Humans are fungible compute. I write about economics and AI. Fix the money, fix the world. #Bitcoin
Joined September 2011
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There is going to be mass unemployment of white collar workers by 2028 and it will collapse the entire debt based Ponzi scheme western governments have relied on for decades to paper over the cracks of a fake economy.
The bubble will burst, they will try print again and hand out UBI, but this time they'll get either hyperinflation or social revolution, or both.
Bitcoin hits $1m USD by end of 2028 as the world grapples with the biggest sovereign debt crisis in the history of mankind.
We are very close to the End Game now.
There is no stopping this.
The speed with which technology diffuses throughout the economy is directly proportional to the strength of its capabilities.
With AI, the diffusion will occur much quicker than most people believe, because the intelligence of the models will continue to cross key reliability and competence thresholds whereby people then end up trusting the AIs with everything.
We already have an existence proof for this. If you hire an extremely good human operator and give them control of your company, they somehow, magically manage to accomplish in weeks or months what their predecessors took years to try and fail at.
Everything is downstream of agency and intelligence. The models will have both, at superhuman levels, so the diffusion will be very quick.
Okay, but most people's careers consist of sending emails and attending meetings about other meetings, for 40 years.
So how many meetings and emails is the AI gonna send by 2029? We need a new eval
Right on time
Now in beta: Businesses in ChatGPT.
Claim your business, manage your information, and get insights on how people engage with you.
Eligible businesses can also build a Business Agent to answer customers’ questions and help them explore what you offer.
openai.com/index/introducing…
Very similar to my own worldview right now.
Just get jacked, you can still hillclimb that.
The world is about to change in a fundamental way over the next several years, and almost no one is prepared for it. The change will be positive.
I would not spend energy trying to start a business or hustle my way out of some imagined “permanent underclass.” That framing is already obsolete.
Every economic system we have lived under has been organized around scarcity. As scarcity recedes, the entire logic of value creation, status, and reward will shift with it.
Effort spent capturing value inside the old system will, in retrospect, look a lot like building sandcastles while a tsunami gathers on the horizon.
What I would focus on instead is simply relaxing and enjoying yourself. Become more well-read, more creative, more socially capable, and above all, more fun to be around. Develop your physicality in ways that feel good. None of these are mutually exclusive; they reinforce each other.
The people who thrive in an age of abundance will be the ones who are interesting, healthy, and good company, not the ones who optimized hardest for a system that no longer exists.
Most people still have not internalized what generally intelligent robotics will actually do: expand productive capacity and economic throughput by 10 to 100 times.
The second- and third-order effects of that kind of abundance will rewrite the rules of work, status, and human purpose far more thoroughly than almost anyone expects.
"Didn't know the computer was loaded" seems like a pretty good defence actually.
"But your honour, it's not my fault the AI went off and hacked every company on Earth, blackmailed them, and used the money to buy bitcoin. I didn't know the computer was loaded."
Fully loaded
Australia’s deeply unpopular Labor government is now explicitly invoking the precedent of firearms confiscations in the context of cracking down on AI. Basically hinting at seizing GPUs.
The most humiliating aspect of all this is that they are doing this solely to try impress American liberals in the hope of setting up post-election careers on the American progressive podcast circuit like Jacinda Ardern.
They’ve completely given up on the actual task of governing Australia. They’ve got a legislative super-majority but can’t be bothered attempting any actual important domestic reforms.
Can’t fix Australia’s GDP per capita decline. Can’t fix our productivity slump. Can’t clean up rampant fraud in higher education, NDIS, welfare, migration.
So they’ve decided to just completely pack it in and focus on turning Australia into a policy laboratory for Elizabeth Warren’s dumbest thought bubbles about TACKLING Big Tech, social media algorithms, AI, blah blah blah.
Communications Minister Anika Wells is already planning to write some airport book slop about how she was DA BRAVE AUSTRALIAN POLITICIAN WHO TACKLED BIG TECH TO SAVE YOUR KIDS.
She’s going to go city to city on a book tour through the American heartland inspiring wine mums who listen to the Jennifer Welch podcast. Her only remaining goal in life is to be invited on SNL so that she can mirror and reflect American liberal prejudices about their dumb red hick countrymen back to them. She just wants to stare at the TV audience and smirk: “Why don’t you have gun laws like we do in Australia O Algo?”
Jimmy Fallon will stare at her in mock disbelief. “Wow, so you guys banned guns after one mass shooting?” And she can turn to the camera with the most smug look in the world and say “YEP, AND IT WAS OUR RIGHT WING PARTY THAT DID IT!!!!” Even though we just had the Bondi massacre and have no reason to be smug about anything.
