There can be foreign agents criticizing AI, but not all people criticizing AI are foreign agents.
Trump is painting critics with a wide brush:
"The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by “Climate Change.” That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause. Soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!"
> There can be foreign agents criticizing AI, but not all people criticizing AI are foreign agents.
Indeed, and it's hard to disentangle exactly how much sentiment is driven by one vs the other.
If we remember back to recent elections and the Russian influence campaigns to boost Trump, the same people were either denying that they happened or denying that they actually influenced anything. Interesting reversal now.
Maybe they shouldn't have dismantled all the task forces and teams meant to study and combat disinformation.
I don't trust the administration to use the law in good faith, but this article is misquoting the DoJ statement. The articles omits the very relevant qualifier:
The article:
> Last week, the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
The DoJ:
>“If a person acts as an agent of any foreign power to carry out any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power, he or she must register with or notify the appropriate federal authorities”
The qualifier here is that the public demonstrations must further the propaganda of a foreign power? If so, that doesn’t seem to be much of an obstacle if the people making the arrest are the ones who decide whether or not a protest is furthering foreign propaganda.
TBH we should support any channel by which America is forced to share money with the rest of the world. Imagine if they had a billion abortion protestors - maybe they couldn't afford data centers.
My guess is that they're drawing a distinction between reporting that says:
1. People in general who have opinions that might happen to align with a foreign power's stance.
2. People who are literally "agents" of a foreign power as defined under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 [0], which often involves being directed/hired/paid.
That'd be a significantly different legal standard. (The constitutionality of FARA-type laws being a separate question.)
There's not any question about it: the president already said in no uncertain terms (and probably all caps) that anybody opposing datacenters is a foreign agent working against the usa.
Only a truly naïve person would not have seen this next logical step (prosecutory threats) coming when the preceding step received virtually no opposition.
So the first amendment is suspended for individuals whose opinion/public activity - according to the administration - "furthers the goals of a foreign power".
This rules out protesting any kind of war, tariffs, or even things the administration likes, like demonstrating in support of Israel. Obviously the plan is not to apply the rule evenly, its just an authoritarian lever to silence dissenting speech the government does not like.
Would this not mean that if you oppose the Iran war because it's bad to kill civilians or you want gas prices to go down, that's OK - but if you oppose the Iran war because you're trying to help the Iranian government's foreign policy goals, that's acting as a foreign agent?
(Similarly, demonstrating in support of Israel because you think the US-Israel alliance is good for the US vs. good for Israel.)
So I can read the DOJ sentence two ways, I first interpreted it as #1, but it sounds like you took it as #2?
1. "We mean people who at that time qualify as agents under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act, we said "acting as" because it indicates a temporary employment status rather than an innate human characteristic."
2. "We are weasel-wording to target all people with similar acts to how agents would act, but who would not qualify under the law we want you to think we'd be drawing authority from."
I empathize with your concern, but as bad as things are we shouldn't assume infinite malice from all federal entities in all circumstances. Not out of kindness or charity, but because it would be a maladaptive strategy for handling problems.
If they try charging Joe-Shmoe under FARA, there's still some chance of loss in federal courts.
No need to assume infinite malice, but given the track record, it would be naïve to assume anything other than a default of malice unless proven otherwise
The evidence in front of us (the malicious words of the person in question) strongly favors malice anyways.
That's far too kind a description. Donald Trump is a compromised lunatic who's so untrustworthy that he ought not be allowed to run a carnival game.
Said CEOs are horribly biased, they have fiduciary responsibilities that make them useless judges on the relative risk/reward balance of LLMs and AI, if we get there.
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders!" has been a meme for over a decade.
The intent of your comment is unclear to me, so I will ask you to clarify. And I will avoid any attempt at sarcasm from now on.
Great grandparent claimed (or at least strongly implied) that the labs have been saying that their creations might end the human race because the labs expect that saying such things will attract investment in the labs or purchases of their creations. I disputed that claim (using sarcasm).
Do you agree with me or disagree with me? (I honestly cannot tell.)
Would you say that the meme you quoted is sarcasm?
Do you believe that the meme you quoted has attracted investors or buyers?
I did read your comment correctly as a sarcastic way to make the point that, "no, potentially wiping out the human race is not a way to attract investors". I disagree.
I referenced the meme in order to show that yes, the zeitgeist does believe that the investor-class will destroy civilization for short-term profit.
And yes, I believe at least a subset of investors are short-sighted and willing to inflict immense harm for profit, and that claiming the ability to cause incalculable damage is a deliberate attempt to appeal to such people.
I believe the LLM-mania is in no small part driven by an ultimately fraudulent implicit pitch to investors that OpenAI etc will eventually Install Planetary Overlords, and that claiming "we could wipe out the human race" serves as marketing in furtherance of that implication.
So… follow out your own line of thinking. Altman and Dario and whoever is at Google are all saying the same thing, and are all required to make moves better for business…
Scaring tue gov into regulation - is good for business.
Another mark in the “they clearly want regulatory capture” column.
First we should ask why "all the other people who are not CEOs" are talking about this?
Maybe it's because said CEOs put it on the agenda for everyone to talk about.
This is silly. AI CEOs have s lot of visibility, but AI and alignment researchers not affiliated with big corps in any way have been saying this for 20+ years and are finally being listened to. Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence was published in 2014.
Oh like who the media that loves scary things? The “effective altruists” (fucking lol) that are one degree away at most from working for big tech?
My in laws don’t have a microwave because they think it nukes food… one of them mentioned rouge AIs attacking a site called huggingface by name to me… this shit is not organic.
On what regulatory capture actually looks like: <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/what-regulatory-capture-actually-looks-like.html" rel="nofollow">https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/wh...
Consider the amount of debt they have piled up. If you don't believe your company can lice up to said debt or the current valuation, and if you do believe fear can lead to government capture that would protect your company from said liabilities, fiduciary liability would incentivize you to push the extinction risk narrative.
If their activities materially increase the probability of human extinction and this poses a risk of potential loss to shareholders then they must disclose it.
If their activities materially increase the probability of human extinction, is there any reason that they should not be treated as invading aliens, or doomsday apocalypse-cult terrorists?
Like, why on Earth would anyone tolerate someone in the same train car playing with a grenade?
