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I can't read the article but that won't stop me from commenting.. This year alone something like 400B was spent on investing in chips, datacenters, electricity

I can't read the article but that won't stop me from commenting.. This year alone something like 400B was spent on investing in chips, datacenters, electricity buildouts. That's 400B that could have otherwise been invested in people. While i don't doubt that people will find a few solid business cases for LLMs, i am on team-bubble. I don't think this investment will add 400B worth of value and I very much doubt that this 400B is any good for future growth or long-term aspirations of AGI. Investing 400B into people and (tech) manufacturing would be a solid long-term bet with benefits.

darth_avocado 1y ago
Bah, all of that is still employing people. Companies have completed almost $1T of stock buybacks this year. Since 2018, with the exception of 2020, that number has been between $800B and $1T every single year. And that number has been more than $500B since the 2008 recession. AI spend is bad but it’s not even close to how much stock buybacks have ruined the employee wages and employment prospects.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  You think the companies are just going to give you the money if they don't do buybacks?
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    No but the point I was making was that AI investments at least generate jobs and allow money to flow to people, stock buybacks don’t even do that and are much bigger in magnitude.
    - bigbadfeline 1y ago
      > that AI investments at least generate jobs Nobody said they don't, but these are very few highly payed jobs dwarfed by the number of lost jobs due to capital misallocation. That's the point of the OP which for some reason got lost in discussions of unrelated issues like outsourcing. Besides, a lot of the AI investments go to Taiwan and other Asian countries where all of the AI hardware is made which makes non-AI hardware more expensive too - a huge cost on the economy. The recent Taiwanese factories in the US don't change that.
- danny_codes 1y ago
  It’s mildly infuriating that we keep cutting corporate tax rates and using debt to finance public spending instead. That trillion dollars of buybacks would balance the budget with likely minimal impact on GDP (I mean clearly these companies don’t need the money).
zero_shift 1y ago
Imagine if 10% of that money had been spent just training young people, or on a new cohort of PhDs. Imagine what benefits we would have reaped in a decade's time.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  With $400B you should be able to do pretty much anything you set your mind on. Want to do to Mars, not a problem. End world hunger, $400B will do that in about ten years. You can do ANYTHING with $400B, yet OpenAI want's to sell erotic chats and show you ads? I'm not saying that LLMs and the current AIs aren't useful, but they aren't worth even close to $400B. Some of the progress, especially in the medical field, is amazing, but the spending is completely out of proportion with the gains. It only works because right now people like Sam Altman has sold people with money on the idea and now they have to continue to peddle their sneak oil, hoping that the money won't dry up.

darth_avocado 1y ago

Bah, all of that is still employing people. Companies have completed almost $1T of stock buybacks this year. Since 2018, with the exception of 2020, that number has been between $800B and $1T every single year. And that number has been more than $500B since the 2008 recession. AI spend is bad but it’s not even close to how much stock buybacks have ruined the employee wages and employment prospects.

terminalshort 1y ago
You think the companies are just going to give you the money if they don't do buybacks?
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  No but the point I was making was that AI investments at least generate jobs and allow money to flow to people, stock buybacks don’t even do that and are much bigger in magnitude.
  - bigbadfeline 1y ago
    > that AI investments at least generate jobs Nobody said they don't, but these are very few highly payed jobs dwarfed by the number of lost jobs due to capital misallocation. That's the point of the OP which for some reason got lost in discussions of unrelated issues like outsourcing. Besides, a lot of the AI investments go to Taiwan and other Asian countries where all of the AI hardware is made which makes non-AI hardware more expensive too - a huge cost on the economy. The recent Taiwanese factories in the US don't change that.
danny_codes 1y ago
It’s mildly infuriating that we keep cutting corporate tax rates and using debt to finance public spending instead. That trillion dollars of buybacks would balance the budget with likely minimal impact on GDP (I mean clearly these companies don’t need the money).

zero_shift 1y ago

Imagine if 10% of that money had been spent just training young people, or on a new cohort of PhDs. Imagine what benefits we would have reaped in a decade's time.

mrweasel 1y ago
With $400B you should be able to do pretty much anything you set your mind on. Want to do to Mars, not a problem. End world hunger, $400B will do that in about ten years. You can do ANYTHING with $400B, yet OpenAI want's to sell erotic chats and show you ads? I'm not saying that LLMs and the current AIs aren't useful, but they aren't worth even close to $400B. Some of the progress, especially in the medical field, is amazing, but the spending is completely out of proportion with the gains. It only works because right now people like Sam Altman has sold people with money on the idea and now they have to continue to peddle their sneak oil, hoping that the money won't dry up.