I've been enjoying the industrial revolution parallels. Have the economics of bespoke products changed? Not really. But is it now easier to get a crude, but functional, approximation of an idea? Yes. The main issue appears to be users conflating B for A (and not realising their AI creation is fundamentally a mess).
That's my real fear, that I have massive indirect AI bubble exposure while having zero direct exposure. Similar to how relatively few Americans had liar loans, but we all got burned by the subprime crisis. And then there were those bad actors that made the crisis work for them, and we got burned again during the uneven recovery.
"If that’s the case, AI will let them wire the toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain. So you can have an amazing idea as a corporate visionary, and you don’t have to have any ego-shattering confrontations with people who know how to do things, who tell you you’re actually an idiot"
The “reverse centaur” is a natural product of capitalism wanting workers to be as replaceable as possible in order to drive down wages. An ordinary “centaur” is counter to companies’ goals, they don’t want workers empowered.
I don't think CEO class want better, more effective companies. They have nothing to gain by that. They want monopoly situation for themselves, locked customers and helpless dependent employees.
As a business owner I assure you I am not overly obsessed with labor costs. I obsess on all costs, and all revenues. VC funded and public companies may or may not take a similarly holistic view.
It's not, though. The banking system holds onto everyone's money in a fractional reserve system, if you let a run on the banks happen everyone's money is gone. That's "too big to fail".
If anthropic and openAI fail, the top 10% lose half their money in a stock sell-off. That's perfectly tolerable. Maybe congress bails them out anyways but they don't have to.
> “The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things
That about sums it up. I challenge anyone to name five things that have gotten cheaper or better in their life thanks to AI.
I can't think of anything that I consume that has gotten better, and the only thing that has gotten cheaper is the value of your skills to your employer, as it wants you to offload more of your work to a machine they own or rent. But perhaps someone here can find some tangible improvement.
1 - I worked abroad and wasn't really familiar with the systems there. Gemini made me aware of a kind of pension account that I could withdraw from when I left the country netting me a few thousand dollars.
2 - Working as a tech contractor, charging by deliverable, Codex/Claude Code speed me up and it doesn't seem to have significantly dropped rates in the market.
3 - Also contractor related: I had Claude do a quick legal sanity check of my contracts, and it warned me of some clauses that I'd be better off removing/changing/refining. I was not aware of these nuances and would not have paid a lawyer for this as the contract was too small, but the changes were accepted by the client and reduced my risk exposure meaningfully.
4 - Learning a foreign language, I use it to check my draft emails and messages. It corrects them but also serves a tutoring role providing feedback, improving both the accuracy of my communication and my rate of language acquisition.
5 - Gemini Deep Research helped me narrow down tent models that met my fairly specific set of requirements. Very happy with the tent I ended up buying, from a brand that was not on my radar before.
The bubble is weirdly being kept alive by the promise it can replace software developers, which is ironic because all it has really achieved is a deluge of slop.
Social media has also gone utterly crazy. The last time I saw a gaslighting operation on this scale and volume (including accounts who "hate" AI "because its so scary good") was during the start of the Gaza war.
These accounts becoming easier to distinguish too, because whether they boost AI or feign criticism they all categorically refuse to use the s word.
I guess there is a few trillion riding on perpetuating this mass psychosis so it makes sense they'd try to use every trick to keep it going as long as possible.
Internet bubble was nothing like this. The scale is greater, the promises are more insane and the pop is going to be much more devastating.
Maybe I misunderstand Doctorow, but I feel like he is the king of enshitificiation. Not that he produces shit, he's trying to be the opposite, but the people that buy into him over eagerly seem to be full of it. Ain't that a bitch?
While that's a bit cruel, I do have to wonder how exactly Doctorow got in the position he has -- he isn't somebody who has done great things and is now a tech critic like someone like Geoffrey Hinton. He seems a pleasant enough fellow, but basically he got fame from writing SF books that he gave away for free. How does this translate into being an expert that journalists fawn over?
He's also been a vocal advocate about copyright reform and against DRM, and his arguments are coherent and generally well-regarded among the tech crowd. In context, "giving away books for free" is a particularly strong form of putting his money where his mouth is.
Journalists fawn over many people who write for public consumption in some way (book authors, academics, etc.), and who already agree with the point of view the journalists want to promulgate. I don't think Doctorow has particularly more insight about AI than anyone else does, but I also don't think that "insight about AI" is the main reason Ars Technica chose to publish an interview with him - they did this because Ars Technica has an anti-AI editorial position and so they find it useful to promote Doctorow's anti-AI-book. A different group of journalists who did not have an anti-AI editorial position would not have interviewed and published Doctorow, or at least not done so under as friendly circumstances as Ars Technica did.
I've been enjoying the industrial revolution parallels. Have the economics of bespoke products changed? Not really. But is it now easier to get a crude, but functional, approximation of an idea? Yes. The main issue appears to be users conflating B for A (and not realising their AI creation is fundamentally a mess).
Just wait for the economics to catch up and eat the marketing. No effort required.
Though, the larger the bubble becomes the more damaging the pop will be
That's my real fear, that I have massive indirect AI bubble exposure while having zero direct exposure. Similar to how relatively few Americans had liar loans, but we all got burned by the subprime crisis. And then there were those bad actors that made the crisis work for them, and we got burned again during the uneven recovery.
