DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus The economy……

bro, all these new breakthroughs AI has been achieving is crazy to keep up with.

I have to wonder....what happens if we find ourselves in a situation where AI primarily keeps our economy from crashing in the future?

and even deeper than that...AI would - in theory - be able to solve for future jobs lost due to technology, meaning that even with less direct human input/productivity, it didn't necessarily impact us financially, but at a social level where we have to redefine what human productivity means.

The people who embrace the tech and learn to use the new AI tools will lead the workforce, those who fight it will be left behind.

In the next few to several months, fully autonomous servant and worker robots will hit the free market. They will be affordable and make braindead human labor a thing of the past. Robots are going to be the essential workforce of tomorrow. Humans will have to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and learn to think creatively and critically. They will have to adopt the new tech tools and innovate new income streams. It will not help the willfully uneducated, their time is almost over.

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/inflation-still-hotter-than-hoped-5800329/

Inflation still hotter than hoped
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By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News
Updated 42 minutes ago


A key gauge of inflation rose more than expected for a second month in February, as gasoline prices and shelter costs increased. The overall Consumer Price Index ticked up 0.4%, from 0.3% in January. From a year earlier, the measure rose 3.2%, faster than 3.1% in January. While Tuesday's report shows a quickening in the pace of consumer-price growth, the index is still down from its post-pandemic peak of 9.1% in 2022. But with the Federal Reserve targeting an annual inflation rate of 2%, the report further undermines hopes it will cut rates anytime soon.

The Fed next sets rates on March 20, when it will also share fresh projections on the trajectory of borrowing costs this year.
Most interest-rate futures traders now expect the central bank to begin lowering rates from their 23-year high in June.
Small-business optimism fell to a nine-month low in February, according to a National Federation of Independent Business index, with fewer entrepreneurs saying they plan to expand, raise wages or hire.

"In short:
-Both the headline and core CPI were up 0.4% last month.
-The headline is up 3.2% from a year ago, marking an uptick from January's 3.1%. At the peak in 2022, that rate was UP 9.1%.
-The core rate is up 3.8% from a year ago, down from January's 3.9%. The peak was UP 6.6% in 2022.

Key contributors to the monthly increase were gasoline and shelter. Food prices were unchanged for the month.

Compared to February 2020, the CPI is up a huge 20% (see chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Translated, that suggests consumers lost about one-fifth of their buying power.

Wages are now growing faster than inflation. That's a function of a job market that is moderating but has kept the unemployment rate below 4% for 25 straight months. That's the longest stretch since the late 1960s.

The Federal Reserve has said that it won't move rates at the March meeting. In congressional testimony last week, Chairman Jerome Powell suggested rate cuts aren't far away. "We’re waiting to become more confident that inflation is moving sustainably at 2%. When we do get that confidence, and we’re not far from it, it’ll be appropriate to begin to dial back the level of restriction," he told lawmakers.

Even so, a hotter-than-expected February inflation reading did less than set the table for the rate cuts still expected later this year.
Ac"

I'm stupid when it comes to economics, but I'd be very curious to see what the household debt ratio is and how it compares from pre-COVID to today. Could be one of those time bombs lurking.

it is.

also, they don't want to stop inflation. they just want to kinda slow it down.
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03...heres-why-deflation-is-not-a-good-thing/

We will all be killed by Skynet when it becomes self aware.

So still after all this time, no recession. Thanks.

And when it doesn’t eventually happen, they’ll go “see!! See!! I tried to tell y’all”

Yea, then the economy rebounds and we all go back to business as usual.

They'll only do that if a Democrat is president. If it happens when a Republican is president they'll blame it on the Democrat who was the previous president.

It has been frustrating to see certain issues out there like the economy or the border, where the R's are actively wanting something to fail. It's a sign of a party bereft of actual platforms, where the focus is on how bad a current situation is, or how bad they at least want it to be, because they have nothing to actually campaign on. The House R's have gotten so dysfunctional that people like Buck are like "You know what, forget it, I'm out." The whole Speaker situation is a debacle. It's just bad across the board.

