5 ms·

> The correction will be brutal, worse than the Industrial Revolution. Has it occurred to you that there might not be a correction, and that the outcome would

> The correction will be brutal, worse than the Industrial Revolution. Has it occurred to you that there might not be a correction, and that the outcome would still be brutal, at least on par with the industrial revolution.

stasomatic 6mo ago
Do you mean as in there will be no happy ending / reset and no another century of prosperity?
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  I mean as in living through the industrial revolution would have been wild. So whether we have an AI revolution or an AI bubble it's bound to be a roller coaster. And that's without accounting for the various wars (and resultant economic impacts) that are already in progress. A large part of what drove the meat grinder of WWI was (very approximately) the various actors repeatedly misjudging the overall situation and being overly enthusiastic to try out their shiny new weapons systems. If one or more superpowers decide to have a showdown the only thing that might minimize loss of life this time around is (ironically enough) the rise of autonomous weapons systems. Even in that case as we know from WWII the logical outcome is a decimated economy and manufacturing sector regardless of anything else that might happen.
  - rhubarbtree 6mo ago
    Bubble or revolution - not a dichotomy. Bubbles like the AI bubble are a game theoretic outcome of a revolution. Many players invest heavily to avoid losing, but as a whole the market over invests. This leads to a bubble.
  - Aeolun 6mo ago
    > minimize loss of life this time around is (ironically enough) the rise of autonomous weapons systems I think that just means the relative civilian loss of life will increase once again.
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      What strategic merit is there in targeting civilians or life critical infrastructure in a fully automated battlebot scenario? Perhaps it's naive but I would expect stockpiles, datacenters, and any key infrastructure on which the local semiconductor fabrication depends to be the primary targets.
      - kakacik 6mo ago
        Look au Ukraine for answers and how russians target almost purely civilian infrastructure and civilians in terror campaigns every single day and night, same as nazis did to Britain in WWII. With exactly same results but they just double down and send more drones next day. russia is really and empire of the dumb and subjugated serfs at this point (again, history repeats), but they are far from only such place. Dont expect more, most people are not that nice when SHTF.
      - bojan 6mo ago
        The current reality doesn't match your expectations. Russia is using automated warfare to strike what are primarily human life-critical targets.
      - tacet 6mo ago
        The aim of war is to make political change and gain control of opponent. it is much more valuable to capture datacenters, infra and semiconductor fabricaton than to destroy and rebuild it.
- chpatrick 6mo ago
  Imagine you're a typesetter and they just invented computerized printing.
  - Spivak 6mo ago
    These kinds of comments are so confusing to me, is the work you do day to day really so trivial that you can be wholesale replaced by an LLM?
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      We're not talking about the LLMs of today but whatever shows up 2 years from now and then again 2 years after that. Don't look at the present state of things but instead project the trend line.
    - chpatrick 6mo ago
      90% of the actual code writing? Yes. The actually valuable part is coming up with the ideas for what to do. There isn't going to be a great reset where everyone goes back to coding by hand any more than we're going back to typesetting by hand.
SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago
It won't get that far. It's physically impossible to build out the datacenters required for the "AI is actually good and we have mass layoffs" scenario. This Anthropic investment is spurred on because they've already hit a brick wall with capacity. $40B goes a long way, but not for datacenters where nearly every single component and service is now backordered. Even if you could build the DC, the power connection won't be there. The current oil crisis just makes all of that even worse.
- fallat 6mo ago
  We pretty much already had the layoffs, at least that's my perception. The next level of layoffs is probably still 25 years out.
  - SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago
    There's layoffs, certainly. But all the economic indicators suggest those are "bad economy" layoffs dressed up as "AI" layoffs to keep the shareholders happy.
    - bitmasher9 6mo ago
      The real “AI layoffs” are all the people that are PIPed because their colleagues are better at leveraging AI.
      - Spivak 6mo ago
        We must have a very different view of the world because in my neck of the woods companies are desperate for senior talent. And it's become even harder to find seniors now that everyone has access to a machine that can create the appearance of experience.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > The next level of layoffs is probably still 25 years out. Hasn't even been 25 years years since the previous layoffs before the current ones.

