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Comment by datsci_est_2015

9 hours ago

It’s definitely a result of the money at play, which is unprecedented in scale and (imo) speculation.

But this is, in theory, why we have laws: to fight power imbalances, and money is of course power.

Tough for me to be optimistic about law and order right now though, especially when it comes to the president’s biggest donors and the vice president’s handlers.

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datsci_est_2015

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mistrial9  8 hours ago

the building of the American Railroads were the largest capital endeavor in known history IIR. .. and Stanford was in the center of that, too

  • datsci_est_2015  8 hours ago

    Ah my bad. But also, if we’re comparing buildout of infrastructure to the construction of the American Railroad system, especially in the context of lawbreaking and general immoral and unethical behavior…

    Point kind of proven, yeah? One more argument for the “return to the gilded age” debates.

    Edit: you’re speaking kind of authoritatively on the subject though. Care to share some figures? The AI bubble is definitely measured in trillions in 2026 USD. Was the railroad buildout trillions of dollars?

    • tmp10423288442  8 hours ago

      As a percentage of GDP investments in the railroad buildout in the US was comparable or slightly higher than AI-related investments. But they are on the same order of magnitude, which says a lot about the scale of AI.

      > AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion since 2022. A notable chunk of this spending has been focused on information processing equipment, which spiked at a 39% annualized rate in the first half of 2025. Harvard economist Jason Furman commented that investment in information processing equipment & software is equivalent to only 4% of US GDP, but was responsible for 92% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025. If you exclude these categories, the US economy grew at only a 0.1% annual rate in the first half.

      https://www.cadtm.org/The-AI-bubble-and-the-US-economy?utm_s...