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Comment by redwall_hp | Hacker News Reader

And the LLMs exist to further those problems. People can't afford houses? Well, now they won't be able to own computers either. That's a feature, not a side effect. Once the K-shaped economy progresses enough, you won't even be allowed to use the LLMs. They'll exist only to be a tool for the new feudal class who owns you.

Unless you destroy their wealth now.

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Luckily, the AI bubble will destroy a decent chunk of their wealth.

The Gartner Hype Cycle [0] is real, and ubiquitous. We are teetering somewhere near the top of the Peak of Inflated Expectations, about to plunge into the Trough of Disillusionment. A lot of very rich people are about to lose a lot of money, and we can only hope that they don't get bailed out (again).

Then, once the bubble and hype is over, the long, slow work of actually doing useful things with this new tech starts. That's when we'll see it affect everything else.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

> We are teetering somewhere near the top of the Peak of Inflated Expectations

I've been hearing this for a year and a half now. That word, "ubiquitous", is getting real mighty challenged. I have tried to insulate myself as best as I could and it just never happens and every other day I wonder if my foil hat needs adjusting. Does yours?

Previous bubbles were identified long before they popped too. It can easily go for the next two years.

Gartner hype cycle isn't scientific and is mostly voodoo marketing gibberish, why do people still post it as if it's real?

If the bubble bursts in the worst way it could, we are all fucked, but will recover eventually

Regardless, people have been making your prediction for a couple years now

> Luckily, the AI bubble will destroy a decent chunk of their wealth.

Even if all this is true (personally I doubt it), it assumes the bubble won’t burst before they’ve shifted the money from all our 401ks, IRAs and index funds into their own pockets.

The hype will be over one day, but when is that?

I've done multiple life choices, away from AI, believing it to be a hype, but this hype is still growing, still not dying.

Both in 2019, as well as in 2023, i.e. not 2 or 3 months ago.

yeah, predicting timing on the peak is tricky. Same for all the other tech cycle peaks. If you could reliably predict them then you could reliably make a fortune.

I, personally, think that choosing to move away from hyped tech is probably a mistake. The trick (imho) is to accept that it is hyped and will collapse, and use it while it makes sense to use it. Just don't bet everything on it. Have a backup ready.

> That's a feature, not a side effect.

You’re implying that the deep lizard state planned the LLM craze?

Sama might be a lizard..

s/deep lizard state/billionaires/

r>g is an old hustle, LLMs just accelerate it. Lizards aren't wizards.

when there was so little capital it had to be true... the idea that it will persist forever is obviously silly.

The problem isn't that it fails to unwind, the problem is what the unwind looks like. Last time it meant global upheaval and world wide capital incineration -- mostly metaphorical in the case of the US but very literal in the case of Europe and Asia. The poor suffer more in real terms but capital suffers more in nominal terms and that unwinds inequality and the burden of furnishing runaway capital with the runaway returns it demands in excess of economic growth.

I'm sure the same "strategy" will work again, but this time around everyone has nukes and drone swarms and AI-equipped bio labs so shit's gonna be lit.

r dropping below g isn't "unwinding". r has been falling for decades now. The world is awash in capital.

r>g, not r<g. In 2025 GDP grew 2.1% and SPY grew 17.7%, which is the pattern recently and throughout time.

Historically r>g, no one is debating that. It's the idea that it will just persist which is silly. Capital isn't immune to supply/demand.

And, r is the return on all assets, not just the s&p 500, and 1 year of returns means nothing...

Ok, if you like big intervals, 50 years, all nonwasting assets: returns were 10% in an economy growing 2%. The excess is so excessive that diddling the knobs gets you nowhere.

Capital isn't immune to supply and demand, but we do not live in the just and good universe where this leads to a Kuznets Curve. The Kuznets Curve fails because capital is in control of the economy and the politics and once it tastes high returns it fights like hell to keep them. Fights and wins. Every wise lever to pump r gets pulled, and then the unwise levers get pulled, and then the evil ones get pulled, and then the evil and stupid ones get pulled. Which brings us back to my claim, the one that answered yours earlier but you subsequently ignored:

> The problem isn't that r>g fails to unwind, the problem is what the unwind looks like.

Last time it looked like WWI/WWII. What do you think it will look like next time?

Completely made up numbers. Real returns to all assets haven't been close to 10%, and real GDP growth globally has been higher than 2%.

Anyone can parrot Piketty. Anyone with half a brain knows he is a hack.

Nah, you just don't like that he's right.

You're gonna have to diddle those numbers harder if you want to get rid of r>g.

