Economy crash is less damaging of a totalitarian techno-regime
Yeah, the economy has crashed, what, like 3 times in my life now?
Fuck the economy.
Economy has always been an euphemism for the financials of the capitalists
Someone on Lemmy pointed out that you can usually just replace “the economy” with “rich people’s yacht money” in most news articles, and I’ll be damned if that isn’t the truth.
“Rich People’s Yacht Money”
Wednesday’s strong reports on Rich People’s Yacht Money were welcome news for the Federal Reserve, whose job it is to keep the U.S. job market healthy and inflation low. The Fed’s job has become more difficult because of the jump in oil prices, which is pushing upward on already high inflation.
…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average just crossed 50,000 points for the first time, but that doesn’t mean Rich People’s Yacht Money is healthy
Lol
What about an economy crash?
You’ve already had it.
We’ve had one, yes. What about second crash?
I don’t think he knows about second crashes, Pip.
What about elevenses crashes? Lunch crashes? Afternoon crashes? Dinner crashes? Supper crashes? He knows about them, doesn’t he?
amen
I was a kid for the dot com bubble. I was a teenager for the mortgage lending crash. Watched and learned what happened. When COVID caused another crash I knew what to do and how to make money from it. Another crash is just another opportunity to make money. Not as much as the rich assholes that cause all of this, but enough.
Do that but let’s not pretend that is an option for the majority of the working class.
See enough crashes and you can turn a few tens into hundreds, hundreds into thousands, etc. just do what you can afford. For the rich an economic crash is just an opportunity to buy everything for cheap. Line must go up, put down a few bucks and ride that line.
When enough people catch on, they’ll change it up and you’ll be left holding the bag.
Buying stock in larger companies on the dip? Lol no. That’s not holding the bag.
The more you look into the stock market, the more you realize the values are made up with only a tenuous link to reality in order to cover up the glorified casino that it is.
Better to rip off the band aid now
And economy crash is inevitable anyway because that’s just what capitalism does.
I choose the timeline of AI fails, economy crashes, people band together and fight back against goverments.
And the AI backs the people
🤖🗡️
Together, we are free
The ais all help untangle the injustice system and topple dictators
I care about jobs far less than I care about our environment.
AI must fail.
I can assure you humanity seems dead set on destroying the environment no matter the means to get there.
So uh… let’s try to not do that?
Good idea
I’d care about the economy if I had a real stake in it. We’re all just serfs being used up and thrown away. The medical industry sucks the last bit of wealth anyone is lucky enough to build over their life time.
I could have had a stake in the economy, not on a billionaire level but at least on a “doing alright for myself” level. I am very good at chemistry, could’ve gone into pharmaceuticals, the Navy tried recruiting me for their nuclear program… I told them to fuck off (in more polite verbiage) because I planned to grow weed.
I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit because I don’t believe in the overall mission of this nation (or for that matter, other nations under the same economic system). I will not give my life to facilitate wealth accumulation at the expense of exploiting / killing other people and the planet we depend on for life. I have a lot to offer and I wished I lived in a nation worth offering it to, but I don’t, so I’ll probably spend my life trying to contribute to the government as little as possible while helping other people as much as possible. I wish I could help to further our species, but I’m concerned anything I contribute would be used one way or another to degrade this planet. It’s advice I learned from a prison documentary: “Take everything they give you, give nothing in return.”
I don’t think the AI crash would effect the daily life and real life job, industries. Its effects will be limited companies that are invested in this bullshit, which are running this long term pump and dumb con.
In the end this bullshit doesn’t have real value in the market like food or healthcare. All they have to show for is some bullshit evaluation on paper and they have nothing real to show for these trillion dollar companies.
Its effects will be limited companies that are invested in this bullshit, which are running this long term pump and dumb con.
The effects of the housing bubble will be limited to the lenders and borrowers of subprime mortgage debt.
About a third of the US’s economy right now is this AI pump-and-dump scam. When, not if, that goes away, there will be a huge ripple effect.