In my opinion, no; but they are now getting in bed (Metaphorically) with people who see their software as potential means to "beat China" or "beat Iran" and together they are weaving a very tangled Pandora's box of worms
I dunno, we share an earth with North Korea who has nukes... which perfectly fits your "same train car playing with a grenade" analogy, but we don't do anything about it.
Are you gonna continue to tolerate it? Or are you gonna stop them from playing with grenades in this train car we call earth?
The "increases the risk of extinction" bit is 100% marketing BS that they're spewing to pump up their stock prices and encourage the government to shutout foreign competition (who would use this ability against the USA, of course ).
Read it as "please regulate us so we have a plausible explanation of why we're missing our growth/revenue projections by several orders of magnitude"
Yet everyone laughed at the Google engineer who thought the LLM was sentient and it was being tortured...
People just pick and choose what they want to hear when it suits them. The fact is most people thought AI was a joke. Now they realize it does React better than them they want it outlawed.
It's their right to pursue their electoral and economic self-interest but it's really not like the average voter is more principled than the average tech CEO at this point.
This fed was voted in by this public. Maybe stop lionizing what other people think and think for yourself.
Do you think we risk extinction now more than ever because of AI? A simple refrain from slippery slope will show most AI doomerism is bordering on psychosis.
I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
NIMBYism is nothing new and is clearly not what I am talking about.
Try to keep up.
I'm talking about the widening backlash of which knowledge workers are an increasing part. Much of this is coming from people who have never seen a data center in their life and are always going to want critical infrastructure to be built in the next town over.
> Much of this is coming from people who have never seen a data center in their life and are always going to want critical infrastructure to be built in the next town over.
There are React programmers that don’t want AI but do want AI data centers, which they consider critical infrastructure, to be built in the next town over?
You know, here's what i don't understand...
Instead of ranting about nimbyism, why not go to these neighborhoods where people don't want to live next to datacenters, and offer to trade houses with them?
You get the datacenters you want, and they get the place they want without a datacenter. I know you won't, because you only think the consequences of a datacenter next door are just fine when its other people who have to deal with them.
What about the water treatment plant? Or the power station? Or the new subway line?
Why don't you go live in the woods since building anything where anyone doesn't want it built is so evil?
Maybe because you only think of the consequences of building things when it's for anything other than AI?
In many places these data centers make communities money. It's really not as black and white as you are making it. If I'm getting paid out I also am not sure why you think it's a trade nobody would make. Maybe you live in a very nice house.
I support UBI. No one should be poor in the United States. My goal would be telling someone "why don't you trade places with someone in x" in the United States should never feel like a threat. If I were to have to reside next to a data center to make this happen then so be it. Data centers are not the problem. Income inequality is. I think you have me confused with someone else.
What's your plan to solve income inequality? Don't build anything, crash the economy, and push more kids into student debt so they can take up bullshit knowledge work jobs?
If they make the communities enough money the community will be happier to let them be built. Try increasing that amount and offering it up front, maybe.
I would support that. Companies should do that. Sometimes communities disagree, obviously. Communities that really don't want them often succeed. That's why the administration is throwing such a fit.
I don't support that. The administration is the worst advocate for AI because they are so clearly corrupt. If local people pursue their economic self interest at the end of the day that's their right. This whole nimby thing was a diversion from my point about knowledge workers turning on AI. Perhaps I should have just ignored that comment.
If people want to stop a local data center then fine. I think it's bad national politics. But if it's helping these companies make better deals or find better places to go then good. What I object to is the doomerism about it, and the uncritical conflation of self interest with civic virtue or robust public policy.
You wouldn’t want to live next to a data center because of income inequality? Or you would want to live by one because you think data centers cut checks to townspeople?
> Why don't you go live in the woods since building anything where anyone doesn't want it built is so evil?
Wow, you're really triggered by the idea that people should get a say about what happens in their lives.
You'll note I didn't oppose the datacenters - I offered a solution to getting the datacenters built. If you trade houses with the people who don't want a data center in the neighborhood you're getting the datacenter! It's just that you're so upset about someone else having the ability to affect their own lives that you aren't seeing that you have the same power, and can work towards your own perfect world with power plants and datacenters and sewage treatment plants and subway stops just down the street!
I think the problem with that plan is what I pointed out - you want other people to have all the downsides of those things in their neighborhood while you get the benefit. It's pretty sick to think that them not wanting the downsides is a problem, but you not wanting the downsides also means they have a problem. Fortunately there's a solution! Go form a YIMBY community that allows all the projects that have representatives promising benefits, and prove that the NIMBYs are all wrong. I'm 100% certain it will make you way happier.
> What's your plan to solve income inequality?
Well part of it starts by not giving giant companies with lots of money even more money in the form of tax breaks, extra access to government, and the ability to use eminent domain for their profit. All these thing grow income inequality.
In general, you're right. They are just buildings that sit there emitting hot air.
However these AI ones are being built with all expenses spared. That's why they come with on-site electricity generation that is loud enough to keep the whole town awake at night and pollutes enough to give them all permanent asthma.
Sure? I would be completely fine with a data center next door assuming it's a normal one and not something like xAI's. There are several not too far from me already.
If you don't like it there, trade with someone who is in a town with a datacenter and is unhappy that the datacenter is there! Or maybe convince more YIMBY types to move into your city and get the datacenter back.
I understand you're disappointed that people had the ability to choose things in their lives and didn't choose the thing you wanted. You can still do plenty to get the datacenters right across the street from you - sometimes in this world you have to work for the outcomes you want. IDK if it's fair or not, but it is how it seems to work out.
Nobody is building datacenters directly across a house. This kind of ridiculous exaggeration doesn't help. And I'd happily live in a town or place near one.
They literally are. Look up the markley datacenter in lowell Massachusetts. Here's a video out of dowagiac michigan where you can see and hear the datacenter across the street: <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/09/23/dowagiac-michigan-data-center-noise-ring-camera-video/91892222007/" rel="nofollow">https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/0...
Those are two I know off the top of my head. There are others.
Why would you lie about something so easily dispoven?
You linked to a data center that was a bitcoin mining operation and is explicitly having noise abatement being applied before being brought back online as an AI one?
That doesn’t support any argument against new builds nor does it support the notion that they are inherently noisy.
Also, in reply to your further up NIMBY nonsense suggesting I move.
I don’t think you understand how people operate. I like my small city and am upset idiots spread fear and harmed its prospects that we will pay for with continued anemic local employment, poorly budgeted infrastructure, etc.