Nah, he's a hack, extrapolating the recent past into the future.

I'm not the one making up numbers...

You don't need a back room filled with cigar smoke where supervillains coordinate their plans while twirling their mustaches when good ol' class interest does the same job.

Once capabilities catch up with the demand (~which is in few years - it just takes time to build!) average person will have much better access to higher quality and cheaper hardware. It's literally how it has always worked, I don't understand why would it be different this time. There's zero substance in your comment, just repeating tired tropes from twitter.

A market requires scarcity, because scarcity is what neccesitates trade.

You can't invoke market mechanisms to defend a post-scarcity scenario.

Why would the ai owners make things cheaper or even available at all once their abundance machines give them everything they want?

What would they get out of if it? What could ordinary people trade for it that their abundance machine can't give them already and that would be worth giving up their monopoly on productive force?

You can't argue "this will change everything" and "this is how it's always worked" simultaneously, and yet AI accelerationists bring out both to defend their ideology.

Right. Capitalism is clearly incompatible with the proposed AI future where no jobs are needed.

> You can't argue "this will change everything" and "this is how it's always worked" simultaneously, and yet AI accelerationists bring out both to defend their ideology.

Luckily I did not, you are arguing against points I did not make at all.

Oh, but you did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49648472

Either way though, what's more interesting than what you specifically said is that AI boosters have no answer to this structural argument about the reality of post-scarcity. Tellingly, you didn't address that part of my comment at all, either.

> Either way though, what's more interesting than what you specifically said is that AI boosters have no answer to this structural argument about the reality of post-scarcity. Tellingly, you didn't address that part of my comment at all, either.

You've fished a comment from completely different discussion, where a point was that if AI were to displace workers, it would be different than previous waves of automation (and there meeting these capabilities was assumed, not put forward by me). But in this thread it's more down to earth discussion about manufacturing capabilities if there is no ASI. But sure, I'll bite - yes, capitalism won't work in post-scarcity society. But we are not leaving in post-scarcity society and in our current situation capitalism is amazing system. If capitalism would get us to post-scarcity society then well, you'd have to admin that capitalism is amazingly effective. Your assumption about AI-rulers (I presume altman and amodei, not governments) having abundance machines and not sharing the abundance with anyone else is really without any merit. For this scenario to work we would need to meet few conditions that are so unlikely that it's not really worth entertaining them seriousl: 1) powerless government 2) actual ASI that's abundance machine 3) ASI that's perfectly aligned towards serving altman and amodei and none else 4) altman and amodei deciding that everyone should be poor. And also as someone who I guess you'd call AI booster (so a person that's not deluded about AI capabilities and sees how powerful they are and how current concerns with AI such as water use are overblown) I can tell you how I address this - you can't stop progress. It never worked and never will. I think world would be better if we would've stopped developing AI. But it's impossible so you might just embrace it.

> If capitalism would get us to post-scarcity society then well, you'd have to admin that capitalism is amazingly effective

I will freely admit that. But that's not the critique. Effective at what? Cancer is effective. Effectiveness for its own sake is not an inherent good. Capitalism is amazingly effective at centralizing power in a few oligarchs.

> Your assumption about AI-rulers (I presume altman and amodei, not governments) having abundance machines and not sharing the abundance with anyone else is really without any merit.

It's not an assumption. It is a structural argument. You have not addressed any of my points - why would they share?

> 1) powerless government

The government doesn't need to be powerless. It just needs to be aligned with the oligarchy. I would posit that is already the case - see basically anything the regime does.

> 2) actual ASI that's abundance machine

Yeah I agree with you there, I'm not sure that one's gonna happen, but what if it does? Under current ownership structures, it would be a bad thing.

> 3) ASI that's perfectly aligned towards serving altman and amodei and none else

Maybe Musk. Maybe Zuckerberg. Probably also Trump, as per 1).

> 4) altman and amodei deciding that everyone should be poor.

Their fellow oligarch Musk literally cut USAID which was providing for the poorest, most vulnerable people on Earth, while he was the richest man on Earth. You do not become a billionaire by caring about the poor.

> you can't stop progress. It never worked and never will

Of course you can. Some examples: Civilian Supersonic Flight, Genetics under Lysenko, Firearms in the Tokugawa shogunate.

Companies have been trying to figure out how to get people to rent pcs for a while. Unfortunately the AI boom has shown them how, buy out all the capacity of the ram manufacturers, pay them enough consistently and the manufacturers have no reason to expand their capacity. No cheap ram means companies and then home users will have no choice but to come to you and rent their pc.

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