Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | throwacct's commentslogin

I love it. This needs to be on the front page of every newspaper, hehe. I don't care if you're a republican or a democrat, anyone going that way deserves everything they get.

Hehe. People have "AI" fatigue (I'll include myself there, too), not only because AI content "feels" soulless, but also because the looming job displacement narrative, exacerbated by CEOs, VCs, etc. There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using AI to lay off employees, etc

It's not just soulless, it's plain ugly. You'd think with their budget these companies would try harder.

It drives me mad to see that companies use AI to make garbage for 1/10th of the cost instead of just leveraging it to halve the cost while not losing quality…

>There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using AI to lay off employees, etc

No there won't. Same how there was no consumer pushback when everything from your Nikes to Apple computers moved to be made in China by slave labor and gutted your manufacturing industry at the same time while consumers and shareholders cheered.

Consumers only care about value for money not where or how a product is made. People's morals go out the window when their hard earned paycheque is on the line. Capitalist competition is dehumanizing by nature. The only thing that can help maintain humanity is government regulation because expecting consumers to prioritize morality over price has always failed.

If AI companies give consumers the same product but cheaper, they'll win.


Interesting. I agree with you that consumers prioritize price over morality, but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly negatively affected by AI, and the people are starting to notice it.

> I agree with you that consumers prioritize price over morality, but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly negatively affected by AI...

No consumer complained 15 years ago when the VFX industry in LA was outsourced to Vancouver and London due to subsidizes [0], and no consumer complained when VFX in Vancouver or London was outsourced to India and China over the last 5 years. No one will complain when VFX studios leverage AI to create content and then maybe have around 20-30% of the remaining humans edit videos to be humanlike.

Ironically, the Trump admin proposed a tariff that would help bring VFX back to the US [1] but the same consumers who on here are complaining about AI and Offshoring are the same ones who opposed such a tariff. Of course, if the Biden or a hypothetical Harris admin did something similar, they would also be flamed severely.

And thus the cycle continues. You all will keep complaining, but will keep purchasing from Costco, Trader Joe's, Patagonia, etc, will keep consuming content from one of the handful of companies that have consolidated media, and will remain employed by tech companies that in some shape or form continue to help maintain this cycle.

Statistically speaking, the demographic on HN told blue collar workers in 2009-17 to "learn to code". Why should they have sympathy for you? And thus the cycle continues.

[0] - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-feb-01-la-fi-ct...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-impose-100...


>Ironically, the Trump admin proposed a tariff that would help bring VFX back to the US [1]

Why ironically? Tarifs to protect some US Industries were part of his campaign promises. We're people living under a rock till now?

With the rest of your comment I agree 100%. Replacement of expensive US jobs will continue tarifs or not.

It's the downside of being the world reserve currency. Labor is too expensive to be globally competitive outside mega specialized and highly profitable niches like big tech and AI or protected industries like defense.


> Why ironically

Because it's an industry with an avaowed opposition to Trump and it's members are not in his voting bloc. A major reason the policy has been pushed was because of the Teamsters (which the Motion Pictures Union is a part of) lobbied the Trump admin due to Sean O'Brien's close ties to Trump.


>but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly negatively affected by AI, and the people are starting to notice it.

And do what about it? People don't give a shit AI is replacing creators jobs same how people didn't give a shit automation or offshoring replaced blue collar jobs. Literally nobody cared when the actors and writers went on strike so nobody will care when they'll be replaced by AI.

Especially when the quality of human made entertainment has been on a steep decline over the last 10 years consumers will even cheer to see them replaced same how they cheered when they could buy higher quality Japanese made cars at lower prices.


Could anyone please explain how this is "news" worthy? There are literally more pressing issues (inflation, wars, etc), and covering this is asinine, to say the least.

The story is that people with better things to do are spending their time on this

This argument has never, in all of human history, been made in good faith.

C'mon man. You know why...


Which product do you recommend? OneDrive? Dropbox?


I have to imagine they are all on the lookout for CSAM. They’d simply have to be.

If it goes beyond that then let me know.


There is no evidence that any storage service that offers E2E encryption does any scanning of adult content.

Note that possessing significant adult content in non-E2E storage risks eventual misclassification by a bot.


Oh is Google Drive not E2E? I don’t really use it (or store large files like video on any of them) so I never looked into it.

Filen is quite good, is E2E encrypted and currently offering (final round of) lifetime plans for Black Friday.

They are not super mature yet (though have been around for several years) so the product still has some improvements to be made, but I like it.


They're all the same to restic.


This x100.


Google needs to pace themselves. AI studio, Antigravity, Banana, Banana Pro, Grape Ultra, Gemini 3, etc. This information overload don't do them any good whatsoever.