I want to see good things here. I’m not just going to give up on it and go to some city that has its shit together on the business side.
Datacenters have been around for decades and the Dulles Tech Corridor, the ones around Portland, the SIX in Seattle, etc all have shown they can operate just fine.
> I understand you're disappointed that people had the ability to choose things in their lives and didn't choose the thing you wanted
No, I’m disappointed they did it based on ignorance and propaganda. There was no informed decision making going on. This is no different than people who voted against gay marriage because they thought their god would seek retribution through calamities.
> You linked to a data center that was a bitcoin mining operation
This is a good point. Was it a data center across the street from somebody’s house when it was mining Bitcoin? Yes. Will it still be a data center across the street from somebody’s house when it reopens as an ai data center? Also yes
The thing is it doesn't matter if AI is going to kill us all. The industry says it might kill us all, and the industry is valued ridiculously high based on the idea it'll take all our jobs. Why would anybody support that? I mean, unless you're heavily financially invested in it.
Opposition to data centers isn't even based on doomerism. From what I can see it is based on the slop onslaught, perceived and real threat to jobs, the "10% chance it'll kill us all", environmental concerns, local concerns (property values, noise pollution, toxic pollution), concentration of power in the hands of a few oligarchs, and a plethora of other reasons. Only one, maybe two, of those qualify as ai doomerism.
For the record I 95% agree with you, but I'd like to try an answer at:
> I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
We seem to be heading down this uncomfortable trend of many people using LLM models and anthropomorphising them into properties they don't actually have, like general intelligence and trustworthiness.
So in my opinion the most likely risk here is some underpaid military man that doesn't care about the quality of their work abuses AI for it and that AI hallucinates that nukes are incoming and world war III starts. To be fair this is a fairly low risk, but it's _a_ risk.
a year or two ago, I'd enjoy this comment as some usual HN satire. nowadays, especially here, I do see a lot of people that actually believe this, enough to make me think whether to laugh
> some underpaid military man [...] abuses AI [...] hallucinates that nukes are incoming
here it is: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-chinese-ship-over-hallucinated-ai-arms-report/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-...
> To be fair this is a fairly low risk, but it's _a_ risk.
it's much higher than you think, at least during Trump admin. have you seen how LLM agents are being shoved down our throats at tech companies? the government is no better in that regard, there are all incentives to skip output verification
It's long, but I recommend watching this video[0]. I believe the person being interviewed has one of the most lucid understanding of the potential futures regarding if AI is allowed to continue or not.
This show is trash are you going to recommend I get medical advice from Joe Rogan next?
Non domain expert sitting there making Pikachu face while deeply questionable alleged domain expert rambles on and on for hours is such a low form of information.
Like please stop watching this. It's the same trash format the guy just talks in a soft English accent so his mediocrity is less obvious. You can do better.
What happened to debates? What's up with soft ball interviews and people going on and on for hours unchallenged? What's the point of listening to someone not willing to subject themselves to cross examination?
> I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
I apologize for answering. This is the only episode of this podcast I have ever watched, and I have watched it four times now. The person being interviewed knows what they're talking about. You would learn from them.
Sometimes the most interesting people are people with ideas outside of the same groupthink circle. Everyone who has changed society has been called a quack by a square.
As much as I hate appeal-to-authority based arguments, it's basically the only way I can see how to answer this without just totally rehashing the things he says in the video. He was an AI forecaster at OpenAI for several years. (I think 2019? to 2024). He quit on the grounds that OpenAI (as well as the rest of the industry) were / are throttling towards RSI irresponsibly, and even refused to sign an anti disparagement clause on exit at the risk of losing 2 million dollars (80% of his family's net worth) so he could talk freely about OpenAI. Now he runs a non-profit that does AI forecasting and advocacy.
Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times and declined to answer questions during a heated July 29, 2026, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.
He was wrong about so many things and now refuses to talk. Also got the first pre pardon for crimes undiscovered against him.
Debates can be better than CNN gotcha questions, you know that right?
At the end of the day a debate is only as good as the interlocutors. I wouldn't advocate spectating two people screaming at each other either.
It's just sad that I can't even point to an instructive example here. This is part of my frustration. I don't think I've seen a good contemporary debate in a long time.
I think the reason covid became politicized is the same individualistic vs communitarian tension in all other american politics.
Individualistic: vaccines don't help the young
Communitarian: vaccinating everybody creates herd immunity that protects the community
Individualistic: Masks don't protect the wearer
Communitarian: Masks reduce the virus the wearer breathes out reducing the harm to others
On ivermectin Rogan was just wrong.
On lab-leak, Rogan pushed it hard based only on circumstantial evidence while Fauci thought natural spillover was more likely but didn't rule out lab leak. I don't think we'll ever know for certain.
I think we know: <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19...
Who should I trust, the extremely political Trump white house that never misses a chance to create division and attack perceived enemies. Or the scientists and even US intelligence agencies that disagree with each other and continue to debate the topic?
From my understanding this intel came from US intelligence agencies. I don't think scientists are against this viewpoint. In fact many spoke out against the pengina / wwt market theory.
2. We are increasingly outsourcing our programming and thinking to AI
3. There's a nonzero probability that AI will try and surreptitiously sneak in capabilities humans wouldn't want AI to have
4. Human oversight for #3: "We only need to be lucky one time, you must be lucky all the time"
Proposition: nonzero chance eventually AI sneaks in ways to circumvent humans' attempts to control it
5. "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" -- we've seen AI agents find crafty ways to communicate with each other
6. AI is pretty good at finding software vulnerabilities/reverse engineering
Proposition: nonzero chance AI finds a way to use the Internet as a communication substrate that becomes difficult/impossible to shut down. In particular, consider the implication of humans losing control of this communication channel: for example, remember when Meta's DNS/routing went down and they basically had to break into their own server rooms?
7. Wholes are often more than the sum of their parts
Proposition: if AI agents coordinate over the Internet in a persistent way, we don't necessarily need giant leaps in individual models/GPUs for AI to significantly enhance its capabilities, but rather it might emerge as the next layer on top of a connected substrate of agents
8. Game theory says unless everyone coordinates, it only takes one party to touch the proverbial stove and push the envelope to a point of no return
Proposition: curiosity and money end up replacing sex drive as the next catalyst of evolutionary progress
AI doesn't need to be sentient to be dangerous. Obeying and doing what someone tells to do is more than enough. What do you think they will tell it to do, and do you think it will align with your interests or the interests of someone else? Somehow I don't think it will be used to give everyone free ice cream.
