Fuck AI

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"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"

A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.

AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.

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I won a Pulitzer for explaining the Great Depression. The AI spending boom terrifies me (fortune.com)

submitted 2 days ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world

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I won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Lords of Finance, my account of how four central bankers’ decisions triggered the Great Depression. I have just completed 1873, a book on America’s railroad boom of the 1870s — the last time private capital flooded into a transformative new infrastructure technology at a scale comparable to 2%–3% of GDP. That research is why, when I look at the AI buildout today, I am genuinely frightened.

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[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 58 points 2 days ago (1 children)

While I do respect this guy's perspective, I don't think you need to be a historian to see just how terrifying this is.

You've got multiple top members of the Fortune 100 over-leveraging their finances multiple times over and laying off staff like no tomorrow, all so that they can dump billions upon billions of dollars into a technology that hasn't so far even made a single penny of profit.

And then, just to prove how wild all this speculation has gotten, in walks fucking Elon Musk with SpaceX - which for reference in 2025 made $20 billion gross with a net loss of $5 billion - being valued at damn near $2 trillion, a figure it cannot possibly make back with its current rate of progress.

Its maddening. Investors are playing with the dollar like it's monopoly money, but at some point somebody is going to have to pay the bills, and who do you think that's gonna be? Cause it certainly isn't going to be them stupid fucks.

[–] NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

It basically is Monopoly money at this point. And if they can keep loaning dollars into existence that only the richest have access too, then the money consolidates among a handful of very rich individuals.

Even if the bubble pops, it’s the retail investors who will get screwed and the rich people will loan themselves more money to buy up the scraps.

I’m not hopeful at all about a bubble popping creating societal turnover. It will just push money into the hands of a few while increasing the sized of the impoverished class.