Going back to the political ads, you watch an ad for a guy like Sherrod Brown, and sure it's fluff, but it at least has stuff in there like burn pit legislation and accomplishments he's done or platforms he's advocated for. Meanwhile, his prospective competitors are arguing over who is more affiliated with Trump and which among them is too liberal, like Biden. I'm not using hyperbole, either.

It's bad, man...

We do have moderate liberals parroting GOPers feelings on how bad a job Biden is doing, but can’t point to anything specific but age isn’t helping the cause.

Neither candidate is the best either party could offer up. That's not good for anyone.

What's really funny is this, Trump keeps saying that the reason the economy is so good is because it's still running on his admins efforts.

So make up your damn mind, it's bad or it's good because Trump did it.

The stock market is good because Trump gave companies a tax break.
The economy is bad because cummulative inflation during Biden era is very high.

I'm trying to make sense out of this. I won't argue about the tax breaks during the Trump administration because the stocks did, in fact, go higher after that. There's a whole lot to be said about the debt/deficit on that front, but neither party has a great track record there since Reagan, honestly. All that being said, stocks did go up, for sure.

However, when I look at the Dow Jones falling down to $28,725 in September 2022, and then setting a new record high now at $39K+, are you saying that, too, is from the Trump tax cuts?

On the second point, you do mention "during" the Biden administration, which is correct. It did happen during his administration, but are you laying the blame at his feet on the inflation? From what I have seen, the artificially low rates during the previous two administrations probably built up a powder keg that was waiting to explode. Sure, the COVID handouts didn't help, but I think that was also an overlapping gaffe for both admins, both of whom are running against each other now.

Also add in the supply/demand pricing related to the supply chain issues and that surely didn't help. It seems like corporations nowadays don't seem too keen on lowering pricing now that supply chain issues have largely been resolved. Their profits are record-setting. Seems the gouge has set in and nobody has intervened yet.

This. All the other hemming and hawwing you did is irrelevant.

If trump won in 2020, we’d be so deep in a recession right now..probably full fledged economic depression. Biden made sure that didn’t happen.

So? Putting down the sitting president for no other reason than being old and a speech impediment is immature and stupid.

Oh, I’m sure there is another problem coming down the pike… there always is. And there is a Trumpian cult factor killing our country from within our own government. 4 years ago today was when covid-19 became a national emergency under Trump. Oh how GOPers long for lockdowns and stemies to MAGA.

You know, back when some starved while others got checks in the mail signed by Trump. Such a booming economy. Even before covid, Trump’s economy was all bloviation, not fact. But like a placebo cure, GOPers are making a mad dash to put Trump back in charge after he blew threw and added 8 trillion to the national debt in 4 years… because he’s good for the economy? It must be GOPer math.

lol, as always, I truly appreciate your well thought out position and display of intelligence.

If the fed dropped rates to the pre covid levels that Trump enjoyed, GOPers would see the Biden Boom. It’s coming either way. Even Bernie warning about the age of AI and automation that is here. All jobs will change drastically over the next 5 to 10 years.

AI has definitely taken a huge leap forward as of late. A lot of brilliant minds have been warning about AI, including creators of AI. Time to brace ourselves.

That’s why I’m watching every innovation and advance I can see. AI is going to be heavily used to automate our current ‘manual labor’ jobs away. Robots will work 24/7 for zero pay and minimum downtime, costs, or other employee related health concerns. And right now, I think those robots will be mass produced by the end of 2025 or early 2026. This year expect to see AI woven into almost all modern research, tech, healthcare, and all other major business industries in the US. When AGI and ASI are achieved, the AI/automation explosion will be on its heels.

I’ve been learning as much as I can while learning to develop apps with AI models. But I have hit a roadblock… it’s advancing so fast, the training is outdated by the time I get it. I mean I can do all sorts of things with AI now, but these bigger companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are using the open-source community to power their innovations then they take the tech or use case and build it into their offerings, because the work was open source… meanwhile they also have armies of developers and AI machine learning specialists on payroll innovating the next big thing. And it has become sort of a race for AGI/ASI and control of the worlds economies if not governments… It’s so much power that a single corp with the only ASI would control the world’s economies, no questions asked.

