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throwaway323929today at 3:19 PM7 repliesview on HN

Instead of just rejecting the future like a Roman fatalist because you've decided that it's just going to be someone else controlling you, maybe a better plan is to adopt emerging technology when it comes into play (like for example when the Internet came into play) and use it to start your own company, or make yourself more productive, or disrupt an industry that desperately needs it.

I shouldn't have to explain the benefits of productivity improvements and computer technology to people on Hacker News, but the place for some reason has been hijacked by neo luddites from Reddit that apparently have nothing better to do than troll about AI on a web site that is literally dedicated to an industry they don't like. Sam Altman literally used to run Y Combinator. Why not use that energy you're wasting to adopt emerging technology instead of bashing it?

There are places that recognized manufacturing was going to go away, transitioned a service economy, and did well economically, and places that ignored reality and are now in disrepair. Now's a great time to decide if you want to be Seattle or Cleveland. Don't fight the future. And don't think it's a billionaires fault when certain places are more successful then others because they didn't ban AI and datacenters while other places squandered the opportunity because they didn't confront the pitchfork mob driven into a frenzy by yellow journalism.


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pixl97today at 3:38 PM

"All everybody has to do is work and there will be no unemployment" --throwaway323929

Wow, you just solved economics!

Your argument is so incredibly reductive as to be nonsensical. The understanding of the allocation of capital is seemingly below grade school level. Even moreso, your understanding of the business cycle and how it interacts with governments and banks seems to be even more immature.

"manufacturing" didn't "go away", it moved to China so investors could capitalize on lax environmental laws and cheap labor. This engineered trade off of wealth had devastating results to massive parts of the US. On top of that, not every city can become Seattle. There isn't enough 'service economy' to go around and do that, especially as technology tends to concentrate wealth.

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andy_ppptoday at 3:26 PM

I love AI and have built many projects with PyTorch and use LLMs daily for all my work and am building a startup in my spare time here: https://veloa.com/

Being concerned about how AI will concentrate power doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s extremely useful.

inigyoutoday at 4:38 PM

Did you adopt cryptocurrency in 2022? What were your results?

tharmastoday at 5:07 PM

If AI was utilized to eliminate the "shitty" jobs I'd be more enthusiastic about it. AI Robots that clean toilets so humans don't have to? Yes, please. (Yes, I get it that at present its probably still cheaper to employ a human wage slave to do this job -> the economic argument).

But at present AI seems to be just eliminating the junior programmer positions. That is, the apprentices. Once the more experienced engineers retire and die off who will replace them? AI? Who will have the knowledge and expertise to know what is crap software is and what isn't?

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blinkbattoday at 3:46 PM

it's really funny when people advise the fix for widespread sociological problems as "just become an entrepreneur and disrupt an industry bro"

nearlyepictoday at 4:52 PM

[flagged]

watwuttoday at 3:42 PM

> disrupt an industry that desperately needs it.

Why is the primary tech people impulse to disrupt, destroy and harm other industries? Maybe that is why we dont produce useful tech anymore. The primary impulse is always hostile, rarely something like "lets create and sell a useful thing for them".

> adopt emerging technology when it comes into play (like for example when the Internet came into play) and use it to start your own company, or make yourself more productive,

Funny, the strategy of creating a company entirely dependent on mercy of another company, vulnerable to destruction with any simple change in TOS has been criticized on HN previously.

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