Not disagreeing but also I wonder how it compares to inequality in Britain before the US was a thing.

The core issue is that most major businesses are ultimately owned directly or indirectly abroad, largely in America, with some tapping by London-based intermediaries.

Supermarkets and shopping centres, national assets (e.g., water) the story is the same. Then there's Amazon et al.

Profit generated in this country is by and large not spent here, and is certainly not taxed adequately.

This causes inequality by short-circuiting redistributive measures, either local economic multipliers or government spending.

What gains are felt are concentrated in service sectors which facilitate global capital, concentrated in London. See OP's thoughts on legalistic societies.

It compares to inequality in England before the US was a thing, in the same way. Small elite benefiting from global plunder, vast inequality internally.

The British Empire didn't actually end. There was a hostile takeover by Washington at the end of WW2.

I would guess fear of losing market share and valuable data, as well as pressure to appear to be winning the AI race for the companies' own stock price.

i.e competition. If there were only one AI company, they would probably not release anything close to their most capable version to the public. ala Google pre-chatgpt.

I’m not sure that really answers the question? Or perhaps my interpretation of the question is different.

If (say) the code generation technology of Anthropic is so good, why be in the business of selling access to AI systems? Why not instead conquer every other software industry overnight?

Have Claude churn out the best office application suite ever. Have Claude make the best operating system ever. Have Claude make the best photo editing software, music production software, 3D rendering software, DNA analysis software, banking software, etc.

Why be merely the best AI software company when you can be the best at all software everywhere for all time?

Im waiting for people to realise that software products are much more than just lines of code.

Getting sick and tired of people talk about their productivity gains when not much is actually happening out there in terms of real value creation.

Just because you don't see it or refuse to believe people doesn't make you right and them liars. Maybe you're just wrong.

Or maybe I’m just right and you’re just slow at seeing what other people can see.

I’m not a SWE either fyi. Therefore I have no vested interest.

Some people are dropping things in response to how things are being ruined. Many people are not.

I hope you're right but I imagine with more computing power used more efficiently, the big companies will hoard more and more of the total available human attention.

Palantir is more directly involved in the surveillance state and military industrial complex.

Not saying Google isn't, but it's at least not as public or blatant, and is much less of what Google does overall.

Tbh I think public and blatant is preferable.

Don't worry sufficiently advanced LLMs will learn how to put in the right amount of typoes to be convincing.

It's not certain that LLMs don't do this already—it's likely their doing this even now.

That’s —— not just —— possible— it’s —— ——— probable!!!

I read this phrase in a Spiderman comic, probably 1990 +/- 5 years. If memory serves Harry Osborne said it to Peter Parker, something regarding Norman Osborne's activity as the Green Goblin. Anyway, it's one of those phases that immediately etched itself into my brain and replays itself whenever the situation seems appropriate. I've always wondered if the quote had a more respectable original source, but haven't been able to find one.

Are you an LLM that misspelled “they’re” intentionally?

That was the joke. Also the use of the "It's not; it's" structure and the em-dash.

Swearing is a good heuristic still I think. The American corporate world remains rather prissy about swearing, so if the post sounds like a hairy docker after 12 pints then it's probably not an LLM.

*typos

Oh you got me

I mean, it does for people like me who decide to work less as they don't need to earn as much.

I decided to breathe for a while after a startup was out of runway and minimized my consumption while figuring out what to do once grew up.

It was a revelation to find out how little one needs materially to feel happy.

But a basic income or something is mandatory IMO as it's the only thing that can remove us from the rat race and free us from the zillionaires. Oh, sorry. We need to get rid of the zillionaires first, the last thing they want is normal people who aren't hungry and desperate for pennies.

I've been envisioning a market for agendas, where the players bid for the AI companies to nudge their LLM toward whatever given agenda. It would be subtle and not visible to users. Probably illegal, but I imagine it will happen to some degree. Or at the very least the government will want the "levers" to adjust various agendas the same way they did with covid.

I despise all of this. For the moment though, before all this is implemented, it's perhaps a brief golden age of LLMs usefulness. (And I'm sure LLMs will remain useful for many things, but there will be entire categories where they're ruined by pay to play the same as happened with Google search.)

More fundamentally, the trend of the world economy is toward turning everything anywhere in the world into either a resource to be exploited or a playground for the rich.

This is a big generalization but I think it's broadly true.

If you are in a "resource" area you'll get pollution and often instability and war.

If you are in a "playground" area you get massive cost increases and are eventually forced out.

As the trend is toward concentrating more and more wealth at the top, the slice of rich who can afford to enjoy the playgrounds becomes smaller and the number of refugees, homeless, and poor becomes larger and poorer.

Not quite - because the person with the 300k house still owns the house. They have a 300k asset and <300k in debt. (assuming house value didn't crash after they bought it.

This has been happening for a very long time. The current administration is just worse and/or more blatant about it than previous ones.

So I agree with your sarcasm and I also agree with the parent comment that the current admin is doing a better job "clearly showing" how this works to everyone.

You say blatant, I say transparent. In terms of scale there is no difference, but the honesty is refreshing.

The only problem is it's causing people to focus on the wrong thing (us vs them, D vs R) instead of the oligarchs who continue to line their pockets (and by the way do not get re-elected every 4 years).