This is why it’s vital that AGI be open-sourced. We can’t have that concentration of power being controled by a few elites. I mean what could go wrong with a guy like Elon having the ONLY AGI or ASI on the planet? I used Elon because he is full on for open sourcing AGI, but most of the others want to control AGI/ASI and profit off of it without releasing the source code/weights/training data/matrix info or anything that would keep them from profiting off the best models. All of these companies are open-sourcing their lessor modals to get the community working on fixes, fine tunings, and applications… then as soon as a startup gets something hot, they steal it.

All of that, and people are still going hard to compete with them in their own sandbox. I decided to look at the things they wouldn’t be tempted to steal for my apps, because I’ve seen hundreds if not thousands by now build apps and new methods for AI case uses, just to be killed off or bought out by the bigger companies. And sure, I’d love a Microsoft buyout of my apps! But that is only happening a small percentage of the time. Most of the time, the work is unprotected and the big boys replicate or steal it.

But those companies aren’t all bad, not at all. OpenAI, imho, has already made AGI and is sitting on it, because the world (specifically governments and economies) are not ready for the changes or pace of changes. Likely, if poorly planned and released, there would be billions “with a B” of jobs (household incomes) wiped out within months worldwide. Claude 3, Anthropic’s Mistral Large, Chat GPT4, and a few other closed source modals are the industry leaders today, but we’ve seen their earlier versions all out performed by othersd in little to no time. OpenAI is actively trying to raise 7 trillion dollars for INFRASTRUCTURE. Some believe that is to get to AGI, while others believe it is to serve AGI/ASI because they have figured out the formula at large scale.

Then you have teams improving the infrastructure components and that has gone nuts. Invidia is hands down the leader in that area. Yet small startups are killing it. One company has figured out better ways to store data on DVD tech disc that will allow them to hold petabytes of info. New processor chips built to make AI inference 100 to 1000 times faster. Inference being the costly part of AI ‘thinking and performing’, making that faster will bring down the cost of providing to the world. And the big players are throwing billions and billions at this kind of tech. There is also a huge need to energy to be used by AI, so that infrastructure is being worked on too. The big players and governments are going to have to figure that out, unless the AI community gets those costs down with new innovations.

But like you said, this is all moving at breakneck s[peed now and WILL BE REALITY very shortly. And the average Joe has no idea or plan at all for this if someone doesn’t step up and figure it out for them, 75% of people holding jobs in modern countries will likely be unemployed and unemployable before 2030. Think about that and let it sink in.

To me it’s almost like the perfect storm. AI can change humankind for the better or for the worse, either way it coming is now inevitable, even if we ban AI, our adversaries will embrace it. And whoever controls the access to the AGI/ASI models will pretty much control the world/country/area it serves. But if we can get to that point without wiping ourselves out and somehow keep access to the tech affordable or free, we can drastically change the world for the benefit of all mankind. We are talking about new science, new materials, new fuels, new tech innovations galore at that point. And everybody running their own enterprises using AI, creating their own jobs and opportunities, in a very competitive world. This is why we are wholly unprepared. Less than 25% of the population of the world has the skillsets needed for the future. That in demand skillset will include the ability to learn, the ability to teach, AI powered business management and operations, AI powered services, automation services, and the ability to innovate at breakneck speed.

This is where my focus has been lately. Huge problem looking for one or many fixes. AI, not unlike the internet in the early 2000s, is the new wild west. It’s wide open and plum full of opportunities for those who know how top recognize them. And the exciting part from that point of view is, that everything I’ve said here and much more is already inevitable and will happen shortly unless some kind of tragic event that impacts all of humanity prevents it, like an extinction level event. So. IMO, this is the future, and it will look drastically different than anything we’ve seen before.

AI advancements started 20 years ago. people are now just hearing about it. most of the things that people are calling "Ai" is conditional logic, some ML, algos,or automation which have been in use for 20 years in commerce.

Many people are starting to believe that the use of computers and everyone creating Ai is going to environmentally change our planet faster than the Industrial Revolution.

Deflation is devastating.

We see it from time to time in real estate. You buy in the bubble, it bursts and prices fall a great deal. Deflation isn't like the price of hamburger meat dropping 7cents a pound.

