This turned out a little bit long. I wonder if anyone will bother reading it.
A lot of this so-called ‘bubble’ is based on capital expenditure in support of a technology that probably doesn’t have the capability AI company ceo’s claim, but does have fascinating, and in terms of how society is currently arranged possibly extremely harmful, potential.
I know what ai companies have done, and what they are likely to do, in the pursuit of profit is shit; I would say that is a capitalism and fascist billionaire issue, rather than a tech issue but ymmv.
And there is the energy consumption problem. I think ai ceo’s and tech broligarchs would privately say ‘compare the energy consumed by my datacentre to the energy consumed by the workers it has replaced and you will see it is fairly efficient…’ (I am saying what I expect they think, not what I agree with).
The concern that the economy currently has all of its eggs in the ai basket seems reasonable, but I see why capital is betting on it as big as it is. Any concerns regarding the economic disruption of an ai bubble popping is nothing compared to what could happen if 50%+ white collar workers are made redundant. We saw the number of essential workers needed per 1 million people during covid: it wasn’t many. Most jobs exist because the people exist to do them, corralled into the pyramidal structure of capitalism, where money trickles upwards. AI might push us into an era where the people exist but the jobs do not.
Anyway, I see this ‘bubble’ as being like the dotcom bubble, which didn’t kill the web when it popped. The gpu’s this capital expenditure has paid for are going to continue to be used, even as this economic period shakes itself out. They aren’t just going to evaporate. It isn’t like worthless debt being packaged up and resold without a chance of it being recouped, even if the prospect of what can be achieved with AI is currently over-valued.
Comparing to the dotcom bubble is what finally made it make sense in my brain. Though I know the toll it took on that sector’s workers and I don’t envy those in fields that are going to be affected the same way.
This turned out a little bit long. I wonder if anyone will bother reading it.
A lot of this so-called ‘bubble’ is based on capital expenditure in support of a technology that probably doesn’t have the capability AI company ceo’s claim, but does have fascinating, and in terms of how society is currently arranged possibly extremely harmful, potential.
I know what ai companies have done, and what they are likely to do, in the pursuit of profit is shit; I would say that is a capitalism and fascist billionaire issue, rather than a tech issue but ymmv.
And there is the energy consumption problem. I think ai ceo’s and tech broligarchs would privately say ‘compare the energy consumed by my datacentre to the energy consumed by the workers it has replaced and you will see it is fairly efficient…’ (I am saying what I expect they think, not what I agree with).
The concern that the economy currently has all of its eggs in the ai basket seems reasonable, but I see why capital is betting on it as big as it is. Any concerns regarding the economic disruption of an ai bubble popping is nothing compared to what could happen if 50%+ white collar workers are made redundant. We saw the number of essential workers needed per 1 million people during covid: it wasn’t many. Most jobs exist because the people exist to do them, corralled into the pyramidal structure of capitalism, where money trickles upwards. AI might push us into an era where the people exist but the jobs do not.
Anyway, I see this ‘bubble’ as being like the dotcom bubble, which didn’t kill the web when it popped. The gpu’s this capital expenditure has paid for are going to continue to be used, even as this economic period shakes itself out. They aren’t just going to evaporate. It isn’t like worthless debt being packaged up and resold without a chance of it being recouped, even if the prospect of what can be achieved with AI is currently over-valued.
Comparing to the dotcom bubble is what finally made it make sense in my brain. Though I know the toll it took on that sector’s workers and I don’t envy those in fields that are going to be affected the same way.