I mean the subprime mortgage crisis was also just in the airy heights of finance … until it brought the world economy down.
A fair few of the companies would also never be allowed to go under. Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, etc are basically insulated from any ill-effects, because they would considered too big to fail, and be bailed out if anything major happens.
But the computer stuff will be so cheap on the second hand market!
LAN party in the alley when we lose everything!
Sadly no. AI hardware does not relies on the same fundamentals as consumer hardware.
Long story short AI stuff use Float 4 or 8 because accuracy is not a factor. Games or physics simulation use Float 32 or 64.
I’m pretty sure the thing about datatypes is wrong. From experience programming shaders the most typical float values were 4 bytes. The physics simulations are run on cpus typically, not gpus, but for graphics processing of all kinds, smaller floats are used. The conclusion is right though.
4 bytes not 4 bits, so 32 bits. You can’t do graphics on 4 bits, that’s way too small.
Good catch, thanks
Yeah, even the Game&Watch was 8-bit
But you can use 4bits neural networks.
Some people already replied but I would like to add that even if float type where the right one.
AI dedicated hardware doesn’t bundle stuff you usually espect from a gpu like dedicated encoder and decoders.
The “GPUs” used in these AI datacentres can’t even do graphics anymore. They’re now sloppy approximate matrix math machines.
SAS hard drives and server ECC ram incoming!
That doesn’t really matter. Both AI hardware and consumer hardware use the same underlying materials and components. When supply is low due to AI companies hoarding compute, the prices for all the components rise.
Nvidia and rest of manufacturers will set fire to abandoned data centers before allowing a big second hand market nuking their profits
This is where I hope China swoops in with cheap consumer hardware. Might take a few years though.
They’ll want to, but they don’t own the data centers and the ones that do have no concept of sacrifice for loyalty. Those parts will be sold.
If you are being slightly serious, I hate to break it to you, but the HPC equipment that is taking up all manufacturing capacity has limited consumer use. It’s just so power hungry, specialized, and heavy.
People replying to this with “muh enterprise” don’t understand that I can still plug in a Supermicro server with the correct power input, spin up Linux, and do whatever the hell I want with my giga ultra 8x NVlink GPU 2X Xeon CPU morbillion dollar server.
Now even though it will be sold for a measly couple thousand dollars after the collapse, it doesn’t mean I can’t burn through my unemployment savings to have fun lol.
with the correct power input
That’s quite the tall order for a lot of the now ‘bread and butter’ of this bubble. Some of these systems are needing over 25 kilowatts now, being fed by 8 C19 connections.
And that’s ignoring the ones that just dump a crapton over a 48VDC bus bar and don’t have anything even vaguely approaching decent residential electrical hookup friendly.
While most will bemoan that the systems will be too loud and the gpus not really interesting for gaming, the sheer power supply issue is beyond what we’ve seen in datacenters historically. Usually the most egregious was still a few kilowatts over C19, which awkward but doable in residential in certain circumstances. Now we are talking dedicating half your residential service to breakers and outlets to feed the servers.
Imagine if jobs weren’t tied to survival. Like, imagine people got paid for whatever they did. Raise a kid? Government sends you the wage. Community work? Fill out the wage application, describe what you did, wage. Work some job? Wage. Overpaid? Taxed more. Underpaid? Subsidised. Sat on your ass and charged other people rent? Jail.
Then consider what it would mean for ai to take over a bunch of jobs. More money into the pool to pay the wages of creative work, community work, and say UBI. Tech improvements would be celebrated. The economy would be democratised. We’d all benefit.
These are important criticisms to make about liberalism, the coercive power in of wage labour and private property are powerful tools of capital exactly because that precarity gives us less time, resources, and security to resist even the devaluing of our labour.
