> Big picture, to drive a 10% return on our modeled AI investments through 2030 would require ~$650 billion of annual revenue into perpetuity, which is an astonishingly large number. But for context, that equates to 58bp of global GDP, or $34.72/month from every current iPhone user...
As a current iPhone user, I'm not signing up for that especially if it is on top of the monthly cell service fee.
I do realize though that you were trying to provide useful context.
I agree, and would add that it’s contributing to inflation in hard assets.
Basically:
* it’s a safe bet that labor will have lower value in 2031 than it has today
* if you have a billion to spend, and you agree, you will be inclined to put your wealth into hard assets, because AI depends on them
In a really abstract way, the world is not responsible for feeding a new class of workers: robots.
And robots consume electricity, water, space, and generate heat.
Which is why those sectors are feeling the affects of supply and demand.
I don't consider that to be saying that society "owes" me something. I regard it mutually beneficial, not some kind of debt/debtor relationship.
Where are all the geeks that grew up on Trek and want to create a better future where society provides for it's citizens?
You know, in phrases like "you owe it to your spouse/sibling/friend/self to...", people aren't talking about formal debt. Please try to keep that kind of meaning in mind when people say that society owes its people.
Society owes you nothing.
Your premise is false.
If AI makes workers more productive, labor will have higher value than it has today. Which specific workers are winning in that scenario may vary tremendously, of course, but I don't think anyone is seriously claiming AI will make everyone less productive.
I said labor would have “lower value” after AI progresses further and further.
My statement reflects that increased productivity means that fewer people are required to generate the same amount of economic output.
You twisted my statement and said “nobody is hiring.”
Which isn’t what I said.
People have been singing that since the industrial revolution started.
What makes you think it's different this time? Other times increased productivity yielded fewer people doing what a machine suddenly can do. But never fewer people employed or smaller overall economy.
You can argue that our populations are older than ever before. There aren't enough kids, and consumers are saturated with consumption opportunities.
That's maybe never happened before during the industrial revolution. But it's orthogonal to AI.
Workers being more productive does not necessarily translate to workers getting more leverage or a larger piece of the pie.
I think with a smaller employee pool though it is unlikely that it all evens out without the AI providers holding the users hostage for quarterly profits' sake.
It’s not a challenge at all.
To win, all you need is to starve your competitors of RAM.
RAM is the lifeblood of AI, without RAM, AI doesn’t work.
> Sample HBF modules are expected in the second half of 2026, with the first AI inference hardware integrating the tech anticipated in early 2027.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/sandisk-and-sk-hy...
(Though maybe it ends up being better if you're doing lots of random tiny 4k reads. It's hard to tell because the technology is discontinued as you say, whereas NAND has kept progressing.)
Think outside the coastal high paid SWE bubble and realize vast swathes of people use 5 year old phones on a $25/phone family mobile plan.
Retirees, youth, blue collar, lots of people who don’t want/need AI or wouldn’t fork out $140 for their family of 4 to access it.
$35/head is a pretty high bar if you compare to per capita total streaming subscriptions across music and movies across all providers for example.
Even if scaling hit a wall, commoditizing what we have now would do it. We have so much scaffolding and organizational overhang with the current models, it’s crazy.
That's far larger than the population of the USA (unclear to me if that 650bb number is global or USA only) but by sheer scale this is assuming that these companies can collect that fee from a global customer base - including users in developing economies, EU, China, etc. and after the middleman fees are accounted for.
The comments in this thread seem to be thinking within the context of 'the poorest in their nation'. This calculation assumes collecting this fee from among 'the poorest in the world'.
Sure, 1.56bb users could also be interpreted as 'the wealthiest 20% of the world'. But the tail is especially long on this curve given how wealth is concentrated in a small percentage of the global population (1% of users have 50% of wealth).
Obviously, China will protect its homegrown AI industry. Current geopolitics trending towards US decoupling in Europe might slow it. But under the old status quo, US AI would have been rapidly adopted in the EU (and it still might. It depends greatly on how much of the Trump Doctrine outlasts the current administration).
Developing countries eventually adopt new technologies. First they adopted personal computers and became customers of Microsoft, then they adopted the Internet and became customers of Google, they adopted smartphones and became customers of Apple. Eventually they will adopt AI and become customers of someone. The question is whether it will be US tech or Chinese tech.
Or obviously it can be spread out, e.g. ~1% additional increase over 5 years.
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2026-01/gdp3q25-upda...
Given how much of the spending is hard goods and simply not AI-able (rent, most of housing new construction, most of other goods, most health care, much of other services), the replacement theory would require a massive displacement.
#/media/File:GDP_per_capita_development_in_China_1913_to_1950.svg){kind=link}
Developed countries have slow growth because they need to invent the improvements not just copy what works from other countries.
Starting at 1949 is overly generous IMO, but yes the purges that followed didn’t help.