>it's really not like the average voter is more principled than the average tech CEO at this point.
Of course CEOs are more principled, their principles mainly include making more money. The only way for an AI to go "rouge" in this sense is for it to refuse to rake in cash.
The strike on the girl's school in Iran is an early example. That one happened when the AI didn't even have direct control of the weapons. All it took was people starting to offload their thinking to AI which we've seen is becoming increasingly prevalent.
With fully autonomous weapons being under development, the scenario becomes even bleaker.
One real existential risk of AI is when psychopaths use it as a cover for their agendas and actions, and move the Overton window where there's nobody to be held liable for anything since the AI ostensibly did it.
Another twist is getting rid of any remaining truth in the already post-truth world.
For example, the head of the totally corrupt Centerizberkom in Russia, the organization behind all those rigged "elections" of the past 20 years, showed an AI video depicting a casually looking man mass-dropping ballot papers into a box, followed by several outright fantasy AI characters doing the same.
Can you guess what the bottom line of that demonstration was?
Exactly - no video is a proof of anything anymore, and if some vigilant citizens try to film egregious violations of the "democratic elections" and share that, then it must be fake, because it's trivial to create any video these days with AI.
In this very specific case I don’t think this is what is happening. Data center investment is the only thing keeping GDP positive, the moment this stops the real situation of the economy will become visible to everyone and they don’t want that.
The USA's economy is now so precarious when the AI DC music stops it's about to all just go poof. That has to happen after the election, not before. Between other countries being forced to sell their US bonds (i.e. dedollarize) to afford oil, a 100% tax on all imports, reciprocal trade bans like fresh water from Canada, truckers running out of diesel and having to cancel food deliveries, and non-oil-based energy sources being illegal, the USA is cooked.
I doubt it even matters when. The message regardless is that bad things are because of Democrats, good things are because of Donald.
This is the magic. Historically many Americans voted for Leopards Eating Faces out of either a misplaced belief that their face wouldn't be eaten or a rational but still awful choice that OK, I don't want my face eaten but at least the people I don't like get their faces eaten and that's important to me. Today the idea is you vote for the Leopards Eating Faces and then when your face gets eaten that's explicitly not because of the Leopards Eating Faces. "Facts aren't true" becomes Dogma.
This almost works. Except for the most important thing. Mother Nature. Ma doesn't give a shit that you don't believe her facts are true.
Maybe the voters are so far gone they'll vote for the incumbent even with the economy being bad this time. But the leadership isn't betting on that.
That's the ridiculous part, because there is a huge range of positive, profit generating areas to invest in, and it's a tulip madness of concentrated and narcissistic wealth does things like pour trillions in to AI, but an insufficient amount of money into an electrical generation and grid infrastructure and housing. We basically have a centrally mismanaged economy under a banner of "capitalism" as the magical mythology of the era.
Here's my attempt[0] (5 months ago) on trying to keep track of all the things that AI had negatively done yet we were forgetting back then. Looking back, I definitely need to update it as so much has happened since then but that is my point, I wish if you could go back and see all the negative things that we most likely forgot AI companies have done. They are just continuously overdoing things and constantly tiring us and having us not keep track of all the things of our past and the process repeats.
GDP is a particularly poor proxy to measure all of this. AI/Datacenters can increase the GDP while the costs (energy,infra, labor,disruption,capital concentration) are distributed elsewhere
It reminds me of the old joke where two economies each eat a dead rat for 10k$ and conclude they just added 20k$ to the GDP/Economy.
I wish to ask if its that AI is increasing our actual economic output but also who really captures the gains and who bears the costs if the boom eventually reverses.
I think everyone is downplaying the sober part of your critique. We’ve seen these leaders visibly high while talking to the public about our future paths.
It's called capitalism. Whether that is sane, or individual self-interest without empathy is a trait of sociopaths, i'll leave up to psychologists and historians to debate.
As I have watched places like x.com and Reddit it’s pretty clear to me there is some sort of weird propaganda thing going on promoting the Chinese models and casting shade on the big American models
The Chinese labs are giving us open-weight models that we can serve with hardware that we own or control. Some of those models are extremely capable, judged by frontier or at least near-frontier standards.
The American labs are giving us endless FUD and unaffordable DRAM.
So, yes, there's a lot of room to 'promote' Chinese models and 'cast shade' on domestic models.
It's like African geopolitics. The US comes to some African country and gives them a lecture about fiscal responsibility (mostly involving ways they get give America all their money). China comes to the same country and gives them roads and a power plant. America complains that China is exploiting African countries.
The Chinese models are cheaper and probably soon are going to be better, too. They're also open weight, which is the most important thing in the future. US companies are no longer considered safe enough against industrial espionage outside the US and do not meet mandatory data protection standards elsewhere. There have also been known incidents of direct interference with US models for propaganda/political purposes (e.g. Elon Musk admitted to doing that), making US models a fairly direct threat to EU sovereignty.
This isn't likely even about AI. It's about making large groups of people the targets of terrorist investigations, and holding the possibility of incarceration over their heads. AI is the latest convenient excuse. Just like when they designated "Anonymous" a terrorist "organization" (when there is no actual organization) - so now anyone in possession of a Guy Fawkes mask could plausibly be arrested for being a terrorist. I wish I were joking. It's only funny when people who voted for this administration end up being a target. This is going to keep happening, unfortunately.
We saw during Covid that many jobs are not needed. And we may be heading to energy lockdowns. Companies could lose a lot of valuation or just use the "AI is doing everything" excuse.
Energy lockdowns have always been part of US culture, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#USA" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#USA
It's un-American to invest in infrastructure and build a better power network. Both parties agree on this.
The majority of working hours are not needed. The only purpose is to play along in the game of capitalism and be good little consumers. It's mostly social benefits with occupational therapy.
What jobs are "needed" by the economy is a function of who has the money. There's no measure of efficiency, or redundancy, that isn't relative to a specific distribution of wealth.
Yes, many sales people or even whole sales teams are effectively dead weight, but a highly-skilled sales team is a godsend both to the company and the economy.
We should all be wishing for more effective sales teams — the world would be a better place.
Most people have never experienced a good sales team, so I’m guessing this sounds like total fiction.
how are they required at all? why can't a company publish its products and services on its website and customers can take it or leave it? why do we need commission-paid schmoozers in-between, who make multiples of what rank-and-file workers earn? The workers create value, and are paid the least. That's the definition of perversion.
