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America's $1T AI Gamble

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Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#81

Post by jryan49 »

BosunoB wrote: post #43
jryan49 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how they say with a straight face that when AI takes over they will finally share all the fruits of capital with us.

Y'all gotta stop looking at politics this way. You know why they don't share the fruits of capital with us now? Because Americans hate getting taxed to pay for welfare, and so they've been voting against taxes for 50 years. This whole political landscape changes when people lose their jobs to AI, a thing that everyone thinks should be taxed. In fact, the entire ideological underpinning behind extreme wealth accumulat…

Works great in other countries with high unemployment. That's exactly what happens! People elect a person who says they are going to change everything to fix it and they never get around to it for some reason :)

Just look at the mess south America is in...

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#82

Post by bigbadfeline »

throwaway77385 wrote: post #44
co_king_3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then I'm sorry but unfortunately they are going to be left behind. People who are cut out to be software developers can afford the means of production.

Things that can only be used by an exclusive elite don't tend to survive, unless we're talking super-yachts. AI is only going to work if enough people can actually meaningfully use it. Therefore, the monetisation model will have to adapt in ways that make it sustainable. OpenAI is experimenting with ads. Other companies will just subsidise the living daylights out of their solutions...and a few people will indeed run…

> Now, the pyramid has sort of been turned on its head,

It has, and the financial system enables that, the self-restraint that was promised at the time of gutting Glass-Steagall never materialized.

> But there are limits to this.

Yes and no.

Yes, because there are limits as there's a limit to the load placed on a ship, if you overload it with some cargo, something or somebody must be thrown overboard in order to preserve the ship.

No, because those who're responsible for loading and overloading the ship are the ones commanding and steering it. When they overload the ship they get to throw you overboard and keep your stuff too... there's nothing to compel them to stay within limits and everything to tempt them to do the opposite.

We've been already thrown overboard with regard to hardware purchases, that will spread to other areas with the BS AI excuse.

So many comments, other than yours, around here engage in deep thinking about the profits or losses of Captain Ahab... they miss the point entirely.

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#83

Post by throwaway77385 »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #82
throwaway77385 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that can only be used by an exclusive elite don't tend to survive, unless we're talking super-yachts. AI is only going to work if enough people can actually meaningfully use it. Therefore, the monetisation model will have to adapt in ways that make it sustainable. OpenAI is experimenting with ads. Other companies will just subsidise the living daylights out of their solutions...and a few people will indeed run…

> Now, the pyramid has sort of been turned on its head, It has, and the financial system enables that, the self-restraint that was promised at the time of gutting Glass-Steagall never materialized. > But there are limits to this. Yes and no. Yes, because there are limits as there's a limit to the load placed on a ship, if you overload it with some cargo, something or somebody must be thrown overboard in order to pres…

Salient point, regarding the 'no' bit. I agree completely. But since I was responding to a likely troll, there wasn't much point elaborating further. Thanks for the added information :)

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#84

Post by louiereederson »

mg wrote: post #71
louiereederson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point AI may deliver the level of net economic benefit you reference, but it's not entirely clear that we're there yet. Right now much of the direct monetization occurs via OpenAI and Anthropic, who together have around $30B in annualized revenue. They are burning cash like crazy, though admittedly have potentially sustainable unit economics (gross margins around 40-60% before revenue share). However, they ne…

The earnings do not need to come via direct monetization. Google search revenue for example was over $200B in 2025. This revenue will be tightly coupled to the quality of their AI models in the future.

That is fair but doesn't do much to push back against the risk to the independent model vendors, particularly in consumer. This has represented a huge portion of the AI capex so far. OAI alone represented 2GW of compute in 2025. The point is they are in a fragile position, and so are the economics of AI DC spending in aggregate.

With respect to Google, I'd also wonder about the economics of AI search vs traditional.

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#85

Post by niggernagger »

ericmay wrote: post #45
rozap wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French had a tool for this problem.

Yes, guns, clubs, fire, and steel weapons. And afterward they had the Reign of Terror, and the rise of the French Emperor Napoleon. It seems like it mostly worked out in the long run, though subsequent World Wars left the French Empire as a weakened shell of itself. In the short term, up until Napoleon was finally taken down by the combined British and Prussian forces at Waterloo, it seemed to have led to all sorts o…

[flagged]

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#86

Post by rozap »

sarchertech wrote: post #55
webdoodle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because the U.S. and U.K. conspired against them. The French did everything they could to keep the fire burning, by hosting people from various countries to teach them about revolution. Organizing globally against the rich parasites was hard and expensive back then. Now the only hold back, is that the rich parasites own most of the internet. But WE BUILT IT, and can take back the internet when we finally realize…

I think we need reforms and I’m very much against the accumulation of power that we’ve allowed the billionaire class. But the French Revolution is nothing to emulate. If you’ve read the history of the French Revolution you know that it quickly moved on from rich parasites to murdering and imprisoning people over minor philosophical differences and real or lack of perceived lack of enthusiasm for continued murder. And…

My original (admittedly tongue in cheek) comment is less of a value judgement, and more an observation that if the ruling class doesn't effectively walk the tightrope of exploiting while subduing people, then they stand to lose a whole lot.

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#87

Post by throwaway1114 »

At this year Davos it was said in open text: big LLM supplieers & labs don't have enough demand to have profit that will cover spending. They must compete and provide supply because who win race will get most of the rewards. Geopolitics makes this even worse. So they are over leveraged and now time is running out before house of cards will collapse. All the hype and paid marketing is target to make masses (and more important people who make decisions) believe their story and buy into it. I assume for a person without technical background it's hard to filter signal from noise. It's all about that is hard to see that LLMs are what they are because "they" make great illusion of intelligence and illusion of novel thinking when it fact they just do the math with big text database.

Re: America's $1T AI Gamble

#88

Post by BosunoB »

jryan49 wrote: post #81
BosunoB wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all gotta stop looking at politics this way. You know why they don't share the fruits of capital with us now? Because Americans hate getting taxed to pay for welfare, and so they've been voting against taxes for 50 years. This whole political landscape changes when people lose their jobs to AI, a thing that everyone thinks should be taxed. In fact, the entire ideological underpinning behind extreme wealth accumulat…

Works great in other countries with high unemployment. That's exactly what happens! People elect a person who says they are going to change everything to fix it and they never get around to it for some reason :) Just look at the mess south America is in...

Yes, because current unemployment comes as the result of complex factors that intersect with various groups and ideologies in complex ways. Also, raising employment is a complex task.

When AI takes the jobs, it will be dead simple to the majority of people that the current way of doing things will not work, in the same way it's dead simple to you and me.

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