I don’t know what the usability of this post and the image created here is, though. What you’ve presented here is still stuck in that commodity mentality. Is tech not celebrated now, when we can so easily cure diseases that we only named two centuries ago, or when people identify with internet culture? What level of democratization could even exist in an economy where the mass production of computer technology still exists when the very design of every computer we have depends on colonial extraction?
I’ve found it’s more difficult to imagine a future worth living in when that imagination is only oriented around escaping reality. There are good outcomes from AI the same way there are bad outcomes, because neither have happened. The world doesnt just end when the economy collapses, and people aren’t helpless to resist authoritarianism or capitalism. In the same way, imagining AI as a solution to the problems in the metropole by its capacity to fulfill devalued labour roles takes for granted what is needed to build an AI infrastructure like that, and whether this hope is dependent on the continued subjugation of others. Its a future based on maintaining the present, not improving it.
This isn’t to say your comment or the actual post are pro-colonization, but just that we should question how much of our imagination of a positive future is based in the privilege that we experience today. Conversely, are you willing to live in a world where you are more materially insecure if it meant a global shift away from colonialism? Is it still motivating to consider a world where your labour is even more in demand because we no longer extract in a way that facilitates such an abundance of automation even down to your dishwasher and laundry machine?
Liberalism and capitalism depend on an immaterial world to exist as they are oriented around the imperative for infinite growth in a finite world, so it is important to remember that people will readily embrace the privilege this system affords them if that is the only real route to a world where they personally can pursue art instead of other forms of labour. If our liberal system affords us a UBI and socialized housing in exchange for complacency in its global extraction, would you still want it to end?
There are good outcomes from AI the same way there are bad outcomes, because neither have happened.
Can’t say I’m with you there, though I agree regarding your critiques of liberalism. People are already living near unhealthy levels of noise pollution, already having their water polluted, and already undergoing the stress associated with paying higher electricity bills. And that’s just in America, it’s far worse for the people in exploited countries who have to extract the raw materials to build the massive data centers.
And that’s just the infrastructure side, not touching on the loss of cognitive ability incurred by students who rely on AI or the emotional stunting or even the ‘successful’ (idk how else to phrase that) suicide-baiting of vulnerable people.
The bad outcomes have happened and are currently happening.
The good outcomes usually involve pattern-recognition AI, like diagnosing cancer early / inventing novel drugs / etc, not LLM’s.
Wow, okay so there’s some stuff here that probably needs addressing. Just like quick, when I talk about colonialism within the US, I’m referring to stuff like monocrop farming, mining, logging, etc. that was facilitated through the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans and indigenous nations. Though it is certainly relevant to point out that this way of life has negative health impacts on everyone who exists in the world, even those people in the metropole, my concern is more about the fact that this way of life can only exist through the violence and extraction I mention above. Disease, poverty, and pollution are not exclusively linked to capitalism and liberalism, even if they exist more abundantly in the world as a result of it, but that specific relationality of settler-colonialism, indigenous peoples, and commodified land is.
Also, I don’t know if you realize the ableism you seem to subscribe to here. “Loss of cognitive ability,” in reference to students’ use of AI is, quite frankly, harmful. Whether you meant this in a physical way, as in it causes brain damage, or a pedagogical way, as in they are not learning the skills we measure cognitive ability with, this creates a much more powerful and destructive effect from AI that also happens to reproduce the devaluing of people who do not conform to hegemonic ideas of ability. Even if AI was causing literal brain damage to young people, that doesn’t mean they’re less valuable as people or more of a burden on society, though if it was, certainly that’d be something to address. Except, it isn’t doing that, there are just effects on skillbuilding needs since we were already doing that poorly due to the industrious teaching pedagogies schooling in settler-colonial countries have been designed around. It isn’t a threat to that ability anymore than the internet, television, or print was. The ease of access to information as well as mis- or disinformation introduces new needs for critical thought beyond the usability in employment (it is also a matter of self-defense), but having access to those skills makes these things powerful tools. I’ve noticed more of a drop due to the COVID-19 Pandemic as the students who went through that period in their life learning these skills in a cobbled-together online curriculum which was really just adapted from preexisting, ineffective teaching methods. There are students with organizational barriers to learning who find they now succeed more easily in institutions that punish deviation from structure by having AI assistance to do something their brain is not able to and the system will not provide for them, for example. To suggest that a technology that benefits a disabled group and harms an abled group is ontologically evil is to argue that harm is only a problem when it is directed at one of these groups; which happens to be the privileged one in this case.
