Comment by f6v
17 days ago
> the market for AI is 2.5 larger than all the food sold on this planet.
It just shows how much the automation has impacted agriculture and the food industry. Sure, there're rural farms that apply 200 yo technology. But e.g. the grain production and farming are incredibly efficient at scale. So, it's not that costly for as a humanity to feed 8 billion people (at a varying level, of course).
Remove 20% of AI supply, and the world goes on like nothing happened.
Remove 20% of food supply, and watch prices explode, global unrest, and famine take place.
Food is a solved problem. We can grow far more food than we need and we stop doing so simply because the low prices mean it's not economically viable.
In the places where famine remains a problem, it's due to political issues, not that we can't grow enough.
And growing all that food requires a tiny workforce compared to 400 years ago before the Agricultural Revolution. AI might extend such a massive reduction in labour requirements to many other industries.
> We can grow far more food than we need and we stop doing so simply because the low prices mean it's not economically viable.
Half. This depends on there being a reliable source of cheap fertiliser, which would be much more secure if not for the situations regarding Hormuz and Russia.
> Food is a solved problem.
Mmmmmh
> We can grow far more food than we need and we stop doing so simply because the low prices mean it's not economically viable.
So, it's not a solved problem. Last time I checked we have plenty of people in several parts of the world with difficulties to access the required level of food to be healthy.
> In the places where famine remains a problem, it's due to political issues, not that we can't grow enough.
The political issues are still there so I really don't think we can call that a solved problem.
1 reply →
Technologically yes, but this is a vast oversimplification.
You need lots of money to be able to buy the tech you need to do so. And you can't exactly earn that from not using the tech, since foreign (or even local) competition will slaughter you on prices. And if you do make it, you're stuck with a low-margin race to the bottom on price.
1 reply →
I don't think anyone is claiming AI and food have the same elasticity of demand, which is what this really talks to, but, after a claim the AI market is 26 trillion dollars... I wouldn't be surprised if someone did.
Valuation and elasticity of demand not related even if you ignore consumer surplus
do you spend most of your money on food?
I spend roughly 10% of my take-home pay on food.
I spend 0.2% on AI. Exactly one subscription.
do you spend most of your money on grok subscriptions ?
4 replies →
Then I assume you'll happily pay $20 for a bottle of water, given how important it is?
We could remove 100% of world AI supply and humanity would not be worse off. It is still additive and in areas of generally indeterminate value except in hype.
Reasoning and RAG is amazing already and is a productivity gain but I'm yet to be convinced GenAI is anything but a slop machine.
#startflamingmenow
I half agree, but I'd still had software development to the list.
AI is useful as a search & information synthesis tool, and as a dev tool.
The problem is, when has a dev tool ever command such ridiculous valuations and investment in infrastructure?
The market is going to realize that yes, it's useful, but no, it's not over $1T useful.
1 reply →
You can't food maxx a trillion calories a day to generate a multi million dollar bill. You can token maxx it though.
I think the issue is the reality that most life is worth a lot less (in US Freedom units) than some software running doing absolutely nothing truly valuable for anyone.
Nozick was right, the Utility Monster wins.