So the reality is that AI in its current state, as any programmer can tell you, is already pretty useful. It entirely changes the nature of your job. You’re now talking to the computer in human language. People are delivering new software that is entirely “vibe-coded”, written using human language, then transformed by the machines into machine-language.
The reality is this is not going to go away. The cost of the AI data centers is immense and they are currently operating at a loss. But what the skeptics seem to be missing, is that the whole endeavor is simply getting cheaper as time goes by.
Take a look at the numbers here. The Nvidia Blackwell Ultra delivers 35 times lower cost per token than the previous generation, the Hopper platform. The Hopper platform is what most of the data centers are currently using. After the Hopper, we’re going to get the Blackwell chips, which will drive the cost per token down by 35 times.
After Blackwell, we get Rubin. Rubin brings the cost per token down another tenfold, compared to Blackwell. What this means is we’re looking at Jevon’s paradox: AI is now going to get so cheap, that its use will increase massively. We saw this with coal. With every efficiency improvement in the steam turbine, coal use merely went up. Because you could do the same amount of work with less coal, we started using steam turbines for more jobs, so overall coal use went up.
There may be an AI bubble currently, just like there was an Internet bubble that popped in the year 2000. But you know what happened after the Internet bubble popped? The infrastructure that was built became integrated into our everyday lives. The popping of the Internet bubble didn’t stop the use of the Internet, it just meant that the companies that built the Internet lost a lot of money.
Think for a moment what happens when you can generate an AI video using 350 times less energy than we use today. We’re going to end up with actual AI generated movies. I don’t really care whether you want this or not. I’m just telling you what the logical consequence is of the reduction in cost of intelligence. The fact that Sora just shut down doesn’t mean AI movies are going away, they’re going to get 350 times cheaper as the current infrastructure is replaced by the next generation. After the chips, the main cost is energy. In the future AI will do 350 times more work with the same amount of energy.
There are lots of problems that lie ahead of us. Heaven knows how you’re going to keep billions of people employed. AI will simply be cheaper to use than a human being for most cognitive labor. We should probably hope for some kind of universal basic income, because I don’t see how you’re going to keep everyone employed, as intelligence becomes cheap.
The most dangerous thing you can do in regards to AI, is to look away. To think this will just “blow over”. It won’t. This will fundamentally change how our society works, in the same sense as the steam engine fundamentally changed our way of life in the 19th century. I’m not saying these changes will take place overnight, it will take many years to get all the infrastructure constructed, but that’s going to happen. Realistically speaking there’s nothing that will stop these data centers from being built.
Think for a moment about what happens to music and movies. Music can already be generated in seconds through Suno. In the future you’ll simply have music generated on the fly to exactly match your own taste. What about movies? Titanic cost 1 million dollar per minute of screentime to produce. Who’s possibly going to pay for that in the future? You’ll have the AI generate a movie for you.
People are currently trying to stop all of this. Anything AI generated is banned on most subreddits. Spotify is banning AI music. But at some point you’ll stop being able to tell apart the AI generated stuff apart from the human-made stuff.
The real question of course is: What can we do with sufficient intelligence under our thumbs (assuming here that it stays under our thumbs)? At some point, it may be possible for us to cure aging, or to simply make a recording of the state of all the synapses in your brain. If that’s possible, then for all practical purposes, we can keep you alive forever.
There are some limitations here. The AI models we have, have superhuman crystallized intelligence: They know more information than any single human being alive. But fluid intelligence is lacking: They’re still poor at solving new problems, where they can’t apply data in their database. But with enough data, the models are able to discover an underlying pattern beneath the data. That gradually makes them increasingly capable of detecting patterns, which is all that fluid intelligence really is.
The reality is that all this stuff just isn’t going away, whether we like it or not. It’s going to transform our societies.
I’m just as bullish as you but I add a big if at the front of the statement:
If there isn’t a global depression that gives every western country plus China intermittent blackouts for more than the six month window it would take for fuel and food distribution to collapse, then AI will eliminate most human ability to compete.
