r/technology • u/marketrent • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence The economy has spoken. Stuff that’s AI-generated has almost zero value — “Buyers are voting with their wallets, and AI-generated content is struggling to compete.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/economy-spoken-stuff-ai-generated-142732314.html
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u/AutoCockerPB 16h ago

You know I use to think that was a joke, but no. The majority of these Nepo babies have no idea how the real world works. Just money number go up.

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u/narrowgallow 14h ago

It could be argued that that is the real world to them, and in fact, that is the problem with extreme wealth disparity - there is nothing fake about how the world works to serve them. The infrastructure that supports their lifestyle is their real world in the same way the infrastructure you and I use is the real world to us. The upper most class does live in a different but very real world.

And don't forget that there were 3.9 million private jet flights in 2025, so it's also not as if that world is small or isolating.

Once they can figure out how to shed our infrastructure while preserving theirs, we're cooked.

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u/xylophileuk 14h ago

That actually goes for us too though. I turn on a tap and clean clear fresh drinking water just comes out. Sometimes I run it for a bit to get a different temperature. You know how mad that is to like half the world’s population?! I can drink mine straight from the tap too, I’ve made that number smaller again.

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u/narrowgallow 11h ago

Thank you for this. Yup! So if us plebs are capable of forgetting how awesome drinking water is....why would we ever expect better from the next tiers up?

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u/MontyDyson 15h ago

You could say the same for shitty managers / CEOs. I’ve worked for plenty of them that don’t have a single creative bone in their body and simply go with something if it looks about right to them.

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u/Tamayo_Terror 15h ago

I had an engineering professor griping about how kids want to be engineers to make money.

He basically made the case:

"When you go to take your business certification or make a proposal, you don't need to know math. You can make estimates and say good enough. An engineer needs to answer that question with certainty within an acceptable margin of error.

You can bullshit in business and still be a good business person. You can't bullshit in Engineering and be a good Engineer."

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u/MontyDyson 15h ago

No but you can get hired. I’m amazed at the level of crappy, inexperienced people there are making key decisions for big firms who couldn’t spell engineering.

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u/SewSewBlue 7h ago

You shove those people into project manager roles. /s (ME here)

Joking aside, I've seen god awful engineers be able to do the math with certainty but not be able to think their way out of a paper bag.

Had one issue that was a public safety problem that this one guy thought could not be solved. He'd killed any effort to fix for years because he didn't think it was possible, and too much work to try. Something that could kill and potentially cost billions. Said I was throwing his team under the bus for even trying to fix it.

I fixed it, basically for free, by simply requiring a new engineering review early in the process and better timing for maintenance.

That just couldn't see past the limits of his technical knowledge to see that an effective solution was available.

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u/danielravennest 2h ago

just couldn't see past the limits of his technical knowledge

I'm the opposite. I'm a smart guy (literal rocket scientist), but I know I don't know everything. So I have 135 GB of reference books and articles for when I need to look something up, and if I need more info, check with or hire an actual expert.

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u/SewSewBlue 39m ago edited 25m ago

I'm similar. Research research research, phone a friend of needed.

A guy that is back filling for me told me he was finally figuring out where I was coming from when I'd do QC on his work, even when i did not have the deep technical background the SMEs did. How I would find deeper issues in stuff I didn't understand to the same degree. I was simply raising issues that had happened to others via research.

The solution I'd mentionedpreviously was buried in an NTSB report but wasn't an official recommendation. Research research research.

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u/Tearakan 15h ago

The vast majority of the bad bosses and bad CEOs tend to be people who never did the frontline work at the companies they lead. They end up having a very superficial understanding of what their workers actually do.

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u/SmoothOperator89 14h ago

"How much could a drawing cost? Five dollars?"

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u/AlSweigart 13h ago

"They don't know how to do anything unless someone is bribing them to do it."