stasomatic 6mo ago

Do you mean as in there will be no happy ending / reset and no another century of prosperity?

fc417fc802 6mo ago
I mean as in living through the industrial revolution would have been wild. So whether we have an AI revolution or an AI bubble it's bound to be a roller coaster. And that's without accounting for the various wars (and resultant economic impacts) that are already in progress. A large part of what drove the meat grinder of WWI was (very approximately) the various actors repeatedly misjudging the overall situation and being overly enthusiastic to try out their shiny new weapons systems. If one or more superpowers decide to have a showdown the only thing that might minimize loss of life this time around is (ironically enough) the rise of autonomous weapons systems. Even in that case as we know from WWII the logical outcome is a decimated economy and manufacturing sector regardless of anything else that might happen.
- rhubarbtree 6mo ago
  Bubble or revolution - not a dichotomy. Bubbles like the AI bubble are a game theoretic outcome of a revolution. Many players invest heavily to avoid losing, but as a whole the market over invests. This leads to a bubble.
- Aeolun 6mo ago
  > minimize loss of life this time around is (ironically enough) the rise of autonomous weapons systems I think that just means the relative civilian loss of life will increase once again.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    What strategic merit is there in targeting civilians or life critical infrastructure in a fully automated battlebot scenario? Perhaps it's naive but I would expect stockpiles, datacenters, and any key infrastructure on which the local semiconductor fabrication depends to be the primary targets.
    - kakacik 6mo ago
      Look au Ukraine for answers and how russians target almost purely civilian infrastructure and civilians in terror campaigns every single day and night, same as nazis did to Britain in WWII. With exactly same results but they just double down and send more drones next day. russia is really and empire of the dumb and subjugated serfs at this point (again, history repeats), but they are far from only such place. Dont expect more, most people are not that nice when SHTF.
    - bojan 6mo ago
      The current reality doesn't match your expectations. Russia is using automated warfare to strike what are primarily human life-critical targets.
    - tacet 6mo ago
      The aim of war is to make political change and gain control of opponent. it is much more valuable to capture datacenters, infra and semiconductor fabricaton than to destroy and rebuild it.
chpatrick 6mo ago
Imagine you're a typesetter and they just invented computerized printing.
- Spivak 6mo ago
  These kinds of comments are so confusing to me, is the work you do day to day really so trivial that you can be wholesale replaced by an LLM?
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    We're not talking about the LLMs of today but whatever shows up 2 years from now and then again 2 years after that. Don't look at the present state of things but instead project the trend line.
  - chpatrick 6mo ago
    90% of the actual code writing? Yes. The actually valuable part is coming up with the ideas for what to do. There isn't going to be a great reset where everyone goes back to coding by hand any more than we're going back to typesetting by hand.

SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago

It won't get that far. It's physically impossible to build out the datacenters required for the "AI is actually good and we have mass layoffs" scenario. This Anthropic investment is spurred on because they've already hit a brick wall with capacity. $40B goes a long way, but not for datacenters where nearly every single component and service is now backordered. Even if you could build the DC, the power connection won't be there. The current oil crisis just makes all of that even worse.

fallat 6mo ago
We pretty much already had the layoffs, at least that's my perception. The next level of layoffs is probably still 25 years out.
- SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago
  There's layoffs, certainly. But all the economic indicators suggest those are "bad economy" layoffs dressed up as "AI" layoffs to keep the shareholders happy.
  - bitmasher9 6mo ago
    The real “AI layoffs” are all the people that are PIPed because their colleagues are better at leveraging AI.
    - Spivak 6mo ago
      We must have a very different view of the world because in my neck of the woods companies are desperate for senior talent. And it's become even harder to find seniors now that everyone has access to a machine that can create the appearance of experience.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > The next level of layoffs is probably still 25 years out. Hasn't even been 25 years years since the previous layoffs before the current ones.