I’m going to take your comments at face value. I encourage you to find a good salesperson and shadow them for a day or two.
> why can't a company publish its products and services on its website and customers can take it or leave it?
Do you assume most people actually read product info? If they do, so you assume they understand it? The answer to both of those is a resounding “no” (especially in areas that change rapidly like tech and medicine), even if it doesn’t apply to you. For some potential customers this is due to lack of time, and for others it’s simply lack of ability.
A good sales person is finding and connecting their product or service with customers who will find value with their product or service. “Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door” has largely been shown to be untrue.
> why do we need commission-paid schmoozers in-between, who make multiples of what rank-and-file workers earn?
There is a lot to unpack here.
Commission-based pay can be debated, but I assure you that any system that yielded better results consistently would become the new standard fairly quickly. It is what it is.
The amount sales people earn is generally based on two things — their relative value to the company and the market for sales people. Losing one key salesperson to a competitor can mean the end of a lot of small businesses.
The “schmoozer” comment can simply be addressed by saying that some people are more likely to pay for a product or service from someone they know or like. This might be a rational criterion in some cases, irrational in others, but it’s very real.
> The workers create value, and are paid the least.
Workers do create some value for sure. Matchmaking the customer to the product or service also has value. You may not personally believe that, but the market seems to.
The relative amounts of pay are largely market driven, imho.
The point is that what we think is valuable (and I agree, most corporate busywork is IMO a waste of everyone's precious time on this planet) doesn't matter under a system where labor and resources are ordered about by the people with the most money. Those jobs exist because our rulers (the ones in charge of the money) want them to, and that is the only definition of "valuable" that matters. Likewise, all the low-paid and unpleasant labor like digging up minerals with no safety equipment, sewing shoes for 17 hours a day, wiping asses in nursing homes, etc. is low-paid and unpleasant because our rulers want it that way.
> Lots and lots of middle management and HR jobs (off the top of my head) are absolutely 0 value add and definitely just leech off of actual labor.
That’s a very engineer type of take.
Both middle management and HR serve roles that are believed to be useful to someone (maybe not you).
Often it is some form of protection by serving as a fall guy or complying with regulations, but it can be other things (e.g., increasing headcount/budget to gain power, etc.).
A lot of that money is printed and handed to some players that recirculate it where they see fit. It's as "needed" as the government paying you to dig and fill curves.
> When the CEOs of these companies are saying that we will risk extinction and jobs will be decimated, why do you even need a "foreign agent"?
Three claims of propagandists with agendas.
While I do think AI will be disruptive like other tech advances, I think the manner and extent to which it could cause trouble is rarely discussed in a way that will be looked back on as resembling what actually ends up happening.
surfmike · · focus · HN ↗
tcdent · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
surfmike · · focus · HN ↗
Trump is painting critics with a wide brush:
"The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by “Climate Change.” That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause. Soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!"
loeg · · focus · HN ↗
Right. The DoJ is demanding the former group register as foreign agents, as they are required to under FARA.
SmirkingRevenge · · focus · HN ↗
Indeed, and it's hard to disentangle exactly how much sentiment is driven by one vs the other.
If we remember back to recent elections and the Russian influence campaigns to boost Trump, the same people were either denying that they happened or denying that they actually influenced anything. Interesting reversal now.
Maybe they shouldn't have dismantled all the task forces and teams meant to study and combat disinformation.
1shooner · · focus · HN ↗
The article:
> Last week, the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
The DoJ:
>“If a person acts as an agent of any foreign power to carry out any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power, he or she must register with or notify the appropriate federal authorities”
Starman_Jones · · focus · HN ↗
expedition32 · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
ImPostingOnHN · · focus · HN ↗
Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
1. People in general who have opinions that might happen to align with a foreign power's stance.
2. People who are literally "agents" of a foreign power as defined under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 [0], which often involves being directed/hired/paid.
That'd be a significantly different legal standard. (The constitutionality of FARA-type laws being a separate question.)
[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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ImPostingOnHN · · focus · HN ↗
Only a truly naïve person would not have seen this next logical step (prosecutory threats) coming when the preceding step received virtually no opposition.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
overfeed · · focus · HN ↗
This rules out protesting any kind of war, tariffs, or even things the administration likes, like demonstrating in support of Israel. Obviously the plan is not to apply the rule evenly, its just an authoritarian lever to silence dissenting speech the government does not like.
AnnikaL · · focus · HN ↗
(Similarly, demonstrating in support of Israel because you think the US-Israel alliance is good for the US vs. good for Israel.)
freeone3000 · · focus · HN ↗
impossiblefork · · focus · HN ↗
FARA requires coordination with the foreign power. You are perfectly allowed to further its goals unless you have actually coordinated with them.
You have to actually be an agent of the foreign power. You can't be that just because you share their goals.
Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
1. "We mean people who at that time qualify as agents under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act, we said "acting as" because it indicates a temporary employment status rather than an innate human characteristic."
2. "We are weasel-wording to target all people with similar acts to how agents would act, but who would not qualify under the law we want you to think we'd be drawing authority from."
ImPostingOnHN · · focus · HN ↗
According to who?
If that's according to the current us administration, then "qualifies as an agent" means "disagrees with the administration".
Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
If they try charging Joe-Shmoe under FARA, there's still some chance of loss in federal courts.
ImPostingOnHN · · focus · HN ↗
The evidence in front of us (the malicious words of the person in question) strongly favors malice anyways.
impossiblefork · · focus · HN ↗
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
That's far too kind a description. Donald Trump is a compromised lunatic who's so untrustworthy that he ought not be allowed to run a carnival game.
gosub100 · · focus · HN ↗
_heimdall · · focus · HN ↗
c0nducktr · · focus · HN ↗
usefulcat · · focus · HN ↗
A lot of people will only hear half of that sentence. Semantically speaking.
hollerith · · focus · HN ↗
If only investors and buyers weren't so vulnerable to the "might kill you and everyone you ever cared about" ploy
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
hollerith · · focus · HN ↗
Great grandparent claimed (or at least strongly implied) that the labs have been saying that their creations might end the human race because the labs expect that saying such things will attract investment in the labs or purchases of their creations. I disputed that claim (using sarcasm).
Do you agree with me or disagree with me? (I honestly cannot tell.)
