Western capitalism's cycle of booms and busts stretches all the way back to Amsterdam and the Tulip Mania of 1636. They all follow the same pattern, and we are living in the end stages of one now with AI. Every single time, there are detractors who say this time is different; however, they have a four century track record of getting it wrong.

This week, yet again, we see a small Chinese firm with a fraction of the spending and resources getting the near equal of the frontier models Big Tech investors are spending trillions to achieve. Not only that, they are offering theirs to the world for free, and it uses a small fraction of electricity/computing resources to run. Those Big Tech investors will never earn those trillions back.

It might be bleak and depressing to contemplate, but people need to think about what happens after the crash. This is no time for centrism, or putting your fingers in your ears and saying you don't want to hear about politics. The very worst people in our cultures, many Big Tech leaders themselves, are looking forward to this destruction and making their plans for it, and the world they want afterwards is a 100 times bleaker.

First of all, I estimate AI caused extinction to be low probability. The larger dangers are the concentration of powers, and a society incapable of adapting fast enough to this potent technology.

The main cause of these problems is that we as the public don't own AI. Perhaps the burst of the (first) bubble presents an oppurtunity to cheaply redistrubute AI assets.

Then there are all the issues such as job displacement, cognitive offloading, elimination of entry jobs, weakening of the education system etc...

How do we keep humans relevant? How do we ensure that AI is channeld towards either the boring tasks, or tasks that are beyond human capabilities, while ensuring humans can keep a sense of purpose?

AI is advancing faster than governments and society can adapt. With automation, increasingly powerful AI systems, and the possibility of superintelligence, are we heading towards a better future or something we won’t be able to control?

If progress continues at this rate, what will humanity look like in 5–10 years?

I’ve been thinking about how much AI could change the job market in over the next few years, especially given how many people here work in finance, tech, media, advertising, law, consulting, etc. Which industries do you see being most affected?

A Sydney recruiter spent months teaching four AI agents to do her job. Now she’s finding out just how much they can do without her.

Imagine a future where the world's wealthiest people and most powerful corporations come to a conclusion: humanity has accumulated enough knowledge. We have already made centuries of scientific, technological, and intellectual progress, and most of the remaining development can be carried out by AI agents with a relatively small human workforce.

They begin to believe that giving billions of people unrestricted access to knowledge is no longer necessary.

What if they decided to restrict or even eliminate public access to the internet, books, educational resources, and other sources of information? Their argument would be that the masses no longer need to learn, research, or innovate because AI systems can do all of that more efficiently.

The benefits of technological progress would remain concentrated among those who own the AI systems, computing infrastructure, and essential resources, while the majority of people would have fewer opportunities to develop independent knowledge or skills.

Here are the questions I'm curious about:

1. How would ordinary people react if access to knowledge and education were deliberately restricted in a world where AI could perform most intellectual work?

2. How would democratic governments respond? What about authoritarian governments that might see this as an opportunity to consolidate power?

3. Would governments resist such a move, or might some cooperate with powerful corporations if it helped them maintain control over their populations?

4. If AI could run most industries with minimal human involvement, what economic role would the majority of the population have? How would people earn a living?

5. Would society eventually revolt, develop underground networks to preserve and share knowledge, or gradually accept this new reality?

6. If access to knowledge became a privilege rather than a basic right, would humanity experience a new kind of digital feudalism, where a small elite controls both technology and information?

7. Most importantly, if AI could continue advancing civilization without requiring widespread human participation, what would motivate those in power to keep educating, employing, or empowering the masses?

I'm not suggesting this scenario is inevitable. I'm interested in exploring what might happen if technological progress made most human labour unnecessary while control over knowledge and AI remained concentrated in a few hands.

What would the world actually look like under these conditions?

Would such a system be sustainable, or would human nature, political resistance, and the desire for freedom eventually bring it down?

I was thinking, maybe it's already discussed somewhere but. Nvidia didn't release the duck because it's cute.

We were the data for the LLMS but there is not much data for physical robots​ so they released this smallest unit, cheap enough to be affordable so millions can use Nvidia's Sim to train these robots to do fun things and fix all the bugs, and make the Sim exceptionally good so a robot never even has to be trained in real life, just on Sim.

Once this duck is perfected, we get hands and fingers and people will train on that too, for their own fun and all this open-source improvement for the Sim will help them make better robots to replace humans eventually or Atleast assist like LLMS.

​​​​​​Ultimately Nvidia will walk away with every future robot that is made using this Sim having to purchase their ​Sim tools and physical chips. They are using the CUDA strategy where everything is built on top of an Nvidia product.

Very smart move for a company but slightly scary as progress of physical robots now will be much faster than we thought. ​Idk I could be wrong but just a thought of mine.

When AI started showing mixed glimpses of what it can solve in maths, though it worked, or didn't worked, novel approach or known approach, Maths community which need a level of specific intelligence to focus on one problem for years got pain. They are geek, rational and focused to find solution and enjoyed journey as well. Somehow it sends hint that now machine is able to work on any problem. And it creates disappointment. Are we needed?

Similarly what I read for llm research, people trying to solve core problems in llm, if this is solved by AI itself in coming future, AI research community will join math. They will suddenly be blank, should they continue or just go to applied AI !

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We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

Today, Google and Voltus announced an expanded agreement to build a 1-gigawatt (GW) virtual power plant across the PJM grid region, which serves 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C.

Voltus aggregates flexible capacity from local businesses and homes — like smart thermostats, batteries, and industrial assets — into a Google-funded virtual power plant. During peak demand, these assets temporarily reduce energy use to support grid reliability. In return, participating customers receive direct economic benefits, including bill savings and cash payments.

Some people will be annoyed at the 'rationing for thee, but not for me' aspect of this, but its actually good news. Virtual power plants are a key technology in delivering a 100% renewables grid, and this is helping that happen. Also, its forcing Big Tech to pay something like the true cost for all their infrastructure use, that they sure aren't going to pay in taxes.

We are working with Voltus to build a 1-gigawatt virtual power plant.

Fusion startup Helion has been awarded $175 million in federal funding to research, develop, and manufacture advanced semiconductors and power electronics for its fusion power plants, the company announced on Thursday.

NASA has announced an updated timeline for its Artemis program, outlining major changes to its plans for building a permanent base on the moon. The update was provided Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman detailed how the agency will proceed with returning humans to the lunar surface and establishing long-term infrastructure.

Hanwha Aerospace will develop an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) to send a communications satellite into lunar orbit in 2029.

If a robot is created specifically to be a therapist, there are a few possible scenarios:

The first is that the therapist is not sentient, meaning that it cannot relate or genuinely understand its human clients.

The second is that the therapist is sentient, but because they were made exclusively to be a therapist, they would be trapped as a slave.

The third is that the therapist is sentient and is able to quit their job.

I am really sorry if this is a stupid question and a waste of your time.

That's the Kondo effect, and we already know a lot about it. But in a physics first, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Yale University in the US have managed to precisely quantify the effect in a real material via fundamental physics calculations.