bigbadfeline
History supports that conclusion even without cynicism. There are insurance loopholes ready to be (re)used as in 2008 AIG case (humorously, AIG isn't AGI).
AIG got bailed out and repaid the money by raising insurance costs and general inflation for everyone. That's commonly passed as a success story (without mentioning the source of repayment funds, of course).
By latest count there are $1.5 Trills invested in AI-related assets owned by life insurance companies which are in turn owned by private equity, mostly dark portfolios there.
As you might expect, almost every state guarantees the funds of life insurance companies, purportedly to protect policy holders, so the states would make any life insurer whole in case of losses... poof, 1.5 Trills will soon to move into the pockets of some VIPs [1]. We're going to learn about the other bailout pathways soon enough.
[1] https://prospect.org/2026/08/03/ai-bailout-could-be-baked-in...
I would rather let people decide for themselves.
> independent repair shops that either won't get those jobs, [ok] cannot actually perform the work due to tech/service monopolies
Part availability and service monopolization are easily fixable by regulation and it's an old practice.
> [ repair shops ] simply lose revenue because the work is shorter
Welcome to the AI economy, where a lot of people lose a lot of work because it became easier and shorter to do.
> They severely reduced the number of components by integrating parts into larger pieces.
Just swap the larger pieces, computers and phones are like that, when they're at all fixable.
But you're denying both basic economic theory and basic political theory. If RAM is to be allocated, it has to be done in a safe manner too. Something like publicly funded and controlled datacenters, protected against data leaks and spying by private interests who want to use people's research to then steal their credit, ideas and businesses.
Let's now move from basic politics to economics - upwards of a Trillion dollars of debt has been sank into AI, most of it for free, subsidized AI services provided both domestically and internationally - how's that for "basic economics"?
But there's more, for $1 trillion, you could build 100 chip factories for RAM or other chips - 100 of them - 10 times more than we now have. Not building any or not building enough, means you're severely overpaying for RAM and compute - how's that for "basic economics"?
If Sam wants to plan the economy for efficiency, let's do it the way it has to be done, simplistic self-serving BS doesn't cut it.
Don't they? Being in debt over the value of their RAM purchases means they are using only borrowed money for it - money is fungible, if not buying any RAM for X dollars would reduce their debt by X dollars, everything else being the same - their RAM is bought entirely on debt - and that's precisely the case for both OpenAI and Anthropic.
Both of them a running a textbook market scalping operation as the OP is suggesting.
What system? Seriously, there are infinite number of systems, it's not a binary choice despite what the ms media and some politicians are claiming.
You forget that we live in the age of AI abundance, "make your living" and "support you financially" aren't arguments with any weight here. Let's get clear about this, because the AI bros did a bait and switch and replaced the promised "AI abundance for you" with "sacrifice yourself for AI".
It's a really important point - math and logic skills are essential for not taking the bait. In other words, besides a science tool and an art, math is a tree where geniuses and not-so-geniuses can sharpen their claws, because being dull is an existential hazard, especially when a bunch of sneaky AI bros are hell-bent on using AI against you.
> if you want your hobby to support you financially, it has to offer enough value for others
Nah, AI is supposed to offer more than enough value for others, it's easy to do, those who can't make it happen should get out of the way, it's that simple. The BS has to stop, it's either deliver AI abundance or get rid of any and all AI altogether. There's no middle ground here, or rather, the middle ground is a swamp of existential hazards.
If a model on rented hardware could manage to launch some country's nuclear weapons, the same could be done by model-armed or model-free humans, spies, etc from other countries - using their specialized tooling they could always do better than any model.
In short, AI doesn't add any new threats to the mix, the defenses against AI are the same as against adversarial humans, and the whole brouhaha is nonsense. Sure, make your defenses impenetrable, use AI for that and it'll stop any I, not only AI.
Depends on how they're stored. Computer chips aren't potato chips, they don't rot, properly stored they can last a really long time, a multitude of storage technologies are available for that purpose.
> Doesnt take long for chips to go out of date.
That used to be the case but it's no longer true. Advanced chips are made by 3 companies total and competition is nowhere to be seen. Then, with every generation of chips, their production costs and prices are rising more than the benefits that generation provides i.e. the benefits curve is flattening faster than cost curve.
