be a news/accessibility bias. Take a look at deepmind's research blog to see applications in more areas.

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

#618

Post by postflopclarity »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #605
toephu2 wrote: post #599

What many Americans don't realize is that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of development (developing country vs developed country sense of the word). Obviously both are 'developed' countries at this point but compare Chinese tier 1 cities vs American tier 1 cities. I would argue Chinese tier 1 cities are 10-20 years ahead of their American counterparts. source: visit any Chinese tier 1 city (Be…

>clean streets, no homeless, practically zero crime The US regressed on this heavily in the last generation.

no it didn't. crime rates have been steadily declining for over 30 years

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

#619

Post by bsder »

kranke155 wrote: post #237
bsder wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. I'm SUPER doubtful of this. When I last bumped into this, the local Amazon warehouse paid more than all the local manufacturing. It wasn't even close. Local manufacturing got used to being a local monopoly and being able to underpay. Now that they're not a monopoly, all they do is whine and complain…

The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary when other countries were selling their goods in the US market without impediment. Tariffs were supposed to fix that, but now I don’t know if they are effective at all.

> The issue is of course there is no market for US made goods at a good salary

The Smarter Every Day scrubber demonstrates that is not true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

The problem is that the US has systematically destroyed all the ecosystem required to manufacture by outsourcing everything.

Maximally efficient is minimally robust.

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

#620

Post by stouset »

Pulcinella wrote: post #118
stouset wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but this is a ridiculous take. $0.05/hr is $104 a year for a full-time job. Zero people are going to have that be the tipping point for them to take on a monotonous, often physically draining job that they’d otherwise turn down.

Yes that is my point. What business owners consider "significant" and what sane people consider significant are often quite different.

I apologize, I misread this and thought you were suggesting that $0.05 was significant.
Post reply on HN