• petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      I do think this is a bit bigger than AI.

      A problem we’ve been running up against for a while is that the US economy, maybe the world-wide technology sector in general, has run out of things to innovate. It’s an empty mine. This is part of the reason they want AI to be a thing so badly, it is the only thing propping up the GDP at this point, and it’s barely doing that.

      [Edit] Sorry, the point being: if it wasn’t AI, it would’ve been VR or Bitcoin or some other half-baked idea. We are headed for a cliff at the moment.

      • PuddleOfKittens@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        There’s always something to innovate, you just get diminishing returns. The problem is that sooner or later, the returns diminish below the profit rate of banditry and rent-seeking.

        Also, there’s plenty of wildly profitable innovation, but so much of it isn’t politically feasible because it will hurt the profits of existing rich people whose permission you need to upend the status quo. Usually this isn’t a conspiracy so much as the alternative being so completely incomprehensible in the current paradigm that it’s just written off as crazy and a terrible idea.