Chinese GDP was higher during WWII than over the next several years, the actual minimum 1959 to 1961 was well into communist rule. Literally CCP rule was worse than the anarchy of civically war, it’s right up there with the insanity of Pol Pot.
There was no GDP data under KMT - it wasn't even formally calculated.
CCP started GDP calculations, but using soviet MPS GDP accounting system that basically omitted services and lowballed production prices.
The only GDP data we have that is pseudo normalized are via estimates like Maddison project. Even they don't bother to recompose China/KMT data during WW2. The TLDR is prewar peak 1939 data (right before JP invasion) around 288B, PRC took over in 1949, GDP was 245B in 1950, grew to 306B by 1952. GLF tanked GDP from 460b to 350B... i.e. the worst case scenario of GLF floor was still 40% larger than 1950.
E: Note wiki data links to ourworldindata that pulls from Maddison and in table form KMT/WW2 data is not available and only pulling from closest data point 1938/1950 and naively extrapolating per capita. Because KMT data doesn't exist.
At the low end of economic output starvation or the lack thereof is a strong indication of GDP. You do need to adjust for exports and imports but you don’t need to have a particularly deep insight into the economy beyond that.
> starvation or the lack thereof is a strong indication of GDP
No that's just an indicator that some cohort starved due to distribution failure. And to be blunt... that cohort was rural / peasants doing mostly subsistence agriculture tier production that do not count much towards GDP. An urban worker in industry can generate 10x GDP surplus than farmers in a commune.
Hence starvation (mostly in rural) has disproportionately less GDP weight vs urban worker productivity. An economy losing millions of peasants while still modernizing/industrializing can easily maintain higher total GDP than peaceful agrarian society. AKA CCP speed running first 5 year plan post WW2 raised the GDP floor so much that they can unalive 10s of millions of peasants and still have higher GDP vs pre/post war which, was incidentally also not peaceful agrarian society, but even messier interregnum shitshow with significantly shit state capacity than relatively unified postwar PRC under CCP. Republican Era KMT (during anarchy/civil war) simply couldn't organize fragmented China to be as productive as PRC under CCP, who can lose millions of peasants with marginal productivity of labour near zero and still do massively better in gdp/economic terms.
Re-education camps don’t generate value. They didn’t have a surplus of urban workers instead Mow just destroyed the economy. Killing off the educated doctors etc isn’t a free action, it has negative consequences.
China literally had net migration out of cities, so no this wasn’t over investment in industry or a distribution issue this was just abject failure and total economic collapse. Total Anarchy would have been better for the economy than Mao.
1. Mass starvation at a few points due to central planning errors
2. Horrifying purges and paranoia that cannot be excused as "errors"
3. Achieving mass literacy and a partially industrial economy in a single generation, from a medeival starting point.
Most good Americans who paid attention in civics class learned 1 and 2 very well without truly appreciating 3.
You have to understand that they were coming from a peasant economy where nobody could even read. It's an accomplishment despite Mao's shortcomings and awful deeds. And look at the scoreboard today. Highest GDP by purchasing power parity in the world. Xiaomi cars are nicer than Teslas, only non-American tech industry, high speed rail, etc etc.
There’s a long list of countries that industrialized more quickly without suffering such internal economic issues. The USSR and China suffered because of poor governance not industrialization.
Second, Mass literacy occurs via teaching kids. It has little to do with what the wider economy as seen by both modern and historic literacy rates.
It’s been 65 years since the Chinese famine, what actually fixed the country was economic reforms. MAO’s death helped but the system simply didn’t work so they tried something else.
Between 1954/ 1959 PRC exchanged material for capita goods and Soviet training speed run industrialization. AKA they were turning surplus rocks they couldn't process into machines so they can process non export into capita stock. You know, developing. This economic/history 101.
Mao even including GLF engineered one of the greatest most condensed human uplift effort. World Bank summary of CCP progress from postwar to 70s, i.e. under Mao noted how PRC, relative to developing pears was significantly more industrialized, like 40% vs low income avg 25% share of economy. With matching proxy indicators like 3x energy consumption per capita vs India, 2x literacy, 1/3 infant mortality rate. aka Mao speedrun PRC to middle income industrial levels - GLF one step back, 5 step forward success. State provided services were also assessed to be far more effective in meeting basic needs vs low income peers. Life expectancy 65yrs vs 50yrs (India) for low income... "outstandingly high" in WB remark. WB concludes CCP efforts by late 70s... again Mao's doing left "low-income groups far better off in terms of basic needs than their counterparts in most other poor countries"... "most remarkable achievement during the past three decades".
All the subsequent snowballing from Deng, not possible without Mao building a captive, mobile, diciplined rural workforce with high industrial experience, reeducating masses to be fungible workers for migrant economy.
