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AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics

(paulkedrosky.com)
339 points throw0101c | 3 comments | 18 Jul 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.425s | source
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oytis ◴[18 Jul 25 20:21 UTC] No.44609364[source]▶
I just hope when (if) the hype is over, we can repurpose the capacities for something useful (e.g. drug discovery etc.)
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charleshn ◴[18 Jul 25 21:53 UTC] No.44610227[source]▶
I'm always surprised by the number of people posting here that are dismissive of AI and the obvious unstoppable progress.

Just looking at what happened with chess, go, strategy games, protein folding etc, it's obvious that pretty much any field/problem that can be formalised and cheaply verified - e.g. mathematics, algorithms etc - will be solved, and that it's only a matter of time before we have domain-specific ASI.

I strongly encourage everyone to read about the bitter lesson [0] and verifier's law [1].

[0] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

[1] https://www.jasonwei.net/blog/asymmetry-of-verification-and-...

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oytis ◴[18 Jul 25 21:57 UTC] No.44610262[source]▶
It's very different from chess etc. If we could formalise and "solve" software engineering precisely, it would be really cool, and probably indeed just lift programming to a new level of abstraction.

I don't mind if software jobs move from writing software to verifying software either if it makes the whole process more efficient and the software becomes better as a result. Again, not what is happening here.

What is happening, at least in AI optimist CEO minds is "disruption". Drop the quality while cutting costs dramatically.

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1. charleshn ◴[18 Jul 25 22:04 UTC] No.44610298[source]▶
I mentioned algorithms, not software engineering, precisely for that reason.

But the next step is obviously increased formalism via formal methods, deterministic simulators etc, basically so that one could define an environment for a RL agent.

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2. bigyabai ◴[18 Jul 25 22:17 UTC] No.44610378[source]▶
I'll bet you $1,000*10^32 that AI never formalizes a novel FFT algorithm worth more than a dime.
3. puchatek ◴[18 Jul 25 22:51 UTC] No.44610657[source]▶
It's unlikely that LLMs are gonna get us there though. They ingested all relevant data at this point at the net effect might very well kill future sources of quality data. How is e.g. stackoverflow gonna stay alive if the next generation of programmers relies mainly on copilot and vibe coding? And what will the LLMs scrape once it's gone?