Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom. When I say magic here, I mean it; because of the ~38T national debt bomb, a big boost is not enough. If AI doesn't completely transform our economy, the massive capital misallocation combined with the national debt is going to cause our economy to implode.
Dot com bust was 50% of S&P / 80% on Nasdaq... we survived it..
For Nvidia: all it will take is for one smart grad student to find a better training algorithm to destroy 75% of their value.
Why I think a better algorithm is out there:
Total installed GPU Tflops = 4 billion. Tflops of human brain = 1 million
It's questionable a mere algorithm would get us there without a fundamental change in computer architecture. (in terms of Intelligence / W)
I don't think so. We've already seen several generations of better training algorithms, but they all rely on CUDA, hence on NVidia.
that said, if all the current infrastructure could run brain-equivalent models at 20W each, I'd wager we would have much more demand than currently.
But on the whole, I'm not too worried.
I don't live in the US, but I'm rather worried.
It's quite possible that the American Century will end with a massive crash, and outside of the US, Europe will probably suffer quite a bit of damage too if we don't detach ourselves more from the US, but I still think most of the world will be fine. Though I will admit that could be partially wishful thinking.
Maybe we should learn from some revolutionary history, then.
Now invest in my Ai company, 100mil at 10bn valuation, can't fail, too big.
If AI is an executioner's blow to your opponent by enabling you to dominate them in terms of hacking, economy, government, politics, etc. kinetic strikes are more than justified. You could destroy most of the US's ability to create AI for decades with Pearl Harbor-esque first strikes.
Do people think countries are just going to roll over and die?
What the global masses want are good food, nice houses, fast transportation, TVs and cell phones... Physical comforts.
It doesn't matter what a superintelligence dreams up if you can't physically produce any of it. As the article says, China is the only place that actually has the manufacturing and robotics capability.
In the US we maybe have a hope of seeing more miracle healthcare, marginally more optimized industrial agriculture, and I guess even more lethal military technology. At best it can design all the factories and energy plants we are missing.
And putting all the white collar knowledge workers out of work- what would that accomplish? People aren't ready for the massive social reorganization that this tech would imply. Would it even survive the revolution it causes??
So the biggest achievement of this amazing new technology is to artificially prop up Wall Street?
For those who can read the tea leaves --- it's absolutely a bubble --- a financial bubble.
The real reason why China is ahead in many areas is because their leadership is a little more technologically savvy and progressive than ours.
If this really is a pre-war economy, we have invested heavily in unproven tech which in my opinion is a risky move that leaves the US highly vulnerable.
Even one wasn't _that_ cynical about AI, but yeah, this is clearly one possible reading of the events. I'm in no hurry to live in the future that it entails, though.
In my book, prosperity and progress is measured in Terajoules. If you have free, clean and abundant energy, you have industry, jobs, every fucking thing a healthy economy should want or need to have.
And on the other side, I think the Chinese are deluding themselves on robotics.
For example, if they try to increase the birthrate by liberalising the economy, reducing social control measures (e.g. hukou), etc. it will give the people the tools to rise up. But it would potentially fix the economy long term.
On the other hand, if they try to crack down on freedom to ensure their own power and economic survival - it will collapse the birthrate even further and/or cause revolt.
Lastly, if they do nothing the economy will collapse under the weight of the one child policy.
Robots would be the perfect solution - birthrates can collapse, they can maintain economic control - and their "workforce" will never decrease. It's of course a pipe-dream.
This line of thinking is of course similar to how the US requires the forever growth of the services economy which drives the need/hope for AI to solve that problem.
China's birthrate has fallen like it has in other richer countries because people have become rich and the amount of time and money needed to raise a kid is expensive. Becoming even richer won't help things at all.
Freedom has little to do with the birthrate, you could even say a crackdown on liberalization that has occurred would make china poorer and therefore the birthrate would go up.
China just wants to be rich, robots are one way to do that with the demographics that happen in rich economies.
Haha okay. Have you met people? Have you seen what they’re using it for? The users of LLMs do not care if they have to pay some of their wages to avoid working and learning. Even if it means they will no longer receives wages (or even close to the same wages) in the long term.
LLMs are as much of a feature of an existing technology as computers are features of electricity. ML and neural networks have been around for a long time and the transition to LLM usage for us feels like "yup, another feature, just a really good auto-complete".
For most users of LLMs, this is a magical feature that answers any questions and saves so much time and effort. I would even dare say that LLMs are a bigger leap in technology than the internet itself was. The internet connected people, "AI" made it so that we need less of each other!
What was the cause of the enlightenment and renaissance period in europe that led to a boom in science, technology and the industrial revolution which is responsible for computers to begin with? It was the discovery of the new world and the expansion of europe into asia and africa. Get gold and pearls from the new world and sell use it to buy things in the near and far east. This meant people can spend time studying science, but it also meant military R&D. Better ships, better guns,better cannons. You need better science for that. Not just for colonization but the competition between european powers.
What's my point? AI/LLMs, are a leap in that people can now do a lot less things they don't want to do. Even if it means social instability. There is a very active arms-race in military capability, disinformation, control of markets and influence of governments going on as we speak. and this in turn is going to result in better and better improvements in every sector.
The internet meant we had to learn new things, move to more efficient work. LLMs meant without learning as much we tell the computer to do things and all it needs is guidance and some correction.
We all see the fads and the hype all over. But there are very real and very dramatic advantages and values to be extracted from LLMs, which in the long run would be the equivalent of the industrial revolution.
The pessimism feels a lot like people were being pessimistic about the internet back in the 90s.
AI isn't just too big to fail, it isn't something that can fail. Can long distance communication "fail" , can electronic computing fail? can transportation on wheels fail?
All the grifters slapping AI on everything will fail, but the AI tech and all the value and change that comes with it, isn't something worth even consider as having a potential for failure.
(sorry for the long post)
LOL fuck this, the stock market deserves to burn to the ground.
Aggressiveness is a requirement for doing a start-up in times of constrained capitalism
Low quality is driven the by the availability of capital for dumb ideas.
So... a while now?
Being anti-establishment should not be viewed as a sin, unless in extreme cases.
The facade of "critical and rational thinker" has all but completely fallen away and this place has revealed itself for the true ideological echo chamber that it is.
So yes, they deserve a haircut.
But I’m all ears. Now that you’ve diagnosed how 401K investing fools get what they deserve, care to offer any alternative solutions as to the entire work force should have been saving towards retirement.
At least give those of us brave (or stupid) enough to do something different with the money the option to.
We're talking about regular folks who want to do nothing else but secure their future in the face of a market that regularly tries to screw it up.
Can you explain why you suggest "deserve"?
*anyone American who doesn't own stock
Honestly you don't have to believe me, I'm trying to make some things clear to drive change but if you don't want to take a critical look at the world around you and try to push for things to get better, that's your call.