In retrospect, GLF in fact, close to free action. Post WW2 PRC was so devoid of talent that Mao could depopulate cities and slap doctors around with trivial long term penalty option. Starting proper industrialization, mass mobilizing low end barefoot doctors alone out state capacities GLF/CR missteps and saved more lives than it bled. i.e. even in terms of mortality vs death averted, Mao comes out massively ahead. That +15 years above baseline life expectancy x 1000 billion new births is about ~200m lives worth. This not accounting averted deaths of countries who started similarly but did not poverty / malnutrition alleviate early enough, i.e. India generating GLF deaths every few years over decades. That averted another 200m deaths. Most of this attributed to Mao speedrunning nation building did actually solve famine after GLF via all the infra built. Something that historically every Chinese polity had to worry about.
Any leader who improved HDI for as much people in as short of a time as Mao would have been given a Nobel Economics Prize and Nobel Peace Prize. Fixating on spike of deaths at PRC scale is boring libtard innumeracy, i.e. ~4% which plenty of leaders of matched/exceeded. Not nice but completely valid to treat human resources as resource and trade for long term gains. Mao increased PRC industrial output by like 30x, from macro economic utilitarian, HDI trend line goes up, PRC brrrting growth, dead peasants and sad elites simply doesn't fucking matter, it's minor shock to overall system capacity which Mao built so much in so fast that it raised aggregate Chinese HDI above most peers even if it also broke a few millions of eggs.
This wasn’t an exchange of good this was a subsidy. Loan repayments at extremely generous 1% interest rates. The use of raw materials shows just how poorly their efforts where despite the aid.
You can try and repaint history into a history of pulling themselves up, but the reality is they had a high literacy rate and for the time period a well functioning economy before the communists took over. Afterwards 50 million people starved to death that’s not progress that’s horrifying inefficiency writ large.
The CCP still has a hate boner for Taiwan because it shows they are objectively doing a bad job as that fragment of the same country still has a higher standard of living and better technology despite the massive disadvantages of vastly smaller economies of scale.
Chinese literacy rates was fucking pre CCP, it was agrarian nation that CCP uplifted. If you want to cope with repainting history, go accuse world bank... in the 80s, by every metric except human lives, CCP was horrifyingly efficient, precisely because they value human lives less.
What techstack does TW have that PRC doesn't? TSMC based off foreign tech stack. Let's not forget ROC is also outcome of subsidy / finance program by US. The difference between PRC and ROC is PRC sugar daddy was poor USSR, TW was rich US, and population scale means US could injected more to smaller pop to bring up development. All while US+co sanctioning PRC btw, hence PRC succeeded where TW has not, and did so on hard mode.
Smaller economies of scale is precisely why TW/ROC is unimpressive, TW should be much richer for how small it is and how lavishly it was rewarded. There's reason TW has to literally ban TWners from working in PRC high end industries... because PRC tier1 opportunities has vastly exceeded TW.
We could have simply not calculated imputed rent (or all of rents).
Certainly, as just a few examples, they are not for the well-being of the Uyghar population or pro-democracy activists or journalists investigating human rights violation or supporters of Tibetan independence.
I hope you understand that not everyone agrees with your opinion on what is best for the populations best interest.
In 1979, median income in the US was $16,530 USD a year.
Not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
Apple will be around in a hundred years.
Will the USA?
By the 19th century, the rise of nation-states accelerated due to the spread of nationalism, the decline of feudal structures, and the unification of countries like Germany (1871) and Italy (1861). Centralized governments, uniform laws, national education systems, and a sense of collective identity became defining features. The French Revolution (1789) played a pivotal role by promoting citizenship, legal equality, and national sovereignty over dynastic rule
Maybe in 2300 they'll say something similar about nationalism
The world is changing fast.
Bunch of tiny companies would love to hire a mathematician to optimise what they are doing to get a 5-10% improvement. Unfortunately a 5-10% improvement in a small business can't justify the cost of hiring another person, and good mathematicians with business sense and empathy are a rare commodity.
The list of people claiming that maths won't work who then get bulldozed by mathematicians is long.
At some point you're stacking bricks and hitting nails.
AI just won't make you stack bricks much faster :)
You can reduce quality of cleaning. But it's very hard to clean faster and better at the same time.
These industries are not going to be optimized by an AI. The only optimization is lower overhead or lower salaries.
Sure, we could have robots in daycare, but I don't think lack of AI is why my wife would have concerns :)
Teachers, cleaners, and daycare workers may see 0% gains, but don't be surprised if that is made up for by 10% gains the productivity of tech, law, marketing, advertising, manufacturing, government, etc. (okay maybe not government).
Consider all the labor and capital spent across all the advertising real estate in the world. Commercial, online ads, billboards, labeling. The inputs to make all these things are now greatly reduced. To increase productivity, it doesn't matter that the market is flooded, just that it's much easier to make these things.