I'll say it, he's going to end up inciting action from the people with nothing left to lose. It's happened once already and frankly I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. He's regularly talking about how we should be trying to adapt and cope with an extinction level problem of his design for which the benefits only apply to an extremely small minority of the population.
I say this as someone who is an avid AI enthusiast. Sam Altman is a monster.
The debt can be inflated away (which is the only plausible way this is going to go) but it might cause the dollar to be dropped as the world reserve currency. I don't know for sure what happens in that case..
I suspect that imports would become enormously more expensive, which would reveal the catastrophic erosion in worker rights and pay due to neoliberalism. People would be suddenly aware of how much less they are making and how much more the wealthy are taking than was the case 40 years ago. This in turn might result in political instability. But who knows.
> I don't know for sure what happens in that case..
One thing would be that GDP per Capita would fall to something like Germany (and I'm been kind there assuming it would only drop that much) there isn't inherently anything about the US that says it's GDP per capita has to be ~50% higher than Germany.
> One thing would be that GDP per Capita would fall
Why? What is the mechanism that links being the reserve currency and (real?) GDP per capita?
I can see why being the reserve currency is an advantage for the finical sector, maybe international trade. But I don't understand how if the world stopped trading in dollars and switched to gold or Bitcoin or some basket of currencies, GDP per capita would be majorly impacted.
Being the reserve currency props up our currency conversions because everyone wants USD to trade with. If we lose that, the value of the USD falls relative to other currencies (and especially relative to the new reserve currency). Our GDP would presumably be measured in whatever the new reserve currency is, and that alone would cause a GDP drop just due to unfavorable currency conversions.
Being the reserve currency also makes imports cheap but exports unappealingly expensive. Losing that means the inverse; imports are expensive and exports are more appealing internationally, but our economy is set up for cheap imports and not exporting much. It would take a while to realign to doing manufacturing for domestic supply and GDP via exports.
And assuming that median salary drops the same percentage as gdp per capita, it would drop to 41k, which puts a lot of people beneath the threshold to pay their mortgage.
Of course taking a huge pay cut is not something most people are willing to do, so you'd probably actually see mass unemployment and salaries being inflated away.
In response the fed will do the only thing it knows, which is to rev up the money printer even more. But thats going to make all these problems worse, leading to a vicious cycle.
And in the midst of economic chaos, people's danger switches get activated and they will turn to an authoritarian strongman who will make them feel safe.
And generally speaking, once such a person is in power, they can only think of one way to solve their problems, which is to plunder their neighbors by going to war. Thats basically the imperial cycle.
It sucks to be able to see all this coming and yet be powerless to stop it..
Sorry, but that music is really boring. I certainly would not have bought it in 1983. But, you're right that the average person on the street probably can't tell the difference.
Music out there in the real world runs in clusters and communities that form around real world places where people go to be together and make and share things. Its so much more colorful and interesting than you can imagine. But, it is admittedly just a small slice of the weirdest and most creative and crazy people who participate in those communities. For everyone else music is just a recording that appears out of thin air in their car stereo without context and the glossiest product is the one they pick.
I mean, that's the only way I code. I don't use llm's to do my work for me. I'm perfectly capable of solving any sort of problem on my own, and then I'll understand it well enough to explain it to someone later.
I’ve just started a new job and my first month has been coming to terms with a vibe coded codebase. Nobody really understands it. I think that people who have the skills to really know what is there and how it all fits together will be the most valuable workers in future.
My ex business partner said “AI won’t take your job, but the person who uses it will”. I don’t agree. The person who isn’t reliant on AI is the one you should really be afraid of.
Well this has been essentially the plan since the 70's. The 60's scared the bejeezus out of the ruling class and they began taking steps to bring the people to heel from the 70's onward. In the words of Ronald Reagan's education advisor, Roger Freeman: "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”
I interact with people who seem about as smart as me fairly often- my college professors for example. And, I certainly have been in many situations where my domain knowledge was vastly less than some other person with real expertise. But I have a hard time thinking of a time when I thought someone else was significantly smarter than me. Probably, that's an example of exactly what the article is talking about- maybe I've met those people but failed to recognize them. They certainly must be out there (unless i am the smartest person in the world, in which case we're all in serious trouble).
Similar to your observation - I can think of at least one person who is definetly a lot smarter than than me, and yeah, I’m not sure I could tell you why exactly.
Part of it looks like focus, I think I have a broader skill set than they do. But I don’t know that I could like rank a set of people smarter than me.
A few signs: they know what your about to say and give you refutations to your argument before you voice them. Or you find they tend to block your argumentation and you don't quite know how to respond. Could be domain expertise though.
Or if it's a collaborative situation, they might propose an idea you are already kind of thinking about, but they do it faster and clearer.
Having proof on video of trump sexually assaulting a minor would still be significant, I think. Such footage probably exists and would make great leverage.
The Epstein files identify a pretty horrific incident involving Trump and a 14 year old girl, but it doesn't seem to have changed much so far. I suppose a video would be more compelling, but of course there'd be denials saying it was AI, etc.
I think that's their go to for damage control. I specifically remember in 2019 when Epstein was arrested, the MSM was running parallel stories talking about the rise of deep fakes. They were already setting the stage in case the kompromat was released. A few months ago with "Obama getting arrested" posted on Trump's account, I think this is a strategic reference to deep fakes. They'll say "that's not trump blowing Clinton, it's a deep fake like I posted of Obama, silly!"
I feel that I cannot properly voice my feelings about him without being banned from hacker news.
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