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Anonymous A started this discussion 18 hours ago#132,862
AI has useful functions in subsuming boring and repetitive tasks: certain kinds of coding, network configuration, advanced query (if cited and checked). It will certainly begin to erode certain SaaS offerings. Much of what is being offered isn’t profitable and is the latest “new new thing” nonsense, like when dot coms were valued based on losses and burn rate.
Robot armies and human displacement in the evolutionary cycle are part of the hype machine. Maybe someday. Moltbook’s most provocative posts are those of human trolls.
Anonymous B double-posted this 18 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 5 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,391
Also there’s like a weird connection between eugenics and the billionaire transhumanists. It’s not a coincidence that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are both rich white guys who grew up in apartheid South Africa in communities that had Nazi sympathies.
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 3 minutes later, 14 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,394
@previous (C)
A ton of companies failed when the .com bubble burst. The internet was originally created by the government, the military, and research universities.
> Also there’s like a weird connection between eugenics and the billionaire transhumanists. It’s not a coincidence that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are both rich white guys who grew up in apartheid South Africa in communities that had Nazi sympathies. > >https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?t=38m15s
They’re insulated from reality by wealth and can have anything they want. They elevate their prejudices to higher missions. Both of the men you mention were privileged rich kids. The types whose lives involved being the boss’s son, then the boss.
The problem with eugenics has always been who gets to decide who is worthy.
On AI, a crash may occur if investor confidence fades as all of these run-up companies scramble for an IPO bottleneck. Are people willing to risk years of “declining adjusted EBITDA margins,” inflated gross margins, and accounting gimmicks like extending the life of assets to reduce depreciation and artificially propel earnings? (I have tech with a 3 year life. I depreciate it over 5-7 instead.)
Then you get into circular financing. So many of these companies cross invest into each other. NVIDIA and Palantir invest in companies that then buy their products. No different than if I hand you $20, you hand it to Dave, he hands it to Boof, who hands it to E. We all count the same $20 to our books in different ways.
> Remember when the .com bubble burst and we didn't have internet anymore?
The winners were companies who used the Internet to power a distribution model for tangible things. Easy examples: Amazon and Netflix. Suddenly, the big box stores that had wiped out the mom and pops has their economies of scale, contingent upon high real estate costs, transformed into cement shoes.
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 23 seconds later, 20 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,398
@1,417,395 (A)
As evil as it all is, I can’t help but laugh when he starts talking about transgenderism and orthodox Christianity in the context of artificial intelligence replacing humanity.
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 29 seconds later, 20 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,399
@1,417,394 (B)
Broadband penetration only went up after 2000, there are more tech companies and more money in tech stocks now than then, and apps have continued to repace physical companies and services.
An AI bubble doesn't mean AI disappears, or use goes down. It means some companies around today that applied it wrong lose value, and then get replaced by companies that apply it right as use continues to increase.
Everyone I know talking about an AI bubble are the same people that think you can ban AI, as if freely copyable software will just disappear into a puff of smoke.
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 14 seconds later, 21 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,400
@1,417,397 (A)
Yes, and those are the companies spending billions of dollars on investing in unprofitable AI models because they’re scared that they haven’t actually invented anything new in a long time.
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 23 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,401
@1,417,397 (A)
Right, and dumb AI applications will go bust in a bubble and there will be other companies that know how to get value out of it efficiently.
AI use will keep going up, and keep replacing human labor.
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 28 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,405
@1,417,402 (B)
Whether a chatbot is really intelligent is irrelevant to the fact that ChatGPT crossed a barrier into a useable technology.
If you can replace your customer support team with a voice bot that can effectively manage a customers account, who cares if it's "really intelligent"? You're talking about philosophy, and that doesnt matter to the businessman decising whether to lay people off.
Neural nera have been around for decades, but we saw an explosion of generated content in just the past few years. Do I need to explain that something fundamentally changed recently?
> Broadband penetration only went up after 2000, there are more tech companies and more money in tech stocks now than then, and apps have continued to repace physical companies and services. > > An AI bubble doesn't mean AI disappears, or use goes down. It means some companies around today that applied it wrong lose value, and then get replaced by companies that apply it right as use continues to increase. > > Everyone I know talking about an AI bubble are the same people that think you can ban AI, as if freely copyable software will just disappear into a puff of smoke.
It won’t disappear. Its usefulness will proliferate. I’m talking about a quasi-veneration of tech as was applied to dot coms. When the Industry Standard wrote glowing profiles of would-be god kings.