Theoretically, China can bring the prices down but they are sanctioned, tariffed and have a huge market of their own to satisfy first.
Unfortunately, "paid for, but not utilized" doesn't result in rapid depreciation in the case of coordinated market scalping. In that case, dark (unused) hardware is kept on storage to actually cause higher prices until them chips can be sold for profit, in the form of services, after eventual deployment.
I suspect, digging a bit deeper would find some shady financial practices that may lead to a taxpayer funded bailout via the insurance loophole.
For using the phones for all tasks formerly accomplished with PCs - people reduced significantly their use and purchase of PCs and replaced them with phones and sometimes tablets. There's nothing "insane" about it, it's a well known fact.
Another well known fact is Altman's promises of AI abundance, that should have been the result for RAM, GPUs and all hardware too. However, not quite unexpectedly, we quickly got the bait and switch instead, we're now supposed to sacrifice ourselves for AI, because look "it knows some math". This is what's insane.
The frontier labs are running a scalping operation on the hardware market, they front run it with large orders depriving potential competitors from reasonably priced hardware and, at the same time, selling that same hardware in the form of premium services back to those who don't have it.
If there's a solution to this mess, it's investment in more fabs, more hardware, more chip-making companies, as it is, the market for chips is highly monopolized and that creates existential and national security risks. More funding for AI is only wasting money on overpriced hardware and energy infrastructure, now is the time to redirect that funding into creating multiple competitive makers of both categories. This is what a properly functioning market would do.
Sorry, but this is either dilettante talk or an unhinged exaggeration - Qwen, DS, GLM and MM are perfectly fine for REAL work, unless you are an overly ambitious vibe coder, but then no model can save you. The Cl hand-holding may feel like something but it won't lead to the completion of real REAL work.
Shareholders know where the money is but it's not where you think it is. People should have learned that already, after watching what happened to the big web platforms.
"directly"? An extraordinary claim with an extraordinary lack of evidence - that's close to the opposite of truth.
> the total cost of which, tangible and psychic, may yet turn out to have been unsurvivable for the species.
The "species" might be doomed you say? All of them or there are exceptions? I'm asking because you talk about the "species" in such a detached and nonchalant manner as if you aren't a member of them. A true member would show some concern, compassion and readiness to act for the preservation of the future, instead of naked bitterness about the past.
That's the case everywhere, FB, YT, even on HN. Not all topics are equally affected but most anything of significance is.
> we find out that reddit leadership refused to act on bots because they were afraid of losing the inflated numbers they brings
Reddit's leadership is in he same boat as everybody else, I would suggest avoiding moral accusations when there are systemic conflicts of interest at play.
The perils of closed models. 1. They can drift over time. 2. They can drift for specific people only - as a result, you'll see some who claim it's OK, and if that's not you, and you're unaware of the possibilities, the resulting confusion can easily take you to the shrink's office. We have been in that boat wrt search for some time now.
I would believe this if you had started fighting existing property taxes first and waited until you have finished that job before trying to prevent non-existent asset taxation.
> I dont expect normal people to have to sell their stock.
Selling stock isn't abnormal, it's done every day. More importantly, people don't have to sell stocks to pay taxes, instead they could use dividends or part of the income they normally use for buying more stocks. The current obsession with growth stocks is part of the problem.
> Capital Gain Tax should just be Income tax.
I wish a good economy could be built without any asset/property taxes but I don't think that's possible. As with everything else, asset taxes can be quite harmful if implemented the wrong way, but that's a different conversation.
No good faith manners are possible with your style of arguing, you didn't answer any of my arguments but you did divert the conversation away from the real issues we started with and into "I'm so injured because you're such a bad person" posturing. Next, I had to figure out how far it'd go and if anything new would come out of it.
> Instead, you denigrated me for my perspective from your very first comment ("death-cult believer")
Nothing new came out, you kept doing it and you will keep doing till the end of times you so desire.
However, while talking to you, I did come across some useful new perspectives, so I'm satisfied with the results and I thank you for your participation, really, I mean it.
I don't have to reflect, I knew why before I started.
