but people copy and paste pertinent info from articles all the time and have done for many many years, so why would you think it's a hard and fast sign of bot activity
History doesn't have to repeat. There's barely anything else going on in terms of innovation, and AI is a real step function technology. We might be overspending but there's no way we're getting another AI winter like last time (remember last time investment in 90s AI had to compete for resources with the internet boom).
> AI is here to stay. If used right, chances are it will make us all more productive. That, on the other hand, does not mean it will be a good investment.
The dotcom bubble burst and 26 years later we’re all hopelessly addicted to the internet and the top companies on the stock market are almost all what would have been called “dotcoms” then.
The railroad bubble burst in 1846 not because trains were a dead end - passenger number would increase more than 10x in the UK in the following 50 years.
I'm not sure I buy the "everyone will be AI coding to replace things that cost money with their own apps" idea. I only have so much limited time in my day (and only so many tokens on my claude account per week). It's probably going to make more sense for me to buy a tool that's been given human attention over the span of weeks over something i prompt into existence in a few hours (especially if I need 10 such tools to accomplish something).
I can’t always see the personal appeal, however when I view through the lens of businesses that buy very expensive enterprise software and other SaaS products (maybe blending into consumer market), well I think they’re toast. I think the acceleration of AI tools recently isn’t going to be indicative of how long the full transformation will take, but a lot of companies will start preferring Build over Buy. I have no idea the scope, but this is already happening at some partial scale.
I agree the free money in like one month coded SaaS apps are in big trouble. But like there's no way I'm gonna have the vision to desire to play a game I made myself using AI for instance (just the fact that I prompted it into existence ruins some of the exploration of a game made by someone else). So at the low end of the extreme (easy to make SaaS apps with basic code and a db) AI is a thread, but at the other end of the extreme (requiring vision and where human attention is a bottleneck) there's definitely still tons of opportunity.
I think a lot of people will do this, it remains to be seen how the actual economics of this shake out in the long run, especially considering, it’s not like the existing vendors are going to remain static.
The choice isn't between A) the expensive, proven tool and B) the thing I promoted in a few hours - it's b/w A, B and also C) the less expensive, somewhat proven tool that someone else prompted over a couple of days. I can see, over time, a slow drift towards "free".
Factor in how a lot of tools have weaponized their interfaces against their users - then the motivation isn't just cost, but usability.
Everyone will need something customized to their lifestyle changes, like a digital factory kernel, to others wanting to trade workflow recipes. They then use to write their own AI clean-roomed edition (which of course is just glue to hosted tools you buy)
It's probably stuff like this along with investor pressure that will make AI companies slowly make their AIs more profit maximizing (and the long term reason ilya etc was so against even going down that path)
I think one of the reasons politicians can be bought so cheaply by interest groups is that the opponents of the interests groups have practically no money. The interest groups don't need to spend a ton as long as they spend more than their opponents.
The linked post talks about the effectiveness of AIPAC but fails to mention how much is spent by say, Palestinian interest groups. Perhaps there's a good reason for this: do Palestinian groups have any money to spend on US elections? Try fundraising in Gaza right now.
Likewise, business interest groups have a lot more money to spend on elections than, say, environmental groups. The latter have to beg for small donations from individuals just to stay afloat. Thus, it's relatively easy for business groups to outspend environmental groups. To win an auction, you just have to be the highest bidder.
This assumes enough of the small dollar population agrees on anything to meaningfully compete on the cost of buying.
They may on paper, but of course a lot of money goes to dividing us up come election time. What you are suggesting is no shortcut - it would rather be almost like inventing an alternative political party.
Exactly, that is the proof. We are already losing this game. Trying to outspend lobbyists using some kind of crowdfunding sounds interesting at first, but is just restating the same terms on which the game is already rigged, which means you will just lose again.
I think there might be a way to make it work, however you would have to be very aware and plan for a way to not reinvent the same losing dynamics. It might not be possible.
Humorous of you to think they would be against AIPAC.
Gulf states have little to nothing in common with Palestinians. Citizens of most gulf states are born into relative wealth merely by the fact their countries are rich in petrodollars. They build lavish cities and have standards of living (for their citizens) that increasingly put the West to shame. They are "diversifying" from oil by building massive AI datacenters and essentially catering to Westerners who want to live unencumbered by Western pretensions of civic duty, avoid taxes in their home countries, etc. They make deals with the Israelis and have for over a decade now, even if under the table. They buy American weapons, their elites have frequently been educated at the most exclusive British or American universities. They like expensive Italian cars. Money is money.
Meanwhile Palestinians are born poor, in a failed state with no autonomy. Some UAE crypto influencer is yolo gambling away more money than most Palestinian kids will see in their lifetimes. They live under an occupation and have basically no rights in that regard. They are poor. Just google image a picture of Gaza vs the UAE. It just doesn't even compare. Maybe on some level they are both Arabs. But the same rule applies. Money is money.
The gulf state governments gave up on trying to care about them many many decades ago. They realized it was cheaper (and more prosperous) to go along to get along with the United States and Israel. If they hadn't, their capitals might look like Tehran right now. Over the years it became easy to blame other people for the problem - Iran, even the Palestinians themselves. They have long since washed their hands of caring.
Don't conflate the Gulf States with Palestinians, or associate them with anyone on the losing side of anything when it comes to money and power. They are as corrupt and bought-in to this system of wealth/might makes right as anyone.
Feels like a lot of words to avoid thinking about “black” money and favors in kind. For example, nobody would include Trump’s golden bar from Switzerland in such ann estimate - repeated ad nauseam for all lobbying corruption.
"Emails from October 2005 show that after Mandelson complained to Epstein about a lack of British Airways air miles, Epstein offered to pay for his plane tickets to the Caribbean."[1]
The biggest shocker to me has been just how "cheap" a lot of people are to buy off. Mandelson is complaining about air miles FFS. So much of this is a few thousand here, some fancy tickets there, a jet ride elsewhere, etc. In my mind it was always much, much bigger sums that people were selling their countries & souls out for, sadly, it turns out a lot of people, even in really high positions, are shockingly cheap.
I donated $100 to my state's gubernatorial campaign as a part of my annual "make the world a better place" campaign, and was surprised to receive a call from an unknown number the following day. It was the Governor, thanking me for my donation personally, and wondering if there were any issues close to my heart that she could keep in mind. Note that this was from her personal cell phone (for whatever value of personal an executive politician actually has, but still), and she invited me to phone her if I had any issues that the state government could resolve.
That's a wildly low sum of money for a 5 minute personal call, let alone even a modest intervention.
The Internet thinks that lobbying is bribery. If you wanted a bribery like vehicle, you'd just donate to a PAC or more recently, the new ballroom. Lobbying is just paying people to speak to politicians. After a company has said everything that wanted to every politician that can possibly support their cause, there isn't anything left for them to do.
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