Corrections are natural and date to railroads and canals, boom and bust. AI is very much a hype machine. Current investments aren’t leading to the same exponential breakthroughs. A plateau is a problem.
Adoption shows poor returns against metrics at most enterprises. Despite over $10 trillion in global investment, 95% of AI projects fail to deliver measurable impact on P&L (2025 MIT study).
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 40 seconds later, 34 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,409
Now, do I think a lot of people are going to lose their jobs in the near future? Yes, absolutely 100%. Is it because of AI? Nope. It’s because of tariffs.
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 31 seconds later, 35 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,410
@1,417,407 (B)
Great, but that's not what we were talking about.
Whether this already exists, and can already automate jobs is one question.
How you feel about that is a second question.
And whenever someone says AI isn't close to achieving something it's been doing for years, thats an extreme case of denial. When you are denying something that provably exists, it does come off like you have some existential anxiety about it.
Anonymous B double-posted this 18 hours ago, 1 minute later, 36 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,412
@1,417,410 (C)
You’re projecting your own anxiety onto me, I don’t share your views on this. I could explain myself but you’ll just talk over me so what’s the point if you won’t listen?
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 1 minute later, 41 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,417
@1,417,412 (B)
If you aren't anxious then why are you pretending these forms of automation wont work when they are already functioning and rolling out?
You can never explain your POV, you always make up an excuse and then spend even more time writing out personal attacks and changing the subject.
The people and businesses with a track record of making the right predictions are putting in billions because they can do the math on what a human costs vs a bot.
Companies that hire humans will be at a disadvantage to those that use bots whenever possible.
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 1 minute later, 42 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,418
Say for instance, the United States and China each can produce cars and phones. This is a completely hypothetical example. If China has a comparative advantage in producing phones and the United States has a comparative advantage in producing cars, China and the United States each have to choose where along their production possibilities frontier they’ll choose to split their resources between producing cars and phones. The way China and America would maximize their production of both cars and phones is that they each only produce what they have a comparative advantage in and then they trade. If their price is between their respective opportunity costs, both America and China will mutually benefit through trade. Tariffs reduce trade which means Americans would have less of everything.
Anonymous B double-posted this 18 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 45 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,419
You know that thing conservatives say about how the free market is efficient and socialism is bad because they don't like taxes? Well free trade is the global free market and tariffs are taxes, so…
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 3 minutes later, 48 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,420
@1,417,418 (B)
I know what comparative advantage is, but offshoring killed enough domestic manufacturing to power a populist movement and get Trump elected.
I'm not arguing the basic theory of trade, but you need to have some way of accounting for extreme political movements that would not exist if it was really making everyone more wealthy.
IMO what you're missing is that there's also a loss to labour's share of the economy when outsourcing occurs. You can have more overall wealth, but shrink labour's share, and they end up with less.
> Great, but that's not what we were talking about. > > Whether this already exists, and can already automate jobs is one question. > > How you feel about that is a second question. > > And whenever someone says AI isn't close to achieving something it's been doing for years, thats an extreme case of denial. When you are denying something that provably exists, it does come off like you have some existential anxiety about it.
You have additional trends such as regular layoffs that are “AI washed.” Amazon, Klarma, and Tesla also had a boomerang where AI proved better assistants than replacements and had to rehire humans.
I’m not saying AI won’t subsume more jobs, just not yet. Outsourcing human jobs to humans overseas remains more effective.
Anonymous B replied with this 18 hours ago, 27 seconds later, 50 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,423
Say for instance, watch can either devote all of their resources to cars or phones, or split the difference.
Say China can make 500 phones, and 0 cars, or they can make 250 cars and 0 phones.
Say America can make 500 cars and 0 phones, or they can make 250 phones and 0 cars.
How do China and America maximize the number of phones produced? China only makes phones and America only makes cars. If you actually plot that out on a graph, in real life it wouldn’t be linear, but you can approximate their production possibility frontiers with linear functions to make the math easier. But you’ll find China and America combined will always produce fewer cars and phones if you choose any other combination other than what I just said.
Anonymous B double-posted this 18 hours ago, 1 minute later, 51 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,424
@1,417,422 (C)
There’s a trade off between efficiency and equality. The US economy has aspects of both free market capitalism and socialism at the same time.
Anonymous C replied with this 18 hours ago, 1 minute later, 53 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,417,426
@1,417,421 (D)
An AI assistant is still replacing labor.
If a programmer is 2x as productive with AI help, you still need human programmers, but you can lay off half the staff.
The labor market is determined by supply and demand. Increasing supply with automation or immigration doesn't mean we have zero jobs but it means wages fall.
