Currently, I would rather guess it’s the usual bubble popping. AI has attracted billions of investments and will likely pull in even more, but it’s already foreseeable, that hardly any of the investments will turn a profit. So we’ll end up with a third dotcom bubble.
Comment on It is 'nearly unavoidable' that AI will cause a financial crash within a decade, SEC head says
spudwart@spudwart.com 11 months ago
Is it because replacing employees with AI results in a never-ending cascade where your stupid system doesn’t keep consuming because AI don’t consume and won’t get paid?
Or is it because using AI will result in the climate to continually become more inhospitable?
Maybe it will be because AI will be used to create more and more believable misinformation that results in WW3?
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 11 months ago
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
AI isn’t a bubble. The futurist/Rationalist/transhumanist communities were saying what’s happening now would happen in a few years about a decade ago, and our predictions are that the next phase is AI taking over all labor through sophisticated automation. We’ve been trying to warn everyone about this since the advent of Google Deep Dream, but sure stick your head in the sand again and let the world burn around you; it’s worked so well so far.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 11 months ago
How many times has that been predicted already? Three, four? Look at the history of AI, it happens every few years.
Anyway, you’re implying a dichotomy here. World domination or pipedream, but that’s not the case. The dotcom bubble was without a doubt a bubble, but much of the underlying technology was used a few years later, just without the hype and fanfare.
AI will probably find its uses, and has the potential to eliminate a lot of jobs, but the current iteration of AI businesses is utter garbage. Even something as comparatively simple as Microsoft’s Copilot is currently losing money - roughly as much as it costs to use. Yet, there are billions upon billions being poured into useless start-ups that will never produce anything of value in a profitable manner.
What exactly happened to self driving cars BTW? Weren’t those totally on track of what experts predicted?
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They’re on the streets in San Francisco, I see them all the time
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yes. Definitely one of those or something else entirely.
TheFerrango@lemmy.basedcount.com 11 months ago
That’s an economic level reply right there
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’m thinking yes, plus AI margin trading running into a tragedy of the commons where they collectively run the stock market into the ground and there’s no reset button on that.
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 11 months ago
OK, it is addressed in the article…
He’s specifically talking about the use of AI in finance, and that an algorithm that runs amok in a particular sector:
I’ll throw out a microeconomic example. About a year into the pandemic, the price of used cars started going up… a LOT… in a short time. One of the reasons for the sudden changes in used car prices was that major used car resellers were using algorithms to set buying and selling prices for cars. While supply chain pressure on the new car market was unprecedented, and it trickled down to used cars, a facilitating cause is that the used car price-setting algorithms didn’t really have any humans in the chain checking to see if the numbers they were kicking out made a lick of sense.
So you had companies like Carmax and Carvana buying used cars for $X, and then a month later 5X, then a month later 10X, because they were programmed to just up the offering price until they reached target stock levels. Sometimes they were buying 3+ year old used cars for more than the current price of NEW cars of similar trim level. Carvana’s numbers got so whacked that it nearly sunk the company.
Now imagine that kind of a runaway algorithm in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. It’s 2008 all over again.
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Gosh, maybe legalized gambling is not a good way to run an economy?
eek2121@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Honestly hoping something like this happens in residential real estate, if it isn’t happening already. Housing is well overdue for a correction.
You can’t tell me that most people can afford a $400,000-$700,000 mortgage. Median incomes don’t support that price point. Median household incomes might support the lower end…barely. So I am starting to wonder just who is buying/selling all these houses. When I see a $600,000 “average” house last 3 days on the market and then sell for $760,000…I have questions.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I swear if I ever marry it will just be to combine finances so we can actually buy a house and stuff
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I traded in a 2014 Toyota hatchback to Carmax and got an Audi A3 when the algorithms went haywire. It didn’t cover the whole cost but it was a silly enough trade that I thought for sure someone would call me and say it was a computer error.
fjordo@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Wow, what a deal! Did they say anything about how crazy that was?
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 11 months ago
No, they actually called and paid me $100 to make the swap at a lot about an hour away. I wasn’t gonna argue my way out of an upgrade so I was like, “Oh, yeah, I can drop it off wherever.” The dude who details the cars after you drop them off definitely wasn’t worried about it. He thought it was funny his bosses fucked up.
I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My 2013 Prius got totaled around the peak of this. I wanted to just replace it with the exact same model, because it’s a good car. It would have been cheaper to buy brand new one at the time. I got a new electric car instead and with the $7k tax rebate ended up spending less than I would have to buy a 9 year old Prius.
insomniac@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It was pretty bananas for a minute. The Mazda dealership offered us 5,000 more than we paid brand new for my wife’s Mazda 3 in 2018. I told the salesperson that it makes no fucking sense and he couldn’t explain it either. Didn’t go for it for a bunch of reasons but it was really odd.
Peaty@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
My mom’s 2020 Fit at the top trim level sold new for roughly 20k. Her lease buyout price was 1/2 the cost of an entry Fit in the same year with 30k miles (going for 25k at the time)