> You responded to a comment of mine, and then you proceeded to keep engaging in what is clearly a dead-end dialog with a useless internet stranger.
The "dead-end dialog" should be your point of view, you're the one who thinks that some external force determines the fate of humans regardless of what they think or do. Doing nothing makes sense only within that point of view.
> There must be a reason for that, no?
Of course there is, if I think that something can be done to improve the human condition I would try to study the impediments to it. One of those is the doomerism which is now in vogue and also used by people with much higher social standing than the usual internet strangers.
As I said, the quicker, the merrier - because both are true and understanding that saves time for more productive endeavors.
Why do you keep whining anyway, if there's no hope for humanity, there's no hope for you either, as a confused part of it, it's that simple. Just stay away and don't muddy the waters as some hypersensitive primadonna, with apologies to primadonnas everywhere.
> To believe you love humanity while having such disdain for your fellow human beings
What disdain? You see disdain where there are jobs to be done, but it's all in your head. You're the definition of self-fulfilling prophecy, you've locked yourself in your own prison of despair and hypersensitivity, nobody is doing anything to you, but you keep whining and being "sad', craving to lock everyone in your self-built prison too, out of envy.
People offended by the truth don't work in opposition to good ideas, they're useless anyway, the sooner they reveal their inability to engage with anything of significance - the better.
> And by the way, pretending that people should live by "sticks and stones" and telling yourself people who don't agree with you are just too "sensitive"
I referred to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Apparently, you're unaware of this expression which reveals a lot about you.
People changing the subject to how offended they are, correlates with their lack of sensible ideas. It also correlates with the desire to divert the conversation into insignificant personal posturing and away from anything productive. I'm glad you illustrated that point here.
I gather, because of my insinuations your faith in humanity sank to a new low? It took too little, too fast, what happened to "sticks and stones"? Being too sensitive is the foundation of conflict, it prevents the straight talk necessary for mutual understanding.
> None of my comments here have celebrated my somber expectations for humanity
Your expectations for humanity can only be based on what you expect from yourself, a person who projects his lack of positive ideas to all of humanity should at least be aware of that fact and not try to project the same despair to everyone else - this suggestion should not be viewed as controversial or offensive.
> what makes you think we're going to stop fighting and figuring out how we can take care of each other?
The fact that we haven't explored the vast majority of available options. It will happen when we stop confusing singing Kumbaya with just living in peace - two vastly different notions, e.g. the fact that someone felt offended doesn't mean he should go to war...
You got that backwards. The point is that not rewarding them for their putative efforts to destroy the world makes that outcome less likely.
> If not, then the risk is fictional and doesn't matter.
Again, the same mistake - destroying the world and Ant's actions aren't independent random variables, the latter does matter for the manifestation of the former.
However, with an eye on private AI as a business desperate for attention and profits, the only way out of this is to build open source research AI - better than anything the closed frontiers have to offer. It should be under the full control of the people who use it and trained to support the accepted ethics and citation discipline.
And? The only conclusion I can draw, is that humans need to stop warring with each other and focus on global security and prosperity for all, even if there's only 1% chance of achieving it, that's where all of our efforts should go... but I'm not a death-cult believer, so what do I know.
> The folly is believing that humans are the tip of the only branch that matters to the tree.
Your "tree" resembles a Kali of mass-murder with the consciousness and agency necessary to exterminate any life on earth. Actually it's just chance and the chances are both favorable for humans and highly improvable with sufficient effort - that isn't hard to see when death-cult thinking is done away with.
You're assuming "human development" is some dark force that controls humans but it's not controllable by them, I would describe this as a slightly amusing occultist belief.
Of course, the exact opposite is true, if humans fail to maintain the straight spear of progress it will be their fault and folly, because, objectively, it isn't even hard to maintain.
MS is an entrenched monopoly which is hard to move off of, especially in times of low budgets and tough debt markets. On the other hand, LLMs are reshaping the competitive landscape and MS might be reacting to that threat, in their usual MS way.
This sounds like a knee-jerk reaction and it hamstrings OSS while others gain from LLM assistance. There are better ways to deal with this issue and I predict that OSS projects which blanket-ban LLMs are going to lose out to more competent maintainers.