The problem is that many on the left will outright deny that market dynamics exist.
Look at the immigration of the past 2 decades. That inxreased the labor supply, and wages have been stagnant and the cost of living has exploded.
There was no wealth redustribution.
The pet issues of the left have made regular people poorer, and some theoretical egalitarian plan they never actually fight for is not relevant until they do fight for it.
Woke libs will martyr themselves so the boss can bring scabs by the truckload, but only give half-hearted platitudes about income equality.
We had already talked about immigration, and I never said I was against wealth redistribution.
The actual "wins" the left make are bad for the working class.
The theoretical policies that would help the working class always fail, because the left never fights for them the way they do rhe policies that are against working people.
Anonymous B replied with this 17 hours ago, 47 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,441
@1,417,438 (C)
Why are you even talking about left wing politics? It’s completely irrelevant to the discussion of economics or technology, you’re just blabbering on.
Anonymous B replied with this 17 hours ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,447
@previous (C)
That’s a supply and demand issue. There’s no housing crisis, the solution to the housing crisis is build more houses. There is no shortage of land. Houses aren’t getting built because another interesting quirk of economics is that you can make more money through artificial scarcity.
Anonymous C replied with this 17 hours ago, 30 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,448
@1,417,445 (B)
I was able to use it for what I needed.
That's how fast development is getting. Instead of mass producing general purpose apps, they can be made fast enough for everyone to make exactly what they need.
And you're changing the subject, because I was reaponding to your obsolete saying about 9 women making a baby in a month. Software development has gotten faster, asking if I sold it is a subject change to avoid awknowledging that you were wrong.
Anonymous B replied with this 17 hours ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,452
@previous (C)
Yes they do have the same quirk of economics. It’s not a random chance. It applies to food too. Farmers could make more money if they produced less food. People don’t understand this.
Anonymous B double-posted this 17 hours ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,455
The population gets bigger, the number of ivys stays the same. Tuition gets more expensive. Supply and demand. There’s no incentive to expand those universities because the universities would make less money.
Anonymous B replied with this 17 hours ago, 9 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,457
And my thing about the "nobody bought your app" I’m not trying to insult you. What I’m saying is, if you can endlessly produce something nobody wants, that thing is worth $0.
There are enough competitors in higher education that it doesn't work like that, especially when so many people will go to a different state to attend the school they want.
@previous (B)
It was what we were discussing. You decided to argue it wasn't possible to do, and now you're saying it doesn't matter.
This is a recurring habit you have. Make an invalid argument, and then try to move the goalposts or say "who cares?" when you are proven wrong.
There's always been a limited number of spots for the top schools, and there will always be some schools more elite than the rest.
That isn't new. But tuition at regular boring universities became unaffordable around the same time healthcare and housing also became much more expensive for the regular person.
Talking about elite schools isn't relevant to why tuition at regular schools councidentally became a bigger burden for regular people at the same time costs went up in many other areas.
Suppressed wages would explain all of that though, because people have many different organizations they spend money at but usually only 1-2 jobs at a time.
Anonymous B replied with this 17 hours ago, 2 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,465
@previous (C)
The acceptance rate at "regular boring universities" has gone down over time. The ivies have single digit percentage acceptance rates and the best public schools have acceptance rates between 15% and 20%. Harvard used to have a 20% acceptance rate back in the day.
Anonymous B triple-posted this 17 hours ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,417,467
The more advanced an economy gets the more people you need to work jobs that require an education. What’s Trump doing? Defunding education. Use your brain.
Anonymous E joined in and replied with this 16 hours ago, 39 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,417,470
I’m also just going to add one more thing: the generation after World War Two could afford homes because back then the wealthy were taxed a lot more and the government used that money to build a lot of houses, and that’s why houses were cheap. Even in Ancient Rome people lived in apartment buildings. That’s not a new thing, the fact that the government built a lot of homes was the weird thing that happened that made homes affordable in the 40s and 50s.
Anonymous F joined in and replied with this 16 hours ago, 15 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,417,474
It’s also funny conservatives think left wing economics are what failed America and ended the good times that followed World War Two. Totally ignoring that Harry Truman was a democrat.
Anonymous C replied with this 15 hours ago, 27 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,417,493
@1,417,465 (B)
Yes, because it became standard practice for all high schools to tell every student to go to college.
@1,417,467 (B)
He's defunding indoctorination centers. Those students are still free to use their own money to pay for it, but they wont because it's not worth what they are charging.
Those students can go to the library, watch lectures from the ivies for free, and take quizes from those ivies, if they are so motivated.