In the same way, the perceived danger of AI for those of us with mental illness discounts the reality that much of therapy is learning to convert your internal thoughts into language, which then helps you better understand those thoughts for yourself as well as in/for others. Since mental healthcare is by no means accessible even with socialized healthcare, most people who need psychotherapy are not able to get enough of it for their needs. There are people who report benefits from this access, and since we obviously cannot guarantee everyone access to this healthcare, it is difficult to argue that certain groups cannot “handle” having some sort of responsive outlet to process those thoughts as language without also infantalizing them. Regardless of the medical efficacy of these AI therapists, or whatever they want to call them, if it helps people, we cannot discard it out of hand. I’m not sure what “emotional stunting” is in reference to here as well, though I’m sure any example of it would still depend on some normative, hegemonic understanding of maturity and growth that is already foundationally problematic as all normative arguments for human action and behaviour is.
So, yes, I think AI as a system is harmful in the same way every single system under liberalism and capitalism is harmful. The ways we build computers, store data, extract minerals and other resources, grow our food and fabric, and even live on the land beneath us are all harmful because they are ultimately subject to a harmful system. It isn’t the technologies themselves, but the relations that determine their distribution and use that is harmful; as always. To suggest otherwise is to accept assertions from that harmful system that you may take for granted as the socialization and culture of that system has dominated your understanding of all things. What you’ve identified is that it can be used very effectively to target vulnerable groups, including children, who were already targeted by this system due to its fundamentally predatory and dehumanizing nature. Except, what you’ve identified as the problem is that it makes them deviate even further from an idealized construction of the human body and behaviour, not that this is a new vector for preexisting violence.
Again, there are no good or bad outcomes, as the future is only ever imagined, it does not exist. That means that when we imagine the future, we transfer idealized elements of the present into that narrative along with the unchecked internalized values we hold. There is no way of predicting how that socialization has effected your understanding of the world, only the ability to respond once it has.
Also, I don’t know if you realize the ableism you seem to subscribe to here. “Loss of cognitive ability,” in reference to students’ use of AI is, quite frankly, harmful.
lmao yeah I stopped reading right there. No it isn’t. If you opt-in to your AI lobotomy, that’s on you (or your parents for failing to raise you properly).
Well, I think having a hard time reading criticism over two paragraphs and then citing a Harvard [Gazette] article as evidence of it equating to a lobotomy is just, well, that’s just the whole package. Did you even read the study that they cite? It doesn’t say what you seem to think it says, and you just inadvertently called the use of any computer screens and text editors for notes as lobotomizing as the Gazette article does not exclusively pathologize AI tools.
Was “Harvard” meant to sound smart? Very typical liberal response to the gentlest and slightest notion that how you think is harmful, lmao.
For someone so insistent on demonstrating (or performing) your apparent intellect, your inability to understand the concept of hyperbole is a bit odd.
The “two paragraph Gazette article” links to a 209-page MIT study. Before we began our overreliance on slop summaries, human journalists would often summarize things themselves. I’d encourage you to read it - all on your own, no AI!
And it’s not that I have a “hard time” reading your r/iamverysmart level responses, it’s just a lack of willingness to waste my time on people who tell me I’m ableist for calling out AI lobotomites. Someone who would make that response certainly has nothing of value to offer me in the following wall of slop-sympathizer text.
I’m also very much not a liberal lol
You’re not a liberal, of course, you just happen to think in terms of liberal values and subscribe to liberal institutions. Also, yeah like this isn’t an edited article or something, but I actually have a formal education on these topics, which is actually clear in how I explain these things like, I know what I’m talking about lol.
