this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Technology

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[–] kittenroar@beehaw.org 37 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Sam Altman and others have publicly stated (something to the effect that) the end goal is for AI to replace workers. There is no amount of money too big for a capitalist to bet on that outcome, especially if they deem it plausible.

[–] AMoralNihilist@feddit.uk 16 points 3 days ago (4 children)

And then who buys the products 🫠

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They buy products from each other, and shut out more and more people if society.

You see the homeless drug addict on the street? They want more of that.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They buy products from each other and shut themselves from society.

Which is not a bad outcome.

[–] ignirtoq@feddit.online 3 points 2 days ago

Except they take all of the land and resources with them. You posit the billionaires have a fully automated robotic industry at their whim and they will leave any scraps for the rest of us? It would be judgment day from the Terminator series, except instead of a super intelligent Skynet AGI mowing down humanity it would be psychopathic pedophiles.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Exchange still occurs globally and amongst the upper class.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The upper class doesn't buy anything but stocks.

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Just imagine a world in which the only products manufactured are exclusively chasing the dollars of wealthy investors. So like yachts, custom giant statues, kill drone perimeters, etc.

[–] PRIMEcavitationfetishist@quokk.au 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

When we only have white cishet billionaires, we can abolish money.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 2 points 3 days ago

Without the carrot there’s only the stick…

[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

Don't forget about the other big players! Jensen Hwang, Lisa Su, Lip-Bu Tan, Satya Nadella, plus the memory cartel (Samsung, SK Hynix, etc.)

This particular war is a class war.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 3 days ago

what he isnt saying, is AI needs to be profitable for it to happen, it hasnt.

[–] TQuid@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

That's an excellent way to think about it. I mean, horrifying, but incisive.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This has been fucking obvious for at least 2 years, more like 4, really.

What this has been the whole time is naked power grab to establish a technate, a techno-oligarchy.

When, not if, this fully fucking detonates the West's finances and economies, most of these people will still be very wealthy, most of our 401k/pensions/net worth will mostly no longer exist, and we will end up with a society of all but formal aristocracy, vs us 'low income worker' peasants.

That is their plan. They have been open about that for 20-30 years; they despise democracy, they think the world should be hard deliniated into haves and have-nots.

It doesn't matter if the tech works or is profitable.

What matters is who will be on top when the dust settles.

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 37 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If only there was a name for that kind of money making scheme...

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 17 points 4 days ago (3 children)
[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Hmmm… I think it needs to be something with more ‘bite’. “Musking it up” sounds like a 90s sitcom dad-move. Like something Tim Allen might have tried on Home Improvement.

“Livin’ On the Eggs!”

“Just can’t help myself from breeeeding!”

Ok, fucking yikes— no, that was somehow even more 90s, and incredibly terrifying. Apologies to anyone who gets the reference. and to literally every member of Aerosmith.

[–] WalleyeWarrior@midwest.social 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No apologies for Steven Tyler. He paid a family to make him the legal guardian of a 16 year old so that he could take her cross country and live with her.

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yeah, I remember that too because I was a teenager when that was in the newspapers, and people were like “whatever”

So gross

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I thought it was a Weird Al reference...

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[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It’s exactly a Ponzi scheme, with the one difference being that there is no product with a true Ponzi scheme, but this one has a product. It’s just a worthless mechanical Turk designed to hornswaggle the rubes.

It’s an Altman scheme.

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 2 points 3 days ago

I know. It was a joke.

But, at least for now, ai doesn’t really do anything, either, at least not anything particularly meaningful. It’s a McGuffin for billionaires to slush money around and profit from others investing in bunk stock. They’re making trillions in a gigantic pump and dump scheme, and right before the bubble bursts, they’re gonna cash out and fuck off leaving everyone else to get screwed

[–] pgo_lemmy@feddit.it 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Reaganomics recalled something from some forgotten box.

Elon-gate?

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Elon-gate recalled a meme from some forgotten box

A 1996 vintage, I believe? South African. A rosy nose, full-bodied, with a turd finish.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 4 days ago

Now that's crispy

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 18 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Wait till they ruin the internet, make users unable of any meaningful general purpose computation on their own hardware, then everybody has to beg them for computing and knowledge.

this is bigger than a few AI companies. This is the scheme of global governments moving towards full totalitarianism and control.

Call me paranoid but I highly believe this is the route we're at.

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago

Wait till they ruin the internet

I think we are long past that by now. "Enshitification" and "Capitalist Slop", was already a huge thing before these 'new' ***holes came about. Capitalist slop is the pre-cursor for "AI-slop", and is basically to throw literal shit on the market(wall) and see if it sticks. My personal view is that 99.99% of all internet content is Cap-Slop that shouldn't/wouldn't be there in a natural society.

full totalitarianism and control.

That was always the end-state of Capitalism, "Fascism" is basically when govs are taken over by private Capitalist sh*tters. US have been an Oligarchy for longer than anyone alive today, and 'Democracy' were never there.

Everything is going as the anti-capitalists predicted and expected..

[–] terranoid@lemmy.cafe 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Nah, I don't think it'll "ruin" the internet in the disaster sense. It's already done enough that it ruined reddit, quora, other social media, but those weren't really information sources as much as companies selling addictive brain rot to steal your data. They are not on the same level as wikipedia, or even representative or what the internet is. Even if you got useful stuff off reddit once upon a time, it was always about tracking you and capturing your data and making you addicted to wasting your time watching bullshit.

What we're seeing and this "top economist" is saying is just "this is a bubble" in other words without saying the B word. People tune out the B word because they believe in the technology. A bubble has nothing to do with whether AI works, and all to do with the behavior of investors and unsustainable investments. So many people these days have to dance around the bubble word because people think it means you are anti-AI.

We will likely see things remain more or less the same except one day investors freak out and stop investing in AI, and then tech will go through a ton of shitty layoffs and people will struggle and some rich day trader type fucks will lose their livelihoods, just like the dotcom era. But after that, we will still have generative AI tools here and there, maybe more restricted to better use cases and not shoved in your face everywhere, but LLM will still be a thing.

Yeah, it means you'll likely have fucked social media forever, bots, propaganda, fake news, fake AI videos of bullshit, but social media always was about controlling your thought patterns. It already fucking sucked. That part of the internet was always shit. But interconnected devices sending data to each other and allowing researchers in Oslo Norway to talk to researchers in Omaha Nebraska, that will still very much be alive and work well.

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 2 points 4 days ago

You say i vestors will back away and the bubble will burst, but I say the investors are governments themselves, therefore, they have all the money and power there is. The bubble will burst in some sense, but this is larger than simple consumer product markets.

This is a weapon. One of the greatest tools for governments and those on power to dictate and control.

Money is fake. Its their invention. They will not let it be used against them.

Kill them, or let it happen.

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Some other news in the past week was about scrappers making like 90% of internet traffic.

I feel like an idiot not catching it the first time I heard about the GPU crunch, but yes.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 points 3 days ago

dont need top economist to tell us that, its been well known since '23

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 days ago

Yeah, we're all about to be fucked because so many major players are tied up in this scheme. The bottom is going to fall out and the entire world economy might be affected (USA for sure, cause WE'RE NUMBER ONE).

Set aside additional savings (if you can) to be prepared for a bad time ahead.

[–] helix@feddit.org 6 points 4 days ago

Every gold rush only makes the people rich who are selling the shovels, never the investors, never the workers.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 days ago

It took them this long to figure that out?

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 3 points 4 days ago

Oh! Welcome to the 1980s

[–] DGen@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Of course it is not sustainable. The level of data centers they build tells the story.

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