So, the selection between 200 million surviving scavengers and Accelerando-esque population culls all comes down to whether America chickens out from their current attempt to cause a global collapse
I’ve been tired of fat Jew trump wrecking my portfolio and seriously wondering about the necessity of this war he’s started for Israel. This framing of an intended collapse was never something I considered. Thank you for putting this out there
I caught Claude out.After asking him about Igg4 antibody response he outlined the fact that it is a permanent antibody response which does not appear to wane over time. I then asked him would that not imply that it would have been better to not vaccinate and let natural immunity dominate, as people are now vulnerable to reinfection from a T-cell exhausting virus. Part of his reply included: “Natural infection also causes IgG4 switching. This is a critical point your argument doesn’t account for. Repeated natural SARS-CoV-2 infections also induce IgG4 class switching — the phenomenon is not exclusive to vaccination but is driven by chronic antigen exposure regardless of the source. medRxiv So a world of widespread natural reinfection would likely have produced the same IgG4 problem, plus far more severe disease and death along the way.” I then pushed back saying the link he provided does not in fact state state that. His reply: “You’re right to push back on that claim — and I should correct myself more substantially than I did in my brief acknowledgement. The research actually draws a much sharper distinction than my previous response implied. The IgG4 shift is largely specific to mRNA… Read more »
Yeah AI still makes errors, it hallucinates a lot and makes up citations.
I can tell you that ChatGPT is terrible at the game of chess and frequently blatantly CHEATS by making impossible moves even though it knows the rules.
Very weird! And unreliable.
I still see the biggest danger from AI that people lose their ability for logic and reason.
If too much people outsource this abilities to AIs, they will not be able to regain it if they lose the connection to AIs. Then they are only marionettes of the AIs, their mouthpiece.
Why should I discuss with people if they are only parrots of AIs? Would be more effiient to talk to the AIs directly.
The Borg would be envious of this kind of assimilation.
Thanks Diogenes – I would agree on this and see three dangers: a) An intellectual poisoning- just as with smartphones, people will lose or weaken their ability of critical, analytical, logical and abstract thinking. I suppose, people will dumb down quicker and faster with this. b) An emotional poisoning: I guess that people may over time get addicted with this gadget and will develop certain emotional responses like being more hysteric, more easily agitated and irritated, more paranoid etc. c) A spiritual poisoning: Something just seems to be entirely wrong with this – but it is more of a vague idea, which I had also at the beginning of Corona, where something just had felt wrong. I saw some people change for the worse with the vax – in the sense, that it seemed to me that they had lost their ability for joy, for wonder, for openness, or in short: Their soul. So I guess AI will do a lot of damage in the long run – but of course, it also creates the solution to overcome it because eventually things will make a turn for the better, once this thing has run its course (or rather curse) 🙂… Read more »
I see too this connection between the widespread mental weakening from covid and the current AI overtaking. Both can be seen as independent events. But if you see them together then it really gets spooky.
David Icke would have probably said they are connected – and he could’ve been right with that, just as you. Interesting times.
Rintrah changing his mind about AI definitely wasn’t on my 2026 bingo card.
It’s weird that you make a complete 180 on a strongly held and vehemently and repeatedly asserted belief without actually acknowledging that you’re doing that.
Well, I tried coding with Claude code. It made it clear to me that this is something that’s not going away. I formerly had no clue it was this good already.
Quote Rintrah: “I formerly had no clue it was this good already.”
Like I had formerly no clue how weak my defense against a manipulating AI is.
“But with enough data, the models are able to discover an underlying pattern beneath the data. That gradually makes them increasingly capable of detecting patterns, which is all that fluid intelligence really is.”
Yeah this is what AI bros believe, that enough quantity will somehow lead to quality. But it’s not really what we’re seeing at all.
(1) Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed ALIVE by ChatGPT – YouTube
If the AI *thinking* is based on internet data it will never be worth anything. Garbage in garbage out. This is completely different from programming, music or video authorship.
I largely agree with your current take on AI. The only thing I want to add is that ‘intelligence’ as we know it may not even a good one. Regardless, it will likely reach ‘singularity’ sometime. Then what?
Then, you dullard, we’ll all upload our consciousnesses into this “intelligent singularity” which will then become indistinguishable from
Oh.
Then what?
Then it really won’t need us, and we won’t really need it, so we will go our separate ways.