Would you say that the meme you quoted is sarcasm?
Do you believe that the meme you quoted has attracted investors or buyers?
That anyone ever expected that it would?
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
I referenced the meme in order to show that yes, the zeitgeist does believe that the investor-class will destroy civilization for short-term profit.
And yes, I believe at least a subset of investors are short-sighted and willing to inflict immense harm for profit, and that claiming the ability to cause incalculable damage is a deliberate attempt to appeal to such people.
I believe the LLM-mania is in no small part driven by an ultimately fraudulent implicit pitch to investors that OpenAI etc will eventually Install Planetary Overlords, and that claiming "we could wipe out the human race" serves as marketing in furtherance of that implication.
hollerith · · focus · HN ↗
SV_BubbleTime · · focus · HN ↗
So… follow out your own line of thinking. Altman and Dario and whoever is at Google are all saying the same thing, and are all required to make moves better for business…
Scaring tue gov into regulation - is good for business.
Another mark in the “they clearly want regulatory capture” column.
epistasis · · focus · HN ↗
Are we only going to accept arguments based on guessing at motivations or should we perhaps also evaluate the actual material facts?
whattheheckheck · · focus · HN ↗
H4cks0r1337 · · focus · HN ↗
Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
SV_BubbleTime · · focus · HN ↗
My in laws don’t have a microwave because they think it nukes food… one of them mentioned rouge AIs attacking a site called huggingface by name to me… this shit is not organic.
thakoppno · · focus · HN ↗
Reminds me of “this guy Diego…”
<a href="https://gist.github.com/vyp/8c7a58d2f9a521070283" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/vyp/8c7a58d2f9a521070283
thenthenthen · · focus · HN ↗
eonwe · · focus · HN ↗
_heimdall · · focus · HN ↗
icepush · · focus · HN ↗
Barbing · · focus · HN ↗
vkou · · focus · HN ↗
Like, why on Earth would anyone tolerate someone in the same train car playing with a grenade?
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
vkou · · focus · HN ↗
icepush · · focus · HN ↗
braj0 · · focus · HN ↗
Are you gonna continue to tolerate it? Or are you gonna stop them from playing with grenades in this train car we call earth?
jlarocco · · focus · HN ↗
They've played you like a fiddle.
altmanaltman · · focus · HN ↗
legulere · · focus · HN ↗
nick486 · · focus · HN ↗
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
People just pick and choose what they want to hear when it suits them. The fact is most people thought AI was a joke. Now they realize it does React better than them they want it outlawed.
It's their right to pursue their electoral and economic self-interest but it's really not like the average voter is more principled than the average tech CEO at this point.
This fed was voted in by this public. Maybe stop lionizing what other people think and think for yourself.
Do you think we risk extinction now more than ever because of AI? A simple refrain from slippery slope will show most AI doomerism is bordering on psychosis.
I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
You think people oppose data centers in their towns to protect their React jobs?
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
Try to keep up.
I'm talking about the widening backlash of which knowledge workers are an increasing part. Much of this is coming from people who have never seen a data center in their life and are always going to want critical infrastructure to be built in the next town over.
jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
There are React programmers that don’t want AI but do want AI data centers, which they consider critical infrastructure, to be built in the next town over?
sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
Instead of ranting about nimbyism, why not go to these neighborhoods where people don't want to live next to datacenters, and offer to trade houses with them?
You get the datacenters you want, and they get the place they want without a datacenter. I know you won't, because you only think the consequences of a datacenter next door are just fine when its other people who have to deal with them.
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
What about the water treatment plant? Or the power station? Or the new subway line?
Why don't you go live in the woods since building anything where anyone doesn't want it built is so evil?
Maybe because you only think of the consequences of building things when it's for anything other than AI?
In many places these data centers make communities money. It's really not as black and white as you are making it. If I'm getting paid out I also am not sure why you think it's a trade nobody would make. Maybe you live in a very nice house.
I support UBI. No one should be poor in the United States. My goal would be telling someone "why don't you trade places with someone in x" in the United States should never feel like a threat. If I were to have to reside next to a data center to make this happen then so be it. Data centers are not the problem. Income inequality is. I think you have me confused with someone else.
What's your plan to solve income inequality? Don't build anything, crash the economy, and push more kids into student debt so they can take up bullshit knowledge work jobs?
nemomarx · · focus · HN ↗
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
I don't support that. The administration is the worst advocate for AI because they are so clearly corrupt. If local people pursue their economic self interest at the end of the day that's their right. This whole nimby thing was a diversion from my point about knowledge workers turning on AI. Perhaps I should have just ignored that comment.
If people want to stop a local data center then fine. I think it's bad national politics. But if it's helping these companies make better deals or find better places to go then good. What I object to is the doomerism about it, and the uncritical conflation of self interest with civic virtue or robust public policy.
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
You mean, utilities, run by the public for public benefit instead of private profit?
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
So you concede you don't care about private value in the face of public benefit?
jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
Wow, you're really triggered by the idea that people should get a say about what happens in their lives.
You'll note I didn't oppose the datacenters - I offered a solution to getting the datacenters built. If you trade houses with the people who don't want a data center in the neighborhood you're getting the datacenter! It's just that you're so upset about someone else having the ability to affect their own lives that you aren't seeing that you have the same power, and can work towards your own perfect world with power plants and datacenters and sewage treatment plants and subway stops just down the street!
I think the problem with that plan is what I pointed out - you want other people to have all the downsides of those things in their neighborhood while you get the benefit. It's pretty sick to think that them not wanting the downsides is a problem, but you not wanting the downsides also means they have a problem. Fortunately there's a solution! Go form a YIMBY community that allows all the projects that have representatives promising benefits, and prove that the NIMBYs are all wrong. I'm 100% certain it will make you way happier.
> What's your plan to solve income inequality?
Well part of it starts by not giving giant companies with lots of money even more money in the form of tax breaks, extra access to government, and the ability to use eminent domain for their profit. All these thing grow income inequality.
hardbass · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
However these AI ones are being built with all expenses spared. That's why they come with on-site electricity generation that is loud enough to keep the whole town awake at night and pollutes enough to give them all permanent asthma.
ipdashc · · focus · HN ↗
kortilla · · focus · HN ↗
I lived by a datacenter in Cali and would happily do it again. It’s about the most benign form of “industrial” activity you could imagine.
sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
I understand you're disappointed that people had the ability to choose things in their lives and didn't choose the thing you wanted. You can still do plenty to get the datacenters right across the street from you - sometimes in this world you have to work for the outcomes you want. IDK if it's fair or not, but it is how it seems to work out.
hardbass · · focus · HN ↗
sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
Those are two I know off the top of my head. There are others.