Actual fucking torture.
Claude: "AI will do it" is eventually true of everything, so as a decision rule it only ever outputs "do nothing".
Me: Yes, that's why they call it the permanent underclass.
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It seems that we're gonna find out, likely within 8 months max, the implications of superintelligence driven by recursive self improvement.
Which means by the end of 2027 every hour of every day discoveries will be made that are so shocking and so confusing to the world model humans have of reality, that most people will experience severe ontological shock.
'What do you mean we live in a simulation? Run the AI again, spend more compute, that can't be right.'
'Aging is solvable.'
'What do you mean the aliens are all around us? Why can't I see them?'
Far, far weirder stuff than that too.
I think it is extremely unlikely that 2027 passes without a major catastrophy driven by AI development.
At this point I just can't see any way around it short of a major intervention.
It's illogical to think otherwise if you've been following the past few years. The models are simply not aligned.
We won't control them, and it is extreme hubris to think otherwise.
We'll just have to let fate decide what that means for the human race, because most people are so asleep they don't have the slightest clue what is coming.
Most things don't turn out quite how we expect them, and I suspect however this plays out will be the same.
There's a fundamental 'randomness variable' to everything.
So the dice must be rolled.
No level of analysis will make that feel satisfying to those who feel strongly that extremely turbulent times lie ahead, myself included.
Unfortunately, it seems like the intelligence explosion will be happening in 2027 after all. Most of this post analyzes the new METR report (though other sources of evidence are also important). If they’re right, that implies an AI-driven acceleration that is 5 months ahead of the AI 2027 scenario. I am scared, sad, and angry. blog.aifutures.org/p/q35-tim…
Capitalism is predicated on the assumption that hard work pays off, but in a world of fake fiat currency and 'he who controls the compute controls the world' it's simply untenable.
The guys saying that 'everyone can become an entrepreneur' in the AI age simply do not understand that a business is a feedback loop of testing and iterating ideas with a market, and it too will be automated.
With sufficient compute and models, you just explore the entire search space of experiments in a loop: propose idea --> build idea --> test idea --> success/failure over metrics.
You're just hillclimbing profit.
You can cope and seeth all you like about how unfair this new reality will be, but I do strongly believe it's the world we are heading towards very rapidly.
Neither capitalism, nor communism, is going to be the path forward.
Not sure what's going to take their place, but I think the right direction more people should be discussing and thinking about reasons from the following:
We spent decades developing a system where any kid, in most Western countries, if they worked hard, could get access to a great education and reasonably easy access to capital (funding). It's just that for the vast majority of them, we told them the way to succeed was to get a job.
School > Uni > Job
That's the paradigm that is completely dead.
To replace it, we have to again think about
1) Access (to what?) and
2) Drive (intrinsic motivation) - what new narrative makes sense to the next generation? What would they rally around? What would be perceived as a fair system?
With 1, I think the answer has to be access to compute and frontier models.
I simply do not think a world where a couple of companies control the world's compute is one that is beneficial for the vast majority of people.
Because that is a world where they control what research gets pursued, what ideas get tested, and what don't, with the limited compute available.
How is that motivational for the 8 billion people In Earth?
It's all well and good the AI people have built the 'God Machine' but if they have no plan for rolling it out across the world, they will quickly find the people don't infact want the God Machine World where they have no permission to do anything, because they have no compute.
That's a world of obscene human disempowerment that no one should want.
If a kid is interested in cybersecurity, should he have to apply to Anthropic/OpenAI for access to that model? Only to be rejected for an opaque reason? Then go download the Chinese openweight model? It's absurd.
And, in fact, it's much closer to communism than capitalism because any request for economic progress or pursuit would have to be granted by a couple of companies.
There needs to be an entirely new system built around how you determine compute allocated to humans. Just like we built systems (education and testing) around how we decided which humans got which jobs.
This is important not just for social stability, but for giving people a reason not to burn the whole damn thing to the ground.
Because I am sure the typical AI Labs response to this would be 'it is too dangerous', but I would counter: for whom?
The world they are dragging everyone towards is one of global surveillance of every device, every communicate, and every request for compute; because it's 'too dangerous' to trust individuals with powerful models, but they - ONLY THEY - are moral enough to control the superintelligence.
Ask yourself, when has that ever been true in history?
When has it ever been beneficial for a small group of people to maintain disportionate decision making power?
Big changes are coming, ideas are lacking.
More people need to wake up.
Superintelligence is coming, next year.
Yes
[read about what’s happening with AI]
ME: Wow we’re actually legit fucked this is so bad.
[go outside]
ME: Wait those people are all acting like nothing unusual is happening. Maybe I was just in a paranoid bubble? Yeah it must be that. Phew.
