Comment by sfblah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sfblah | Hacker News Reader

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My opinion on this is that the damage has already been done. Successive administrations have already loaded up debt massively and participated in a Ponzi scheme with the Fed to pretend asset valuations in the US make sense. Sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost, and valuation multiples in the US will come to resemble those that have existed throughout history, and those which exist in all other parts of the world currently.

When this happens, there will be a big recession, and that is exactly the moment companies will start deploying AI in earnest to save money. This will create a downward spiral.

Yes, the Trump administration is incompetent. But, if you insist on blaming an administration, I would propose Obama and Biden as more reasonable culprits. It was Obama who presided over the massive Fed intervention into markets that enabled unbridled government spending increases. It was Biden who presided over the most problematic parts of the Covid response. Trump is just an idiot. Obama and Biden are actually bad guys.

> that is exactly the moment companies will start deploying AI in earnest to save money.

Companies are already deploying AI everywhere they possibly can as quickly as they possibly can. They aren't waiting for anything. AI just isn't up to the task of replacing most workers just yet. It's still unclear if it ever will be, but they're shoving AI into everything they can to see how it holds up, to see what it breaks, and to give it more data to work with so that it can hopefully be improved.

I strongly disagree with this point. History shows that most companies don't deploy cost-reduction technologies until forced to by economic conditions. When there's a recession, deployment of AI will be next level.

History shows that companies will do whatever they think will make them the most money. They aren't going to hold off on replacing workers with AI if they think that they can just because it wouldn't be nice or because it isn't recessiony enough. The very instant they think they can get away with firing you and replacing you with software they will do it.

Oh? Then how do you explain massively increased adoption of such technologies right after the financial crisis? You're assuming the world works the way people say it does in a business textbook. The real world is messy, and people don't like replacing employees unless they have to

When the economy slows down companies start getting rid of workers regardless of any technology. It's one of the first levers they pull.

Some companies looking to get rid of even more workers might search for new technologies that they hadn't considered before but which could enable them fire more people, or they might accelerate existing plans to replace workers with technology to get rid of them even sooner.

AI is different though because companies are fully aware of it and they are already moving as fast as they can. They have been salivating at the thought of using AI to fire their workers for years now and they're already making every effort to replace workers anywhere it seems feasible to do so. They are in such a hurry that it sometimes results in embarrassing failures like this one: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/airline-ai-chatbots-refund/

Like you say, the world is messy, which means there is no rule saying that companies must leave massive piles of cash sitting on the table until the economy gets bad enough for them to reach out and take it. Shareholders won't accept that. Any company that sleeps on firing their workers when AI can do the job will get absolutely crushed by their competitors who don't sit on their hands.

The Fed intervention was under Bush. The vast majority of the "COVID response" was under Trump. If you look at deficit spending by administration, you will also see that you have things backwards.

Trump 1 increased the debt more than Biden, and Trump 1 wasn't even mitigating a train wreck of COVID inaction left over from his predecessor.

Yeah, I mean people love playing political games with this stuff. But the actual crime was what happened between 2009-2012. Trump is just a symptom. Yes, he's a bad guy, but what do you expect people to do?

I expect people to not vote for obviously bad guys.

Obama too had to clean up a mortgage crisis from his predecessor's careless deregulation. Not an excuse for his own crimes, like say drone striking US citizens. But Trump is just openly corrupt, inept, praising autocrats and aspiring to be one.

Clean up the crisis, yes. Destroy the future of the US economy by endorsing ZIRP and massive government spending for more than a decade? No.

People give Obama a pass when they shouldn't. This stuff didn't start with Trump. The problem goes back much further.

Obama didn't endorse ZIRP. He wanted to do more stimulus but Congress wouldn't let him.

In that environment ZIRP was the only solution. Ben Bernanke (a Bush appointee, re-appointed by Obama) devoted his academic career to how the Fed could have prevented the Great Recession. He was right.

We should hold Obama to account. But at this point I'd settle for enforcing the Constitution.

No need for false equivalence.

Budget deficits are not the same as trade deficits. Trump barely even mentions the debt and clearly does not care about it one bit.

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