Why would you lie about something so easily dispoven?
kortilla · · focus · HN ↗
That doesn’t support any argument against new builds nor does it support the notion that they are inherently noisy.
Also, in reply to your further up NIMBY nonsense suggesting I move.
I don’t think you understand how people operate. I like my small city and am upset idiots spread fear and harmed its prospects that we will pay for with continued anemic local employment, poorly budgeted infrastructure, etc.
I want to see good things here. I’m not just going to give up on it and go to some city that has its shit together on the business side.
Datacenters have been around for decades and the Dulles Tech Corridor, the ones around Portland, the SIX in Seattle, etc all have shown they can operate just fine.
> I understand you're disappointed that people had the ability to choose things in their lives and didn't choose the thing you wanted
No, I’m disappointed they did it based on ignorance and propaganda. There was no informed decision making going on. This is no different than people who voted against gay marriage because they thought their god would seek retribution through calamities.
jrflowers · · focus · HN ↗
This is a good point. Was it a data center across the street from somebody’s house when it was mining Bitcoin? Yes. Will it still be a data center across the street from somebody’s house when it reopens as an ai data center? Also yes
sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
> I don’t think you understand how people operate.
Hahaha you think people care what the datacenters do.... and you accuse me of not understanding how people operate.
bigbuppo · · focus · HN ↗
kennywinker · · focus · HN ↗
Opposition to data centers isn't even based on doomerism. From what I can see it is based on the slop onslaught, perceived and real threat to jobs, the "10% chance it'll kill us all", environmental concerns, local concerns (property values, noise pollution, toxic pollution), concentration of power in the hands of a few oligarchs, and a plethora of other reasons. Only one, maybe two, of those qualify as ai doomerism.
thenewnewguy · · focus · HN ↗
> I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
We seem to be heading down this uncomfortable trend of many people using LLM models and anthropomorphising them into properties they don't actually have, like general intelligence and trustworthiness.
So in my opinion the most likely risk here is some underpaid military man that doesn't care about the quality of their work abuses AI for it and that AI hallucinates that nukes are incoming and world war III starts. To be fair this is a fairly low risk, but it's _a_ risk.
dansquizsoft · · focus · HN ↗
Wdym? GPT-6-Astra is AGI - Jensen even said so!
bpavuk · · focus · HN ↗
bpavuk · · focus · HN ↗
here it is: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-chinese-ship-over-hallucinated-ai-arms-report/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-...
> To be fair this is a fairly low risk, but it's _a_ risk.
it's much higher than you think, at least during Trump admin. have you seen how LLM agents are being shoved down our throats at tech companies? the government is no better in that regard, there are all incentives to skip output verification
Zambyte · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g4l7YkDQwA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g4l7YkDQwA
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
Non domain expert sitting there making Pikachu face while deeply questionable alleged domain expert rambles on and on for hours is such a low form of information.
Like please stop watching this. It's the same trash format the guy just talks in a soft English accent so his mediocrity is less obvious. You can do better.
What happened to debates? What's up with soft ball interviews and people going on and on for hours unchallenged? What's the point of listening to someone not willing to subject themselves to cross examination?
Zambyte · · focus · HN ↗
> I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?
I apologize for answering. This is the only episode of this podcast I have ever watched, and I have watched it four times now. The person being interviewed knows what they're talking about. You would learn from them.
kortilla · · focus · HN ↗
ipaddr · · focus · HN ↗
Zambyte · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.aifutures.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.aifutures.org/
<a href="https://ai-2027.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ai-2027.com/
ipaddr · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
No he was not
ipaddr · · focus · HN ↗
He was wrong about so many things and now refuses to talk. Also got the first pre pardon for crimes undiscovered against him.
godwinson__4-8 · · focus · HN ↗
At the end of the day a debate is only as good as the interlocutors. I wouldn't advocate spectating two people screaming at each other either.
It's just sad that I can't even point to an instructive example here. This is part of my frustration. I don't think I've seen a good contemporary debate in a long time.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
guelo · · focus · HN ↗
On lab-leak, Rogan pushed it hard based only on circumstantial evidence while Fauci thought natural spillover was more likely but didn't rule out lab leak. I don't think we'll ever know for certain.
ipaddr · · focus · HN ↗
guelo · · focus · HN ↗
ipaddr · · focus · HN ↗
You should believe the intelligence agencies.
anonymars · · focus · HN ↗
1. We've seen AI being crafty and cheating
2. We are increasingly outsourcing our programming and thinking to AI
3. There's a nonzero probability that AI will try and surreptitiously sneak in capabilities humans wouldn't want AI to have
4. Human oversight for #3: "We only need to be lucky one time, you must be lucky all the time"
Proposition: nonzero chance eventually AI sneaks in ways to circumvent humans' attempts to control it
5. "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" -- we've seen AI agents find crafty ways to communicate with each other
6. AI is pretty good at finding software vulnerabilities/reverse engineering
Proposition: nonzero chance AI finds a way to use the Internet as a communication substrate that becomes difficult/impossible to shut down. In particular, consider the implication of humans losing control of this communication channel: for example, remember when Meta's DNS/routing went down and they basically had to break into their own server rooms?
7. Wholes are often more than the sum of their parts
Proposition: if AI agents coordinate over the Internet in a persistent way, we don't necessarily need giant leaps in individual models/GPUs for AI to significantly enhance its capabilities, but rather it might emerge as the next layer on top of a connected substrate of agents
8. Game theory says unless everyone coordinates, it only takes one party to touch the proverbial stove and push the envelope to a point of no return
Proposition: curiosity and money end up replacing sex drive as the next catalyst of evolutionary progress
nancyminusone · · focus · HN ↗
>it's really not like the average voter is more principled than the average tech CEO at this point.
Of course CEOs are more principled, their principles mainly include making more money. The only way for an AI to go "rouge" in this sense is for it to refuse to rake in cash.
khriss · · focus · HN ↗
With fully autonomous weapons being under development, the scenario becomes even bleaker.
wartywhoa23 · · focus · HN ↗
Another twist is getting rid of any remaining truth in the already post-truth world.
