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The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and powe
by sashank_1509 2mo ago
The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.
The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.
Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.
But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.
- macintux 2mo ago> then put them on UBI You may be too optimistic.
- vjvjvjvjghv 2mo ago“ put them on UBI” Never, ever will they do that. It’s the same bullshit like Musk telling people not to save for retirement. He can distribute his stock by now but instead he is grabbing on to more money. If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now. No way they are going to share the wealth.
- xienze 2mo ago> If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now. Well yeah. Realistically how much money do you think is available to hand out to every single person? Not enough for everyone to live comfortably. And if there was enough, you'd get large swathes of otherwise economically productive groups (aka the tax cattle schemes like this require) just deciding to drop out of the workforce.
- ETH_start 2mo agoEvery single investment aimed at deploying labor-saving innovation has the impact of reducing the number of workers you need per unit of output. That does not mean fewer jobs, it means that jobs graduate to higher order ones that produce more, and it means more goods/services chasing the fixed supply of workers, translating to deflation (higher real wages / more purchasing power).
- DangitBobby 2mo agoAssuming there's no end to productive uses for labor, of course.
- ETH_start 2mo agoThere's no end, because AI is deliberately not given full human capabilities. Human beings are dangerous, and no company wants to create AI that can pose the same danger. But those same capabilities that make humans dangerous also let them do tasks that AI cannot.