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Comment by simianwords | Hacker News Reader

Here’s what you said earlier

> It's a capital misallocation problem, a number problem, that has nothing to do with subjective feelings regarding LLMs

Now you say

> I would still see the technology as anti-human and would still see the concept of an agentic economy as deeply unserious, wasteful, and risky. Not exactly sure what your point is though.

You can see how someone might be confused with this. Is it your subjective feeling? Or objective economics? I’m not interested in your subjective feelings on AI.

On objective economics: your concern would be invalid if the AI companies overall make profit. If they don’t, then you would have been right on the point of being careful.

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No, I don’t see the confusion. There are a lot of distinct issues with LLMs. In my initial message I made it clear I was talking about the economics issues.

> your concern would be invalid if the AI companies overall make profit. If they don’t, then you would have been right on the point of being careful.

No, that’s fallacious reasoning. If the AI vendors are currently profitable that doesn’t mean the concerns regarding their unsustainability is invalid, but that changes the calculus depending on the details. They could be profitable right now on paper and still be economically not viable. The core problem is that the amount of money allocated to the AI bet is completely disproportionate compared to the actual economical value of the technology. That’s where the imbalance is. The exact reasons for the imbalance can change over time, but there would still be a misallocation. The companies would need to be profitable, and/or their expenditures would need to pay off, and the overall demand needs to grow exponentially, and they need to be protected from Chinese competitive pressure, etc.

I still don’t understand your overall point

This thread is emblematic of the HN view of AI. It starts with some vague concerns - you specify that it is a purely economic concern and not subjective feeling. After being asked that if the economics work out would your concern be proved wrong, you then started mentioning things like anti-human and piling up a random list of other topics.

Essentially you have made your concern utterly unfalsifiable - however the material world situation pans out in AI, your concern would be validated. There's a lot of emotion in all this and its a good idea for you to separate it out from your real objective concerns.

I won’t engage with you again on this website, you’re not engaging in good faith. Read the thread again, none of my responses are me trying to weasel out. I took your (fairly low quality) questions seriously, and answered them honestly. My _economics_ concerns are definitely falsifiable, but not with such simple assertions as „but what if they are profitable“. That’s would only address one of the multiple economics problems, something I clarified in my responses. The fact that I, personally, would still want the technology to be eradicated, even if the economics math out, is a different concern altogether. There are layers of concerns, societal, economics, political, cultural. you seem to approach the topic really naively

Yes exactly the layers of political and social concerns are all new and you added them up in the later part of the thread. You might realise, I hope, that these are all nebulous concerns. Basically left yourself unfalsifiable - a person could have made the same layered unfocused accusation on the internet in 1980s. Something something anti human, something societal and political. It’s a good tactic I tell ya.

There is not a single reply where you understood the position you were arguing with.

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