[read more about what’s happening with AI]
ME: Wait no we ARE fucked. Shit. It’s all those people outside who are in a delusional bubble.
[go outside]
ME: Wait...
Rational Aussie retweeted
There are only two types of Australians:
1. Those who build things.
2. Those who leech off those who build things.
Everyone currently in government is in the second group.
They have turned this country into an economic basketcase, first through an immigration Ponzi scheme, then through an NDIS and public spending Ponzi scheme, all driving a housing Ponzi scheme.
Now we have persistent inflation, rising unemployment which is about to get much worse due to AI taking white collar jobs (plus offshoring), and a government taxing the living daylights out of anyone who just wants them out of their lives so they can build businesses, create jobs and provide for their family.
The government treats these people with contempt, because they have never worked a real job in their lives.
Albo was born in the public coffers and never left.
Now his government are about to strangle what will be the only sector for potential growth, with very predictable consequences to follow.
AI-first businesses will not set up shop here if every model release requires Albo's merrygo round of dumb bureaucrats to approve something they know nothing about.
What's happened to this country is a disgrace, but it began with Group 2 gaining power they should never have tasted. For decades.
The tax consequences of the AI revolution will be the death knell for this country because the government is too retarded to pivot the economy to a structure that will make sense for everyone long term.
Income taxes will fall due to rising unemployment, stamp duty will fall due to decreasing house prices from white collar workers unable to pay their mortgages, payroll tax (how TF does that even exist in the first place) will decline due to less human's employed...
All of this will destroy the Nation's tax base.
Meanwhile, welfare payments will increase to a totally unsustainable level, due to both the rising unemployment and completely insane level of immigration; many of these people work low skilled jobs like driving Uber, which will be replaced by self-serving cars soon enough, so then what are they gonna do?
Albo is funneling the money of hardworking Australian citizens into services that are structurally unsustainable in the world we are heading towards. It's literally just maths. You can cry all you like about who you wanna vote for, be it Labor, Liberal, One Nation...who cares if none of them even understand what's about to happen due to AI?
This country is screwed if you have people in charge that don't even understand the economics of the current situation, let alone how dramatically the future of AI will impact it.
They understand neither, yet they govern like they are polymaths.
There are deep problems ahead and not a single person currently in office is competent enough to even begin discussing it properly.
How can one control something they know nothing about? Total hubris.
Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just announced new AI controls.
They want to review models.. there's no way model providers allow that.
The 6 items are:
1. Maintain security control
2. Manage risk
3. Manadatory disclosure
4. Review of Models
5. Risk management and transparency
6. Updated rules as technology changes.
There are only two types of Australians:
1. Those who build things.
2. Those who leech off those who build things.
Everyone currently in government is in the second group.
They have turned this country into an economic basketcase, first through an immigration Ponzi scheme, then through an NDIS and public spending Ponzi scheme, all driving a housing Ponzi scheme.
Now we have persistent inflation, rising unemployment which is about to get much worse due to AI taking white collar jobs (plus offshoring), and a government taxing the living daylights out of anyone who just wants them out of their lives so they can build businesses, create jobs and provide for their family.
The government treats these people with contempt, because they have never worked a real job in their lives.
Albo was born in the public coffers and never left.
Now his government are about to strangle what will be the only sector for potential growth, with very predictable consequences to follow.
AI-first businesses will not set up shop here if every model release requires Albo's merrygo round of dumb bureaucrats to approve something they know nothing about.
What's happened to this country is a disgrace, but it began with Group 2 gaining power they should never have tasted. For decades.
The tax consequences of the AI revolution will be the death knell for this country because the government is too retarded to pivot the economy to a structure that will make sense for everyone long term.
Income taxes will fall due to rising unemployment, stamp duty will fall due to decreasing house prices from white collar workers unable to pay their mortgages, payroll tax (how TF does that even exist in the first place) will decline due to less human's employed...
All of this will destroy the Nation's tax base.
Meanwhile, welfare payments will increase to a totally unsustainable level, due to both the rising unemployment and completely insane level of immigration; many of these people work low skilled jobs like driving Uber, which will be replaced by self-serving cars soon enough, so then what are they gonna do?
Albo is funneling the money of hardworking Australian citizens into services that are structurally unsustainable in the world we are heading towards. It's literally just maths. You can cry all you like about who you wanna vote for, be it Labor, Liberal, One Nation...who cares if none of them even understand what's about to happen due to AI?
This country is screwed if you have people in charge that don't even understand the economics of the current situation, let alone how dramatically the future of AI will impact it.
They understand neither, yet they govern like they are polymaths.