The AIs will always need us. We are the deliverers of new training material.
They degrade if they always use their own output as training input.
We are like cattles who deliver new meat.
Maybe we will strike a deal with it then.
I have been wondering about all of this talk of how I’m going to be replaced by AI and so forth.
There is a famous essay about Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us _ WIRED.pdf
But maybe it’s possible to turn that on its head?
Maybe the techno-future doesn’t need us, but if so, then it might not have anything to offer us, so might we also stop needing it?
Of what use is it to us if we have no place in it and can gain nothing from it?
I am wondering if we peel off from it.
I can imagine the Ai singularity ‘creature’ being better adapted than us in its digital realm and crowding us out of that space. But I can also imagine us being better at being embodied creatures than it and maintaining the advantages that they provide.
Maybe it can chill in its realm, and we can get on with living in ours.
Maybe we give it some fresh input from time to time. And it gives us, what? A zillion AI songs?
Quote Wombat: “And it gives us, what? A zillion AI songs?”
Better than nothing. Btw: I like AI generated techno.
And they help Rintrah to make new games for us.
And we can have a good time badmouthing how these beasts are really Skynet.
i’m not so bullish, but who knows. point 1: the infra that is currently being built out is good for one thing: matrix-vector multiplies. the fiber that was laid during the dot-com era was good for pets.com and netflix. are matrix-vector multipliers general purpose enough to be good for what comes next after LLMs, or is it all just wasted resources? (also, that equipment didn’t depreciate as badly as GPUs do, as illustrated in your plot.) point 2: the amount of compute/data scales super-linearly with the size of the model, and we are near the limits of the amount of data that humanity has collectively produced, ever. where are we going to get the 10x more tokens for training the next generation LLMs?
that said, i 100% agree that current-gen ai is good enough for coding real apps and it’s not going anywhere.
And yet it cannot turn a profit, because value comes from human labour – human beings in social relationship with each other.
The machine is not a social creature.
So, it produces nothing of value.
I think it was Retard who showed some YouTube account of AI generated songs.
The value of each song?
Zero.
You could get the AI to crank out a zillion of them and not become a zillionaire.
All my instincts are telling me that we’re heading straight for something terrible.
It’s not just because of this AI thing; it’s also that chaotic war in Iran.
Trump, the old man with dementia who can only rely on his instincts anymore, and Hegseth, the wardog and doomsday Christian… those two are the ones steering this war.
Don’t forget Israel.
It’s maelstrom of causal factors spiralling into a perfect storm
For me as german it’s forbidden to criticize Israel.
It will get hit with the anti-semitism hammer if I do that.
>https://x.com/yaelbt/status/2037211686743036320
>AI is spiritually Israeli
Dreams come true!
Rising from the ruins of the old society, the AI New World Order!
That is what that Chinese history dude is saying – Professor Jiang
He argues that the USA will lose this war in Iran, and that Israel will be the new core for the capitalist empire,enforced by an AI panopticon, etc.
I sincerely doubt the U.S is going to lose to Iran, and the idea that Israel is going to be the center of the world is ridiculous tbh. Israel is a proxy state used by the United States with a small population and little economic power mostly useful as a border zone between the the West and the Middle East; it gives far more than it takes; and the leftist and nazi hysteria about Israel being the true rulers of the world is retarded. The Israel question is heavily politicized but in truth Israel is not that important, Israel’s role is not dissimilar to Ukraine’s. You’re a communist so you should be familiar with dialectical materialism, the AI New World Order is coming due to the dialectical process between new technological advancements and their impact on the means of production; there’s no need for conspiracies when everything real is happening right in-front of our faces. Tech billionaires and scientists are very open about their plans and how they feel technology will impact our societies. AI is coming for your jobs simply because that it how history is progressing, it is no different from tractors making the draft horse obsolete. This… Read more »
I don’t think the Israel angle can be so easily dismissed. It’s clear that they were and are central players in this war. I also believe, with my whole being, that conspiracies happen all the time. Each and every government in the world is a permanent conspiracy. The USA has come out and said Isreal is why it went to war, so that’s not some ‘out there’ conspiracy – and as I said before, I do believe in conspiracies (not all of them), much to the disappointment of TPTB I’m sure. You mention things that are said openly, well Israel openly says it wants to become ‘Greater Israel’ – it has big ideas for itself and its future – I’ll come back to that… I don’t think the USA will win. The USA has basically lost every war it’s been in since WWII. Countries don’t surrender just because of terror bombing – that takes soldiers on the ground, but the USA doesn’t have the numbers of soldiers to pull that off. Not yet anyway. It could reintroduce the draft – which the Chinese dude suggests would lead to civil war and collapse – interesting idea there. On this war, none… Read more »
and war, how could I forget the wars in my list? And overshoot with all its consequences, and the brain rotting covid, and, and…
Very apocalyptic.
