alt Hacker NewsThese next few years are the real turning point. If they are right about AI and robotic workforces, then it's checkmate--they don't need us anymore, and we're next for the furnace. If they're wrong... well, I don't know... Will there be any consequences? Maybe a few people lose a few percent of their net worth.
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There will always be jobs for private security, firefighters, and utility repairmen to protect / restore the data centers when people inevitably attack them.
There will be a period of rapid change. If we are lucky, the political class will see and adjust policy quickly. Otherwise we will see US urban areas gutted like the Rust Belt was after NAFTA / WTO. They are making the same mistakes but in a different industry.
Google will definitely lose. Llms supplants search. But not the old document search which they stopped doing long ago.
Add in the fact that open weight models are 6-12 months behind frontier models means AI companies aren’t building a moat, they’re on a treadmill. And treadmills don’t justify the valuations OR the hype.
AI companies are in trouble.
I guess if they are wrong the world economy crashes and burn again, because they wasted all these shiny dollars on infra build out. It's lose lose.
Initially I assumed that when the bubble burst, some VCs would go bust, Oracle would go bust, a few hyperscalers would take a significant haircut but carry on, and life would pretty much go on. However there's now sufficient dodgy AI-related debt making its way onto the debt markets that the bubble burst could be a lot messier, and it may be more than a few percent.
> Maybe a few people lose a few percent of their net worth.
the entire US economy rides on this now so it’ll be more than few people and a lot more than few percent.
A few percent of your net worth, when you're sitting on top of a pile of gold like a dragon on a yacht is one thing, but when you're a retiree, and you're on a fixed income, living off the proceeds from an annuity and a reverse mortgage, and inflation in all its forms is eating into the plan you had, and you don't have any backup, yes there will be consequences!
LOL.
Robotics isn't even 1% of the way to replacing anything.
Consider why every neat demo is a backflip and not washing the dishes or laying bricks or something.
The AI tool providers need companies and customers to pay for the tools and automation. If all the white collar jobs in the Western world are replaced by AI or AI generated SAAS products, some 60% percent the workforce suddenly won't have jobs. If such a large percentage of the workforce has no income through employment, who will be able to pay for the services from SAAS providers and thus ultimately the AI providers?
The tradesmen working on my house renovations aren't consuming SAAS products during their day jobs.
The white collar workforce can't rapidly switch to blue collar jobs.
So for these companies to remain viable, they need the white collar workers to still somehow end up with enough money to pay for services that ultimately the companies provide.
Maybe the turning point will be a recognition that companies can't only focus on maximising shareholder value. They also need to consider their role in maintaining and improving the societies they operate in.