"If that’s the case, AI will let them wire the toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain. So you can have an amazing idea as a corporate visionary, and you don’t have to have any ego-shattering confrontations with people who know how to do things, who tell you you’re actually an idiot"
Just beautiful.
AI spending is all what keeping american economy afloat or else a big recession
The “reverse centaur” is a natural product of capitalism wanting workers to be as replaceable as possible in order to drive down wages. An ordinary “centaur” is counter to companies’ goals, they don’t want workers empowered.
If that is true, they are incredibly stupid. Empowered workers create better, more effective companies.
But they also create workers that can hop off the ship. If they're on a sinking one, they have no choice but to work hard to get back to shore.
> But they also create workers that can hop off the ship.
Sounds to me like a win for the workers, a win for the employer(in that they get better companies) and a win for society at large.
I don't think CEO class want better, more effective companies. They have nothing to gain by that. They want monopoly situation for themselves, locked customers and helpless dependent employees.
It depends but obviously they want both, both control and value.
As a business owner I assure you I am not overly obsessed with labor costs. I obsess on all costs, and all revenues. VC funded and public companies may or may not take a similarly holistic view.
It's kinda too big to fail in US now. If it bursts, US will decline quickly.
It's not, though. The banking system holds onto everyone's money in a fractional reserve system, if you let a run on the banks happen everyone's money is gone. That's "too big to fail".
If anthropic and openAI fail, the top 10% lose half their money in a stock sell-off. That's perfectly tolerable. Maybe congress bails them out anyways but they don't have to.
> “The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things
That about sums it up. I challenge anyone to name five things that have gotten cheaper or better in their life thanks to AI.
I can't think of anything that I consume that has gotten better, and the only thing that has gotten cheaper is the value of your skills to your employer, as it wants you to offload more of your work to a machine they own or rent. But perhaps someone here can find some tangible improvement.
Interesting challenge.
1 - I worked abroad and wasn't really familiar with the systems there. Gemini made me aware of a kind of pension account that I could withdraw from when I left the country netting me a few thousand dollars.
2 - Working as a tech contractor, charging by deliverable, Codex/Claude Code speed me up and it doesn't seem to have significantly dropped rates in the market.
3 - Also contractor related: I had Claude do a quick legal sanity check of my contracts, and it warned me of some clauses that I'd be better off removing/changing/refining. I was not aware of these nuances and would not have paid a lawyer for this as the contract was too small, but the changes were accepted by the client and reduced my risk exposure meaningfully.
4 - Learning a foreign language, I use it to check my draft emails and messages. It corrects them but also serves a tutoring role providing feedback, improving both the accuracy of my communication and my rate of language acquisition.
5 - Gemini Deep Research helped me narrow down tent models that met my fairly specific set of requirements. Very happy with the tent I ended up buying, from a brand that was not on my radar before.
Bubbles do not have roots.
I agree the mixed metaphor and grammar are a bit awkward, but "its" refers to AI, innit?
The bubble is weirdly being kept alive by the promise it can replace software developers, which is ironic because all it has really achieved is a deluge of slop.
Social media has also gone utterly crazy. The last time I saw a gaslighting operation on this scale and volume (including accounts who "hate" AI "because its so scary good") was during the start of the Gaza war.
These accounts becoming easier to distinguish too, because whether they boost AI or feign criticism they all categorically refuse to use the s word.
I guess there is a few trillion riding on perpetuating this mass psychosis so it makes sense they'd try to use every trick to keep it going as long as possible.
Internet bubble was nothing like this. The scale is greater, the promises are more insane and the pop is going to be much more devastating.
> The bubble is weirdly being kept alive by the promise it can replace software developers
And lawyers, and doctors, and tax preparers, and financial managers...
Maybe I misunderstand Doctorow, but I feel like he is the king of enshitificiation. Not that he produces shit, he's trying to be the opposite, but the people that buy into him over eagerly seem to be full of it. Ain't that a bitch?
While that's a bit cruel, I do have to wonder how exactly Doctorow got in the position he has -- he isn't somebody who has done great things and is now a tech critic like someone like Geoffrey Hinton. He seems a pleasant enough fellow, but basically he got fame from writing SF books that he gave away for free. How does this translate into being an expert that journalists fawn over?
He's also been a vocal advocate about copyright reform and against DRM, and his arguments are coherent and generally well-regarded among the tech crowd. In context, "giving away books for free" is a particularly strong form of putting his money where his mouth is.
Journalists fawn over many people who write for public consumption in some way (book authors, academics, etc.), and who already agree with the point of view the journalists want to promulgate. I don't think Doctorow has particularly more insight about AI than anyone else does, but I also don't think that "insight about AI" is the main reason Ars Technica chose to publish an interview with him - they did this because Ars Technica has an anti-AI editorial position and so they find it useful to promote Doctorow's anti-AI-book. A different group of journalists who did not have an anti-AI editorial position would not have interviewed and published Doctorow, or at least not done so under as friendly circumstances as Ars Technica did.
Hinton is a classic case of an academic making increasingly grandiose statements as they age.
Has Doctorow implemented Transfomer from scratch as Lesswrong wants us to atleast pass the smell test?