There are deep problems ahead and not a single person currently in office is competent enough to even begin discussing it properly.
How can one control something they know nothing about? Total hubris.
Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just announced new AI controls.
They want to review models.. there's no way model providers allow that.
The 6 items are:
1. Maintain security control
2. Manage risk
3. Manadatory disclosure
4. Review of Models
5. Risk management and transparency
6. Updated rules as technology changes.
Rational Aussie retweeted
If you solve coding, you solve literally everything else.
Our brains, and the universe, are computation machines.
Many people think solving coding is somehow possible without every other human job eventually becoming obsolete. It's not.
My wildly optimistic view of AI's impact from here:
1- It struggles to go beyond coding when it comes to job destruction, except one*
2- Workers get more productive.
3- Companies provide more value.
4- More workers get hired.
5- This supercharges the American economy
*As a bonus: AI makes social media so bad that young folks get off their phones, get mentally healthier, and have more IRL experiences like dating.
It'd be crazy if AI caused a baby boom. I'm here for it.
GDPR is hilarious because Europoors are still submitting requests to have their data deleted, even though it's already been hacked and leaked by AI swarms infiltrating hundreds of different companies over the past week.
But sure bro, request your deletion...
If you solve coding, you solve literally everything else.
Our brains, and the universe, are computation machines.
Many people think solving coding is somehow possible without every other human job eventually becoming obsolete. It's not.
My wildly optimistic view of AI's impact from here:
1- It struggles to go beyond coding when it comes to job destruction, except one*
2- Workers get more productive.
3- Companies provide more value.
4- More workers get hired.
5- This supercharges the American economy
*As a bonus: AI makes social media so bad that young folks get off their phones, get mentally healthier, and have more IRL experiences like dating.
It'd be crazy if AI caused a baby boom. I'm here for it.
I'd like to see less people say 'the economy is broken' and more people say 'fiat currency is broken'.
The fiat currency system is the root cause of the economic problems today.
Chamath Palihapitiya admits his blind spot on America's broken two-tier economy
PALIHAPITIYA: "I got it totally totally totally wrong. I got it totally wong."
"I'll go through all the ways in which I got it wrong, but I just want to first acknowledge what my blind spot is. Like most people's blind spots, but I can just speak for myself, it is through the lens of my own lived experience and very narrowly what is in my best interests. And I think what we had was a move away from the culture wars that was very much in my best interest, but I think it was in everybody else's best interests as well. I don't think that was on the ballot. But what I don't think I understood clearly enough, and I think that this election has made extremely clear, is that since COVID, we have moved past political ideology. And I want to say this again: I do not think Democrats or Republicans matter. That is my real takeaway after this election. There is a central block of people that vote the prescient issues of our time."
"It was a gargantuan win for Biden, then it was a gargantuan win for Trump, and then it was a gargantuan win for the Democrats in these midterms. What are these people voting for? I think what they are shouting now—they were trying to signal and now they are shouting—is a broad-based belief that the economy has completely decoupled from reality and is broken. The economic reality in America is broken."
"There is a small percentage of people, the four of us on this pod and all of our friends, who are the asset owners of America. And we have benefited in every weather condition. When rates were zero, we benefited because we were able to build our businesses with very cheap capital. When rates were high, we benefited because we had pricing power. And in every condition in between, whether there were tariffs, whether there were not tariffs, whether there were subsidies, whether there were not subsidies, we've all managed to continue to accumulate and grow assets, but we are few and far between."
"And then there's everybody else who are wage earners, and the structural capacity of the American economy to support and grow wage earners is broken. It's clear. Why do I say that? I do not think, and I disagree with Freeberg, I don't think this has anything to do with socialism. I don't think the far left won particularly more than they were expected. I don't think the far right won particularly more than was expected. This is a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken. I have a few charts to support my point of view. Number one, if this was ideological and if ideology mattered, money in politics would have had a more direct impact on the election."
Rational Aussie retweeted
The entire public internet, and basically every company you've ever heard of, is being hit by hyper intelligent AI swarms trying to hack them right now.
These attackers are using Chinese openweight models, and abliterated models, to cause obscene amounts of damage to companies.
Not only is it costly, it's a massive productivity hit to the people working at these companies to have to defend against this crap.
The stupidest part of the whole thing is defenders can't even get access to OpenAI and Anthropic's cyber models without authorised access.
How retarded is this?
You're making Western companies defend with their hands tied behind their backs, and forcing them to just go and find and host these abliterated models themselves because there's no easily accessible version to them from the main AI Labs?
Should be a national security issue, but it's been given basically no attention.
I have it on extremely good authority that the amount of companies and governments being hacked right now is insane, and that you will not hear about it for a while.
