811–820 of 1001 posts
The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition. Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be differ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is private capital. yes, we are in an era of big projects and big capital deployment. is that synonymous with centralized autarky? i don’t agree
This is an amount that would be a meaningful change to most US states' gross annual economic output that we're talking about, and a few people control it. Sounds pretty centralized to me. The fact that a handful of individuals have half a trillion dollars to throw at something that may or may not work while working people can pay the price of a decent used car each year, every year to their health insurance company o…
This money is managed by small amounts of people but it is aggregated from millions of investors, most of these are public companies. The US spends over 10x that amount on healthcare each year.
This is a Military project. Have no doubts about it.
The data centres were already being built. All of these companies have been dumping tonnes of money into AI and will continue to dump tonnes of money into AI. It's just more of the same, but they had to do a big announcement with Trump to pander to his ego and somehow make it about him. Like he engineered this Stargate thing. The whole embarrassing spectacle was likely arranged by Ellison.
I was bullish on OpenAI, but honestly I don't see any path forward where they have any differentiating value that justifies even a tenth of the valuation. Their video AI is simply terrible. Dall-E 2 is matched by many competitors. 4o and o1 and good, but already have been eclipsed by a number of competitors, including an open source Chinese option.
My work has almost entirely transitioned to competitors, and Google's latest updates have quietly absolutely trounced OpenAI's offering. Like, Gemini has quietly become the best AI platform in the game.
That's all neither here nor there, but I just don't care what Altman and crew have to say any more. They are not leaders in the space. They are, in many ways, has beens.
This is a Military project. Have no doubts about it.
The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition. Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be differ…
The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition. Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be differ…
I'm confused and a bit disturbed; honestly having a very difficult time internalizing and processing this information. This announcement is making me wonder if I'm poorly calibrated on the current progress of AI development and the potential path forward. Is the key idea here that current AI development has figured out enough to brute force a path towards AGI? Or I guess the alternative is that they expect to figure…
The thing about investments, specifically in the world of tech startups and VC money, is that speculation is not something you merely capitalize on as an investor, it's also something you capitalize on as a business. Investors desperately want to speculate (gamble) on AI to scratch that itch, to the tune of $500 billion, apparently.
So this says less about, 'Are we close to AGI?' or, 'Is it worth it?' and more about, 'Are people really willing to gamble this much?'. Collectively, yes, they are.
The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition. Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be differ…
this is private capital. yes, we are in an era of big projects and big capital deployment. is that synonymous with centralized autarky? i don’t agree
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For less than this same price tag, we could’ve eliminated student loan debt for ~20 million Americans. It would in turn open a myriad number of opportunities, like owning a home and/or feeling more comfortable starting a family. It would stimulate the economy in predictable ways. Instead we gave a small number of people all of this money for a moonshot in a state where they squabble over who’s allowed to use which ba…
The problem with allowing student debt to rack up to these levels and then cancelling it is that it would embolden universities to ask even higher tuition. A second problem is that not all students get the benefit, some already paid off their debts or a large part of it. It would be unfair to them.
Instead of starting a new better world, we'll just stick with the old one that sucks because we don't want to be unfair. What an awful, awful way to look at the world.