Comment by blitzar
3 days ago
There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM"
The icing on the cake is when all their competitors say "so will we".
3 days ago
There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM"
The icing on the cake is when all their competitors say "so will we".
I'm really struggling with seeing how this is immoral.
10 years ago, Apple was the largest company in the world by market capitalization, its market cap was around $479.069 billion.
How have we gotten to a point in just a decade where multiple companies are dropping annual numbers that are in the realm of "the market cap of the worlds biggest companies" on these things?
Have we solved all (any of) the other problems out there already?
I'm still not seeing it. It's immoral because it's resources not spent on some particular problem you have in mind?
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That was before pandemic inflation and rampant money printing to bolster the fake numbers.
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they're all a bit immoral, like how Hollywood made it big by avoiding patents, how YouTube got its mammoth exit via widespread copyright infringement and now LLMs gather up the skills of people it pays nothing to and tries to sell.
However we could also argue that most things in human society are less moral than moral (e.g. cars, supermarkets, etc).
But we can also argue that dropping some hundreds of millions in VC capital is less immoral than other activities, such as holding that money in liquid assets.
* Glares at Apple cosplaying Smaug *
Patents and copyrigt laws are immoral.
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> But we can also argue that dropping some hundreds of millions in VC capital is less immoral than other activities, such as holding that money in liquid assets.
It really depends a lot on how those liquid assets are deployed.
I agree that Apple should have probably done something with their cash hoard like maybe buying or bolstering Intel so that they could have a domestic supply of chips, but apparently Apple has decided that there's just not much else to do with that money right now that would give them a better return? We might not agree with that assessment, but it's hard to call it immoral.
I learned this in elementary school. When 10 kids join forces to bully one kid, that is immoral. Same with companies and VC money trying to corner a market.
Isn’t that the point of having a government with laws and regulation… to allow the majority to bully specific undesirable minority groups into submission?
For some things it’s even a worldwide consensus, e.g. any groups with a desire to acquire large amounts of plutonium (who don’t belong to a preapproved list).
There’s even a strong consistent push to make it ever more inescapable, comprehensive, resistant to any possible deviation, etc…
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Just from the environmental perspective is pretty immoral, the energy being consumed it's ridiculous and now every company is in an arms race making it all worse.
AI will change the balance of power removing a vital counter balance against the negatives of capitalism.
It will take the power away from the workers, such that there will be no power left for people to make demands.
We can hope it’ll be positive, but we aren’t even involved in its creation and the incentives are there to ensure it isn’t.
I guess the good thing is that many workers are also consumers. If they don't have money to consume anymore, who will buy all the shiny things that AI will produce so efficiently?
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I agree AI can change the balance of power but I think it's more nuanced.
When expertise is commoditized, it becomes cheap; that reduces payroll and operational costs - which reduces the value of VC investment and thus the power of pre-existing wealth.
If AI means I can compete with fewer resources, then that's an equalizing dynamic isn't it?
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In general, modern English uses “this is immoral” to mean “I don’t like this”. It’s a language quirk. It’s good that you’re asking the whys to get somewhere but I might as well just get to it.
“Immoral”, “should not exist”, “late-stage capitalism” are tribal affiliation chants intended to mark one’s identity.
E.g. I go to the Emirates and sing “We’re Arrrrrsenal! We’re by far the greatest time the world has ever seen”. And the point is to signal that I’m an Arsenal fan, a gooner. If someone were to ask “why are you the greatest team?” I wouldn’t be able to answer except with another chant (just like these users) because I’m just chanting for my team. The words aren’t really meaningful on their own.
Fairly cynicial aren't we?
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The numbers are insane to me, relative to other "real" industries. E.g., making some inferences from a recent Economist article, the entire world's nuclear industry "only" generates something like $30bn/year revenue (https://archive.is/WYfIG).
If each French inhabitant consumes 500€ electricity per year and 73% is nuclear, that already makes 24bn€, $28bn.
All this time complaining about companies not investing in research and development for future prosperity and now when they actually do so it is suddenly outright immoral?
> complaining about companies not investing in research and development
Glancing over the last few decades of tax returns it looks like they are claiming a lot of tax credits for R&D, so much so that if someone had a closer look they might find some Fraud, Waste or Abuse.
Wasteful R&D is still R&D, the company just presumably doesn't get a return on it.
If the company does get a return, then the R&D wasn't wasteful.
And regardless, the tax code doesn't and shouldn't (IMO) differentiate there, to encourage companies to take risks.
Burning a pile of money is not investing in research.