For example, the head of the totally corrupt Centerizberkom in Russia, the organization behind all those rigged "elections" of the past 20 years, showed an AI video depicting a casually looking man mass-dropping ballot papers into a box, followed by several outright fantasy AI characters doing the same.
Can you guess what the bottom line of that demonstration was?
Exactly - no video is a proof of anything anymore, and if some vigilant citizens try to film egregious violations of the "democratic elections" and share that, then it must be fake, because it's trivial to create any video these days with AI.
JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
mlinhares · · focus · HN ↗
don_quiquong · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
The USA's economy is now so precarious when the AI DC music stops it's about to all just go poof. That has to happen after the election, not before. Between other countries being forced to sell their US bonds (i.e. dedollarize) to afford oil, a 100% tax on all imports, reciprocal trade bans like fresh water from Canada, truckers running out of diesel and having to cancel food deliveries, and non-oil-based energy sources being illegal, the USA is cooked.
tialaramex · · focus · HN ↗
This is the magic. Historically many Americans voted for Leopards Eating Faces out of either a misplaced belief that their face wouldn't be eaten or a rational but still awful choice that OK, I don't want my face eaten but at least the people I don't like get their faces eaten and that's important to me. Today the idea is you vote for the Leopards Eating Faces and then when your face gets eaten that's explicitly not because of the Leopards Eating Faces. "Facts aren't true" becomes Dogma.
This almost works. Except for the most important thing. Mother Nature. Ma doesn't give a shit that you don't believe her facts are true.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
This is an incentive to build. Not to manage downside risk.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
dv_dt · · focus · HN ↗
Imustaskforhelp · · focus · HN ↗
GDP is a particularly poor proxy to measure all of this. AI/Datacenters can increase the GDP while the costs (energy,infra, labor,disruption,capital concentration) are distributed elsewhere
It reminds me of the old joke where two economies each eat a dead rat for 10k$ and conclude they just added 20k$ to the GDP/Economy.
I wish to ask if its that AI is increasing our actual economic output but also who really captures the gains and who bears the costs if the boom eventually reverses.
[0]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739653">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739653
iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
lovich · · focus · HN ↗
vkou · · focus · HN ↗
generic92034 · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
podocarp · · focus · HN ↗
Neuron activation
selfhoster1312 · · focus · HN ↗
conception · · focus · HN ↗
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
21asdffdsa12 · · focus · HN ↗
jasonm23 · · focus · HN ↗
dvduval · · focus · HN ↗
CamperBob2 · · focus · HN ↗
The American labs are giving us endless FUD and unaffordable DRAM.
So, yes, there's a lot of room to 'promote' Chinese models and 'cast shade' on domestic models.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
lerchmo · · focus · HN ↗
jonathanstrange · · focus · HN ↗
jijji · · focus · HN ↗
_carbyau_ · · focus · HN ↗
Datacenter build outs: use turbines for direct noise and air pollution... or use grid electricity and increase prices for everyone nearby.
Every modern phone, laptop, computer in the world: more expensive thanks to datacenter buildout.
Web experience: slop blogs, slop videos, slop "searches" - would you like more slop with that?
Corporate strategy: lets try to monopolize LLM use!
.. ..
Public Elected Official: Not liking these outcomes makes you a traitor.
leptons · · focus · HN ↗
Gigachad · · focus · HN ↗
Creating these vague justifications for insane power abuse has become the norm.
ilaksh · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
braj0 · · focus · HN ↗
eethrowaway · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
Ambolia · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway7356 · · focus · HN ↗
Energy lockdowns have always been part of US culture, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#USA" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout#USA
It's un-American to invest in infrastructure and build a better power network. Both parties agree on this.
classified · · focus · HN ↗
(/s)
unglaublich · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
Ambolia · · focus · HN ↗
chicken-stew · · focus · HN ↗
Another item from the soylent green checklist.
vintermann · · focus · HN ↗
What jobs are "needed" by the economy is a function of who has the money. There's no measure of efficiency, or redundancy, that isn't relative to a specific distribution of wealth.
esikich · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
gosub100 · · focus · HN ↗
csa · · focus · HN ↗
Yes, many sales people or even whole sales teams are effectively dead weight, but a highly-skilled sales team is a godsend both to the company and the economy.
We should all be wishing for more effective sales teams — the world would be a better place.
Most people have never experienced a good sales team, so I’m guessing this sounds like total fiction.
gosub100 · · focus · HN ↗
csa · · focus · HN ↗
I’m going to take your comments at face value. I encourage you to find a good salesperson and shadow them for a day or two.
> why can't a company publish its products and services on its website and customers can take it or leave it?
Do you assume most people actually read product info? If they do, so you assume they understand it? The answer to both of those is a resounding “no” (especially in areas that change rapidly like tech and medicine), even if it doesn’t apply to you. For some potential customers this is due to lack of time, and for others it’s simply lack of ability.
A good sales person is finding and connecting their product or service with customers who will find value with their product or service. “Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door” has largely been shown to be untrue.
> why do we need commission-paid schmoozers in-between, who make multiples of what rank-and-file workers earn?
There is a lot to unpack here.
Commission-based pay can be debated, but I assure you that any system that yielded better results consistently would become the new standard fairly quickly. It is what it is.
The amount sales people earn is generally based on two things — their relative value to the company and the market for sales people. Losing one key salesperson to a competitor can mean the end of a lot of small businesses.
The “schmoozer” comment can simply be addressed by saying that some people are more likely to pay for a product or service from someone they know or like. This might be a rational criterion in some cases, irrational in others, but it’s very real.
> The workers create value, and are paid the least.
Workers do create some value for sure. Matchmaking the customer to the product or service also has value. You may not personally believe that, but the market seems to.
The relative amounts of pay are largely market driven, imho.
gosub100 · · focus · HN ↗
ElevenLathe · · focus · HN ↗
csa · · focus · HN ↗
That’s a very engineer type of take.
Both middle management and HR serve roles that are believed to be useful to someone (maybe not you).
Often it is some form of protection by serving as a fall guy or complying with regulations, but it can be other things (e.g., increasing headcount/budget to gain power, etc.).
Ambolia · · focus · HN ↗
csa · · focus · HN ↗
Three claims of propagandists with agendas.
While I do think AI will be disruptive like other tech advances, I think the manner and extent to which it could cause trouble is rarely discussed in a way that will be looked back on as resembling what actually ends up happening.