Futurology Today

The argument for current LLM AIs leading to AGI has always been that they would spontaneously develop independent reasoning, through an unknown emergent property that would appear as they scale. It hasn't happened, and there's no sign that it will.

That's a dilemma for the big AI companies. They are burning through billions of dollars every month, and will need further hundreds of billions to scale further - but for what in return?

Current LLMs can still do a lot. They've provided Level 4 self-driving, and seem to be leading to general-purpose robots capable of much useful work. But the headwinds look ominous for the global economy, - tit-for-tat protectionist trade wars, inflation, and a global oil shock due to war with Iran all loom on the horizon for 2025.

If current AI players are about to get wrecked, I doubt it's the end for AI development. Perhaps it will switch to the areas that can actually make money - like Level 4 vehicles and robotics.

This is the Mengxi Blue Ocean Photovoltaic Power Station, now China’s largest single-capacity solar power plant. Worth noting is that it's built in the Gobi Desert, an area twice the size of Ukraine. So there's room for plenty more.

Without grid storage, this is priced at about 10% of the cost of new nuclear projects.

This article - How the Rise of New Digital Workers Will Lead to an Unlimited Age - makes the mainstream case for the future of employment with respect to robotics and AI. By mainstream, I mean that it completely ignores the central question. What happens to human employees when most or all (even future uninvented) work can be done for pennies an hour by AI & robotics employees?

As almost always, he poses the question, and in classic Strawman fashion - pretends to answer it, by answering a different question. Mr Benioff says automation has always created more jobs than it eliminates. But that only answers a different question and ignores the most important one.

Mr. Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of TIME magazine is no different from mainstream economists, or the Silicon Valley elite, in building this world and blindly leading us to it.

One day society is going to have to wake up to the fact we are being duped by these people, and the longer we keep believing them, the more we just get all the angst and chaos, and none of the understanding we need to fashion a new reality.

“There is a perception that the economy is changing, and workers have to make a drastic decision: to undergo training or to go into retirement because the investment in their own human capital is not worth it,” Giuntella says.

As the world's leading manufacturing nation, it is no surprise that Chinese people are feeling the headwinds of robotic automation first. Mainstream neoliberal economics says AI & robotics will provide more jobs than they take away. Yet, here we see evidence of the contrary.

As goes China today, the rest of the world will soon follow. If robot and AI employees are so cheap to employ, who will buy the expensive goods and services from human-employee businesses?

The recent US election seems more evidence that the neoliberal model of capitalism is crumbling and in decay everywhere. Maybe whatever replaces it will have to honestly face up to the economic realities of AI & robots.

Research Paper

Financial Times article