I was so gracious with you too, you were advocating for genocide without even realizing it (because yes, you are a liberal) and I actually tried to explain it in a way that minimized blame (because I know y’all don’t handle criticism well).
Or, we get rid of capitalism and build a new world not based on growth amd respectful of people and the environment.
The thing is that I do not see AI “failing”. Its current state is already goood enough to take many people’s job, let us not kid ourselves. And also, even if the current iteration of AI “fails”, there is always the argument that “we are just around the corner to AGI, wait for the new AI version!”.
I honestly don’t see AI going away, sadly. I fucking hate it. We built such a shitty fucking society. We could all have beautiful, chill lives, but nop. We suck.
While the technology likely won’t go away, some of the companies behind the AI push take huge losses and may collapse. OpenAI, Oracle, Microsoft and the bunch are spending insane amounts of money on datacenter buildout that may never return a profit.
Most AI subscriptions for instance are priced under cost to lock users in. However, unlike traditional services, it’s trivial for a user to migrate to a competitor or (eventually) run a local model. Currently that market doesn’t return a profit and it’s questionable if it ever will
Increasingly, this looks like a death spiral of tech giants where nobody can admit to the sunk cost fallacy. Unfortunately these companies are in everybody’s investment or retirement funds, so when they crash the economy will crash with it. I think that would be the “AI failing”. Not the technical aspect, but rather the economical aspect.
I know those data centers they’re building are like bunkers. When the first effort fails and the fallout collapses the big companies, they’ll make excellent outposts for the resistance to seize. Bring some hydroponics equipment and seeds and we can withstand a siege for decades because god knows we’ll have access to plenty of water.
One group of people wins no matter what
We can rebuild after it fails. If it seriously starts replacing people and there’s no regulation against corporations doing it we’re done
If it seriously starts replacing people and there’s no regulation against corporations doing it we’re done
Yes. And if so, we all need to do our reading, first:
How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion
It is not real AI, I don’t think that would be useful. I’m not sure why people are so crazy about using plausible answer generators, but here we are.
The book is actually based on existing technologies, and was written by a professor of robots with some expertise in what currently passes for “AI”.
The book actually has some practical insights into dealing with the natural hard-to-fix flaws in real robots in daily life.
That said, the book is clearly meant as a work of humor.
Or it was clear, when it was first published, anyway. Some of the overblown “they will inevitably send robots to kill us” stuff is less obviously satire, today.
AI is just a marketing name. Machine learning, generative LLMs, etc. is what we should be calling that, but the simplification leads to misleading name.
I see a bright future on the right
Yeah, it’s not as if this economy does anything more than shovel money into the black holes of billionaire bank accounts.
Exactly! A full reset on wealth globaly and the downfall of capitalism wouldnt hurt anyone
What makes you think that an economic crash would result in the downfall of capitalism? That has literally never happened.
I am talking about a complete whipe out of economies. Almost all buissnesses go down. Maybe some small companies, traditional labor and groceries survive.
Bullshit. The government would never allow big businesses to go down.
- Which government
- …you’re not fun with hypotheticals are you?
Atleast USA and India afaik. Both of them bail out big businesses and banks.
It needs to fail and it probably will.
Stocks are their own entire economy for the rich people at this point. Just don’t give gamblers bailouts they don’t need and we will be fine.
Better hope you have zero money sent through or stored in a bank or pension fund and you don’t have a mortgage yourself or your landlord doesn’t have a mortgage or your employer doesn’t have a mortgage or business loan and doesn’t use a bank.
The correct response is what Iceland did: government bails out the bank’s customers, takes ownership, and actually jails the c-level
wankersbankers.Because like it or not, you’re still part of the financial system unless you’re currently sat in a self-sufficient earth-ship borrowing some else’s WiFi connection.
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AI will replace jobs AND crash the economy.