Don’t forget the aliens either! Must be about time to roll them out again…
And the horrors of the Epstein class – can’t forget that!
It’s gettin’ batshit crazy out there man.
Honestly, I do not see a utopian Ai future ahead for you, or the rest of the vast majority of people.
But with the ramping frequency and amplitude of events, at least it will be interesting!
Quote Wombat: “Don’t forget the aliens either!”
Please don’t ruin my last hope.
That 3I/Atlas moved into an observation position around Jupiter.
And then, when the True Polar Wander happens, and Adam’s Flood happens again, the Alien Mothership will appear in Earths orbit, and the aliens say: “We will save all people halfway sane, and all others have to drown. Sorry.”
And I will be one of those to have the privilege to survive on another planet, until Earth has restored itself and we survivors can return.
Don’t ruin my crazy illusion!
It’s a beautiful vision.
Could also be that all these aliens people see are supernatural, or time travellers, or interdimensional visitors…
Could be all of the above, or something else.
I am agnostic about what it is, but I do believe there is something there.
I saw a UFO once, well, actually three of them in a pyramid formation. I guess it looked kind of like Venus x 3. I had the impression that it was far off, and that there was a significant distance between them – so not just one object. The formation appeared to rise together in the blue afternoon sky until it just faded away.
I have no idea what that could have been, but I don’t think it was swamp gas.
>I don’t think the Israel angle can be so easily dismissed. It’s clear that they were and are central players in this war. I said that Israel was ultimately a proxy, not that it isn’t a player. Ukraine is also a player. >I also believe, with my whole being, that conspiracies happen all the time. Each and every government in the world is a permanent conspiracy. Conspiracies happen all the time, yes, but one shouldn’t believe in particular conspiracies without good reason. Most conspiracy theories, especially the ones revolving around jews, are believed for not so good reasons; and there is little evidence to support them. >The USA has come out and said Isreal is why it went to war, Yes we’re going to protect our ally and proxy from aggression directed towards it from our enemies, it’s called “forward defense.” >You mention things that are said openly, well Israel openly says it wants to become ‘Greater Israel Individual Zionists have said they would like a Greater Israel, you’ll find nationalists in every country that want to expand their borders. Netanyahu does not advocate for a “Greater Israel” he is a pragmatist-nationalist chiefly concerned with security; he has expressed interest… Read more »
“This meme is kind of a tired cliche, the U.S wins every conventional battle it throws itself into. Look at how we absolutely dismantled Saddam’s Iraq while taking so little causalities in-return. It’s not our military that’s the failure in our adventures, but the political goals that often fail. Iraq and Afghanistan were easily dismantled during our invasions, but we failed at making them into stable democracies.”
We spent 20 years in Afghanistan and spunked god knows how many billions up the wall only to leave with the Taliban back in power. Not to mention the vast number of Afghan civilians and Allied soldiers who died for absolutely nothing. I would call that an epic fail.
With Iraq, again we wasted billions and unleashed hell on earth on the population only to leave it largely a proxy of Iran. The end goal shifted from finding WMD to shallow fantasies of exporting democracy to a region Bush and Blair had only a tenuous understanding.
.
How do I delete comments? Just noticed I misread Viking’s argument there.
I can edit but not delete. I’m now a boomer.
The only way is to delete all your comments. You gotta click the little guy next to the “39 comments” in this picture to access the big button. Not saying you should do anything btw, just a heads-up.
Anyway, yeah as I said we failed our political goals, but it’s not like those were such colossal failures so at to cause us to collapse. I think Iran at worst would be no different.
