Billionaire bunkers: How the world’s wealthiest are paying to escape (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Billionaire bunkers: How the world’s wealthiest are paying to escape (2022)

nypost.com

There was a spate of articles in the popular press in the last few years on the subject of "billionaire preppers," most notably this one (which was discussed here): https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...

Before, it was easy to dismiss this growth industry as the natural result of certain people having more money than they know what to do with (and perhaps also, depending on your perspective, being overly cautious, or overly paranoid). But now I wonder if they had forewarning, and were making plans to best position and protect themselves for the coming massively destabilizing, winner-take-all wave of AI.

You think that someone was sitting on advances in ai for years before publishing so that they could warn billionaires that they need to build bunkers and that their stuff was still SOTA after that delay?

No, but I think the billionaires may have had a headsup concerning the models that were being built by OpenAi and others using the published research, and the capabilities and rates of progress of those models. Google supposedly sat (and is still sitting) on AI systems that, while perhaps not on par with GPT-3.5/4, were still much better than what they and others made publicly available, out of fear that it would damage their brand (by saying offensive things) and cannibalize their search business.

Don’t think there is some conspiracy here. Rich people like to cosplay just as much as your typical suburban family going to Costco. They just have enough money to really spec out their bunkers.

-edit-

But this does illustrate what is wrong with America today. Instead of building magnificent buildings, parks, libraries, and public works those with the means are instead building silly bunkers that won’t last longer than a lifetime. This turn inward and away from society is sad.

That was my take at the time as well, but now with tech like GPT and Midjourney, I wonder.

Midjourney? Please tell me you forgot the /s.

Midjourney is poised to cause mass unemployment of digital artists, so yeah, it's every bit as revolutionary and destabilizing as GPT.

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