The AI dooooooom thread

[DGuller]

I suppose I'm fatalist in the other way that I don't think there's an "answer" to the economy or politics. There will be boom and bust/cycles/pendulum swings of all kinds from politics to economics to cultural or social stuff.

Yes of course. But the lesson we learned from the 1875-1929 era was we can't just let them happen. We have to attempt to fight those cycles. By "unleashing" the economy from its shackles we are right back into disastrous busts ravaging the world every twenty years or so. The economy must be regulated to reduce the disastrous impact of those busts. The government must simply do everything in its power to limit these bubbles and mitigate their damage. They will still happen of course. See the failure of the...what were they called? The Nifty Fifty? The fifty "can't lose" stocks of the 1960s when they finally did lose in the 1970s. But as bad as that was it was no Depression of 1875 or Economic Crisis of 2008.

If you don't let the bubbles inflate, how are you going to have economy recover from the last bust?

[crazy canuck]

Other reasons to think the US market is headed to a crash.

Part of a lengthy piece in the NYTimes

Four years ago, the economist Robert Shiller expressed concern about the stock market's lofty heights, but he concluded that there was "no particular reason" to expect a market collapse "as bad as the 1929 crash" because "the government and the Fed have shown themselves to be far more adept in staving off prolonged recessions than their predecessors." Today, with the S&P 500 over 60 percent higher than it was the day Mr. Shiller issued his warning, we should be heeding the words of the former Federal Reserve chairman William McChesney Martin, who warned that market stewards must be willing to serve as the "chaperone" who can order "the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up."
Mr. Trump has been ordering the chaperones removed. Since January, his administration has been firing regulators and vigorously tearing down the guardrails that have kept our markets thriving for nine decades.

For the first time in a century, the S.E.C. is seriously exploring how to allow firms and funds to sell investments to masses of Americans without registration or disclosure. The administration is even encouraging individual retirees to vouchsafe their life savings to exotic financial offerings like private equity. Private equity is, as the name suggests, notoriously opaque, which means retirees would know little about what they're investing in. The White House and the private fund lobby argue that this policy will "democratize" access to alternative assets and promote "better returns." But such a plan, which comes with neither the information nor the protections needed to defend investors from serious economic risks, is as compelling as a plan to "democratize" brain surgery.

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Mr. Trump is also allowing financial regulators to atrophy: The five-person Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tasked by this administration to oversee significant portions of the crypto and prediction markets, has dwindled to a single member. Only two of five statutorily mandated S.E.C. commissioners are serving in their normal terms; the lone remaining Democratic appointee, Caroline Crenshaw, is in her post-expiration grace period, and warning that the agency's policies are "a reckless game of regulatory Jenga."

The agency's chair has declared "a new day at the S.E.C." But the lamps are going out all over the agency: Staff has been cut by 16 percent (substantially more than the 10 percent of a literal decimation), quarterly reports are on the chopping block and forms that provide intelligence about dark corners of the market are being repeatedly deferred.

[Tamas]

Due to various reasons I have been reading/listening up on private equity firms and they do sound like the replacement for the various schemes around the housing market going on pre-2008

[crazy canuck]

My concern about AI succinctly explained by a scientist

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQzjGn1jISq/?igsh=bWliNXdtb2gxZmc0

[Sheilbh]

Just on that AI-powered personalised ad generation point I mentioned earlier to give a bit of a sense of scale.

Fantastic piece today by Reuters that around 10% of Meta's ads revenue comes from scam or fake ads. Basically Meta only bans fake/scam advertisers if they hit a 95% certainty that it's fraudulent or whatever. However they will charge more for advertising the more your "score" indicates you're a scam in some way or other. Which sort of makes sense for them (again dreadful for the publishers sellin advertising space or the readers seeing it but plus ca change).

10% of Meta's revenue is $16 billion. That means that the money they're making on fake/fraudulent/scam ads is more than the entire TV advertising revenue of the NFL.

I expect Meta to do both. So they'll sell to publishers an AI tool to help better screen fake/fraudulent ads which just means Meta need to increase their share of ad sales and they'll sell a tool to advertisers allowing them to AI generate personalised advertising and optimise both the targeting and the creative (which I can't help but think will be a gift for scam artists).

[Jacob]

You know what I would like? I'd like it if Facebook got held criminally and financially liable for fraud they help perpetrate.