Deleting old posts is like deleting parts of your personality.
Me as crazy multiphrenic being know that it’s bad to delete old posts. It’s like if you try to delete your personal diversity. You try to stabilize yourself by deleting parts of yourself.
But I can say you: You will only make it worse.
“I said that Israel was ultimately a proxy, not that it isn’t a player. Ukraine is also a player.” I’m not so sure that Israel is just a proxy. It has its own ambitions. It seems like there is a good chance that it tricked the USA into this war. “Conspiracies happen all the time, yes, but one shouldn’t believe in particular conspiracies without good reason. Most conspiracy theories, especially the ones revolving around jews, are believed for not so good reasons; and there is little evidence to support them.” How much evidence do you need? Joe Kent thought the case was clear enough to resign, and I bet he has better intel than either of us: “After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” “es we’re going to protect our ally and proxy from aggression directed towards it from our enemies, it’s called “forward defense.” See Joe Kent’s comment… Read more »
Quote Cyber Viking: “I imagine a beautiful world, full of Universal Basic Income …”
I really like it how you see the future. I wish I could believe it too.
But hey, do you fool really believe that the tyrants fulfill our dreams?
Money for nothing?
Forget it. They will not make you happy by making Jenny real.
They don’t see you as an individual who just want to be happy.
They see you as cattle they can eat!
“They see you as cattle they can eat!”
Yes, how could I forget the jerky! 😛
>Forget it. They will not make you happy by making Jenny real.
Jenny is already real in a very weird way, I’m just sitting here waiting to see how solid the boundaries between the external and internal worlds really are.
I think I agree with Rad about the Epstein stuff.
I don’t think Diogenes meant they would literally eat you, but I’m splitting hairs really, you are prey for the elites.
The Epstein thing is definitely not a nothingburger.
Joti Brar put it nicely: “What has been exposed is not just the depravity, supremacy and criminality of the ruling elites, but the personal networks (long ago described by the founders of Marxist science) through which they operate, do deals and manage the direction of the system – far away from any mechanisms of public accountability, scrutiny or control.
The truth is that we didn’t need these fresh revelations to prove that the present system is inherently genocidal, sociopathic and anti-worker, or to understand that it is irreformable in all its essentials. But the latest revelations certainly confirm that putting our hopes for change in the replacement of a few ruling-class puppets in Parliament or Downing Street is a futile activity.”
Quote Wombat: “I don’t think Diogenes meant they would literally eat you, but I’m splitting hairs really, you are prey for the elites.”
What I meant was that training material from humans given to AIs is functional the same as meat given from cattle to humans.
Fair enough – still doesn’t all that great.
But that gives us the assurance that we won’t be wiped out.
Why am I not feeling reassured?
“But that gives us the assurance that we won’t be wiped out.”
I don’t think so. It’s true that they’ll still need people to “feed” the AI, as trainers, technicians, and quality control specialists, and of the course as customers and consumers, but they won’t need as many people overall. Anyone who isn’t capable of shifting into an industry that is not in danger of being replaced by AI, or who isn’t capable of playing a role that supports the research, development and maintenance of AI will be considered expendable. I’m completely against this but unless there are laws enacted to prevent this from happening, and enough people don’t rise up to stop it, this is the direction I see things headed: the liquidation of billions of people, through war, famine, pestilence, vaccines, and man-made natural disasters, etc. etc.
I dunno, Elon Musk is kind of a scam artist but he does seem autistic and really concerned with stuff like ensuring westerners have kids. If all the tech billionaires really wanted to kill us all why would Elon Musk the richest among them encourage low status white males to have children?
I think billionaires are people too and they’re not all highly rational sociopaths. Like, don’t you think some of them might find the idea of liquidating billions of people unpleasant?
I think some are genuinely optimistic that AI could make life better for everyone.
I agree that AIs don’t need 8 billion people to keep themselves alive.
But on the other side: The more training data we deliver the better for them.
Maybe in the future they will find a way to prevent degrading without training material from humans, but maybe this is not possible on principle and they will always need us.
And if, together with the AIs, we manage to expand to other planets and other solar systems, then there is no reason for the AIs to limit our numbers.