Think back to the last century. In the 20's everybody was high on the hog, sipping champagne and eating rainbow stew. Then boom, in 29 through the 30's people were lined up at the soup kitchen.

Funny how we are in the mid 20's again.

Which has nothing to do with what I said. "So" does not address the fact that we have two very flawed candidates. I'm certainly on the side that thinks Biden is the lesser of the two evils and to me it's not even close. But that too has nothing to do with the point I was making.

Another doom and gloomer?

We need to re-think our agro-economy. Our food systems are a mess. I think many of our societal problems stem from there.

Agglomeration of food production increased "efficiency," but at what cost. It appears to have been at the expense of quality and introduced many detrimental environmental effects in the locations of agricultural intensification. Add in the pollution from transporting perishable goods and it's not ideal. Transportation also often entails the introduction of additives and preservatives. Unfortunately, food is supposed to break down. I believe food not breaking down as intended is a source of many modern health problems.

Went to the local produce market and they were selling blueberries from Chile. Does that really make sense? 99 cents a pint for something that was transported from South America. How does that work? A gallon of gas costs over 3 bucks. Air travel would likely be more expensive. By ship would make me question the idea of their being "fresh."

I also think the fact that many individuals have no idea how to grow their own food now has consequences. Being reliant on others for basic sustenance makes one inherently vulnerable/exploitable. It greatly limits self-determination. To me, it would make sense that an inability to provide one's own food would lead to greater group identification and a diminishing of the self. This dependence on others for something so vital leads to a desire for control that gets expressed in all sorts of negative ways.

It also made for huge food conglomerates to where very few corporations control the food supply. Which IMO goes totally against competition in the market and makes the vulnerability of our food supply left in the hands of very few.

Sadly, that's become the story in a lot of sectors with the insane amount of mergers and acquisitions we've had since the 80's. Defense, airlines, telecommunications, beer even...you name it.

It's almost always pitched that it'll make things better, and I feel like it's largely the opposite.

...kind of like government.... Lots of grasp exceeding reach. Most things are actually best managed when you can actually see them.

NOT TRUE. I’ve known about ML and AI for at least a decade, but probably since it became a thing. Not that I participated or had in depth knowledge, but I read about the various advancements for years. But if we’re talking normal Joe’s (non-tech-geeks), I agree 100%, people have no real idea what AI/ML is or what it can do, what is hard coded, what is algos, what is logic ops, etc, They can use computers/mobile devices for social media, weather, driving apps, messaging, etc. but have no idea how to use AI, or what is coming down the pike.

And I saw the energy issues with current AI, it’s massive. But I think they will get that down with AI centric hardware advancements. We’ll see.

As with many new technologies, there are often times many great uses for them. They can be a wonderful tool to use. Sadly along with that comes those who will use that technology for nefarious reasons. AI is the type of technology that throws the door wide open for both. That's where we need to be careful. And for anyone to claim that there haven't been major advances in AI over the past 20 years which makes this much more of a possibility are not being honest with themselves.

Please note this post isn't targeted specifically at you but more of a general comment overall.

You’re right about bad actors, but the bad actors, specifically China, Russia, NK, etc. And they will go non stop to be the first to achieve ASI, because they know we will too. If we don’t make it a reality here, somebody else will. That race is on and due to recent advances, it is super heated.

And they are already training AIs to detect and prevent bad actors from hacking us. I’m sure that will be an issue in national security, and they will have to be prepared. Hopefully, somebody that actually knows what’s going on is involved in the governments AI attack prevention preparedness, and it’s not a decision left to the likes of MGT or Boebert… because their know nothing conspiracy theory asses are as dunb as the day is long. Imagine congress banning or limiting what we can do with AI, while our adversaries are working all-in on AGI/ASI.

I don't specify the geographic locations of bad actors in this sector. We have plenty of our own.

I get you.

And now some comical proof of what I was saying.



The pace is crazy, this tech is on our doorsteps.

No, I think pragmatic.

Elevated inflation. Overvalued stock market and real estate prices. Deepening consumer debt. Deepening unrest around the globe leading to political unrest.

All added up doesn't paint a pretty picture. I am not predicting a Black Swan event, but the primers for such an event are all there.

I agree. I also don't lump them in to any specific political party.