Why? They're mostly different markets. Most people using Nano Banana Pro aren't using Antigravity.

A cluster of launches reinforces the idea that Google is growing and leading in a bunch of areas.

In other words, if it's having so many successes it feels like overload, that's an excellent narrative. It's not like it's going to prevent people from using the tools.


> A cluster of launches reinforces the idea that Google is growing and leading in a bunch of areas.

What in the Gemini 3 powered astroturf bot is this?

They probably just had an internal mandate to ship by end of year.

> if it's having so many successes it feels like overload, that's an excellent narrative

Yeah, if this is the best spin you've got I'm doubling down. Those teams were on the chopping block.


> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, if you knew anything, you'd know that AI product teams are the least likely to be on the chopping block right now.


You are not the moderator here and your post history is clearly a bunch of comments astroturfing everything Google.


Google will never beat the "sunset after 2 years" allegations on all products that don't have "Google __" in the name


It reminds me of AWS services: I can't tell what they are because they've been named by a monkey with a typewriter.


Powell Doctrine, but for AI. No one should dispute that Google is the leader in every(?) category of AI: LLM, image gen, video editing, world models, etc.


I feel it's strategic, like a massive DDoS/"shock and awe" style attack on competitors. Gotta love it as PROsumers though!


Stock market seems to agree with their strategy....


Maybe? or lemmings following BH purchase of $4B in Google stock this week assuming "Buffett only buys value stocks; it must be ready to grow!"

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hat...


... and has a tendency to disagree past the Peak of Inflated Expectations.


This cluster of launches might not be intentional. It could just be a bunch of independent teams all trying to get their launches out before the EOY deadline.


Agree. I can't keep up with it, it's hard to grasp my head around them, where to go to actually use them, etc


Grape Ultra?


That part was a joke to illustrate the point.



Jules, Vertex...


I mean, you gotta diversify your portfolio so later on you can push some of them to the graveyard.

/s


They are riding the current buzzword wave. It'll eventually subside. And 80% of it will end up on Google's impressive software graveyard:

https://killedbygoogle.com/


I'm glad I switched to MacOS 3 years ago.


Tbh, the answer is simple: if we truly get AGI, the government would nationalize it because it's a matter of national security and prosperity for that matter. Everything will change forever. Agriculture, Transportation, Health... Breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough. The country would hold the actual key to solve almost any problem.


when you write it out like that, it sounds unfathomably… silly.

I'm not a tinfoil hat skeptic, and i'd like to think i can accept the rationale behind the possibility. But I don't think we're remotely close as people seem to think.


The government only nationalises losses, not wins.


As technology changes over history, governments tend to emerge that reflect the part of the population that can maintain a monopoly of violence.

In the Classical Period, it was the citizen soldiers of Rome and Greece, at least in the west. These produced the ancient republics and proto-democracies.

Later replaced by professional standing armies under people like Alexander and the Ceasars. This allowed kings and emperors.

In the Early to Mid Medieaval time, they were replaced by knights, elites who allowed a few men to defeat commoners many times their number. This caused feudalism.

Near the end of the period, pikes and crossbows and improved logistic systems shifted power back to central governments, primarily kings/emperors.

Then, with rifles, this swung the pendulum all the way back to citizen soldiers between the 18th and early 20th century, which brought back democracies and republics.

Now the pendulum is going in the opposite direction. Technology and capital distribution has already effectively moved a lot of power back to an oligarchic elite.

And if full AGI combined with robots more physically capable than humans, it can swing all the way. In principle a single monarch could gain monopoly of violence over an entire country.

Do not take for granted that our current undertanding of what the government is, is going to stay the same.

Some kind of merger between capital and power seems likely, where democratic elections quickly become completely obsolete.

Once the police and military have been mostly automated, I don't think our current system is going to last very long.


> Tbh, the answer is simple: if we truly get AGI, the government would nationalize it

If you truly get AGI, you are highly unlikely to be able to reliably control it let alone nationalise it. And it is highly unlikely that only a single country would reach it. Chances at least one other country would. And AGI would be eventually weaponised against other countries successfully or not.

the changes of AGI causing huge damage in the world would be very real. Unlike a WMD, the damage isn't necessarily visible, immediate or obvious.


The key to typing out the solution to any problem, not actually solving it.


Looking at the current state of politics around the world...you really think that would be the outcome?


AGI? Absolutely. If your country gets there, would anyone relinquish that type of power and knowledge?


Third option: no bailouts of any type. Don't socialize losses. The board resets itself again, and let entrepreneurs, small businesses flourish again.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: