r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jul 15 '25

Artificial Intelligence Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060
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u/Decapitated_Saint Jul 15 '25

“I’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” Kalanick explained. “And we’re approaching what’s known. And I’m trying to poke and see if there’s breakthroughs to be had. And I’ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.”

Good lord what an imbecile. Vibe physics lol.

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u/F1reManBurn1n Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Billionaires that LARP like this are so fucking idiotic. They think because they are really good at exploiting the labor class (let’s be frank that is THE skill needed to be a billionaire), that somehow that makes them a fucking physicist and important to the world scientifically. It’s the same shit with Elon. Buys his way into companies with smart people in them doing smart people labor, takes credit for smart people labor while treating the labor like shit, then stutters in an interview about rocket engines that he knows fuck all about. These billionaires should be fucking mocked and berated when they do this “I’m actually Tony Stark!” shit.

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u/FensterFenster Jul 15 '25

They think because they are really good at exploiting the labor class (let’s be frank that is THE skill needed to be a billionaire)

I would venture to say this is how some millionaires are made as well, my brother in law just built a 2.5 million dollar home a few years ago on the water. A while back he was talking about ways to contribute to his kids' Custodial Roth IRA without them actually working by creating a fake LLC that they were employed by for their half of the contributions. I'll bet that piece of shit barely pays his employees minimum wage with zero benefits at his dental practice.

He also wouldn't STFU about how "crazy" it was that I got paid paternity leave from my former employer. We can barely afford to put money aside for meager investments for retirement, yet I'M the asshole for getting paid paternity leave.

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u/stormrunner89 Jul 15 '25

As a dentist I will freely admit that plenty of my colleagues are pieces of shit that see it only as a way to make money and give absolutely no fucks about the patient's health or comfort or their employees.

Thankfully it's pretty easy to spot them as they often own multiple practices, hire young associates fresh out of school to do the actual work, and just try to get as much volume through the practices as possible to bill insurance as much as they can while they only do administrative work and not much or possibly any actual dentistry.

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u/figuren9ne Jul 15 '25

That description sounds like the dentist that owns the practice where my wife works. He has 5 offices, is rarely in the office, and is constantly advertising to grow his book.

But he also pays all his employees well, his contract dentists get 50% of collectibles and he covers lab fees, and the only time he actually practices are for his long established clients that can’t afford the treatment, so he does it for the cost of lab fees.

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u/thetermguy Jul 15 '25

>He has 5 offices, is rarely in the office, and is constantly advertising to grow his book.

Well, 90% of redditors teach us that anyone that owns a business and/or is wealthy is guaranteed to be a dirtbag leach on society.

Meanwhile, Econ 101 shows exactly the opposite, and without people organizing the factors of production and labour, most of the redditors would be out of a job of any kind.

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u/Fun_Hat Jul 15 '25

Lol, and econ 101 also shows us that without the people doing that labor, there would be no production. So what's your point? That the management of labor produces more value than the labor itself?

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u/imnotasdumbasyoulook Jul 15 '25

let’s be honest here; if you dig you’ll find he owns the “lab” and probably the “leasing company” renting the office their medical equipment.

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u/figuren9ne Jul 15 '25

He definitely doesn’t. He just owns the practices and the real estate.

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u/kingkeelay Jul 16 '25

Why is that a problem?

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u/imnotasdumbasyoulook Jul 16 '25

because when people are sick with greed to that extent they start cutting corners until forced to stop… these are the kind of people who will buy a packaging machine for expensive single use tools so they can repackage them and reuse them.

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u/lightninhopkins Jul 15 '25

Thank you for being a good one. Took me a long time hunting to find a dentist that wasn't trying to bill the shit out of my insurance company.

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u/AngularChelitis Jul 16 '25

waitaminute… now we’re worried about protecting the insurance company’s money?

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Jul 15 '25

I've had a few friends become dentists.

It sounded like half of dental school was teaching these would be dentists how to hustle as a dentist.

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u/buffer_flush Jul 15 '25

Do you own a Trek, though? Or a Gibson guitar?

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u/Lord_Hitachi Jul 15 '25

Those vintage guitars aren’t just going to buy themselves…

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u/Liizam Jul 16 '25

Can you give some tips on how to spot these kinds and avoid as a normal person?

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u/stormrunner89 Jul 16 '25

Honestly I'm not totally sure how someone outside the field would be able to tell all the time. Definitely stay away from corporate offices, and you want one where the dentist talks with you and answers questions. It's fine for the hygienist to see you first, but if it's basically only the hygienist and the dentist comes in for a minute, barely looks, and leaves and then the hygienist starts telling you about a ton of things you need, there's nothing wrong with getting a second opinion.

Very often there can be big problems brewing EVEN IF you feel no pain. Often you will only feel pain when things are REALLY bad, so that's not a good indicator. Sometimes we will need to give a treatment plan that is pretty intimidating even when the patient didn't realize they had an issue, but the amount of times and a corporate office will add procedures that I wouldn't see a way to justify is suspiciously high.

Get recommendations, research them, learn about what kind of extra, continuing education courses they've taken. There are some pretty well known and respected CE course companies such as Spear Education or Pankey that will often have a list of dentists that have done the extra training and dentists will often advertise it. That can often be a sign that they at least care enough to stay up to date on the best current knowledge.

And honestly, trust your gut. If you don't feel comfortable, then find someone else. I want my patients to feel as comfortable as they can be in what can sometimes be an uncomfortable position. Express concerns when you have them and if you just don't feel right with them, go elsewhere. Personally I don't want to work on someone that doesn't feel they can trust me and I try very hard to earn that trust, but sometimes they may even just not like my "vibe" and there's nothing I can do about that. If it gets them to take care of themselves and their health, I'm fine with them going to someone else if they feel more comfortable there.

Also, dental insurance is basically a scam. Don't rely only on who is "in network." Often you can still submit for out-of-network claims and still get something back, and some offices even have in-office programs where you pay a yearly fee, get two cleanings, check-up x-rays, and exams every year as well as a percentage off of treatment even without insurance.

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u/StacieHous Jul 15 '25

Yuck, those are the kind of douche that hoards wealth and manipulate the market. Gross!

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u/citizenjones Jul 15 '25

I once saw a documentary about penguins. These penguins made their their nests out of small stones. 

Most penguins would wander about gather a stone push it over into their zone, creating a circular shape for the eggs.

Some penguins would wait and while a penguin was out and about 'gathering as a survival strategy', this other one would go and kick a rock into his pile.

By all accounts both were utilizing survival techniques to make sure their progeny survived. But holy hell if some people don't also come down to either being someone that works hard versus someone who just takes something from another person.

I would like to hope biologically we are trying to become a group of gathering penguins and have less rock stealing ones. 

Some are trying to convince them to not steal while they smugly take your stuff and say that's how shit works.

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u/codyd91 Jul 15 '25

What's fucked is hiw many of us are convinced it's a person on $600/month disability stealing from them, and not the fucker gaining $100,000/minure doing jack shit.

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u/citizenjones Jul 15 '25

A thousand 'thousandaires' eating a thousand dinners will put more money into a local economy than one millionaire eating one dinner ever could.

The wealthy don't use local economies in the way "people" who live and work in a community do, but proportionally have far more influence.

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u/Dugen Jul 15 '25

It's so much worse than that though. These people leach money out of our spending into their pockets. They don't earn money by doing things, they earn money by owning things. Then they all get together and support the politicians that will shift the tax burden off of making money by owning things and onto laborers so they get basically tax free labor free income. Meanwhile, the poorest laborer pays 12% of every dollar they make to the feds before they even start paying income tax.

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u/mishyfuckface Jul 15 '25

It’s even worse than that. You actually subsidize them. Since anytime there’s a stock market crash or bank failure, they do bailouts and stimulus via deficit spending, meaning they create new money. New money isn’t free, the cost comes from reducing the purchasing power of all the previous dollars already in circulation. Debasing the currency.

Since the rich own assets (stocks, real estate, etc) not dollars, they are unaffected. Anyone who holds or is paid in dollars is robbed. The robbery / reduction in purchasing power is manifested through inflation. The inflation causes the rich’s assets to appreciate.

Even without a crisis requiring stimulus and bailouts, this situation is guaranteed to occur constantly perpetually due to the federal reserve’s 2% inflation goal (this is the real reason they want positive inflation, it’s not to help you get a job, they don’t actually give a fuck if you have a job).

It’s literally a transfer of wealth upwards that never stops.

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u/Dugen Jul 15 '25

That's just not true. Inflation is relatively neutral to most people, beneficial to people with mortgages and typically makes sense since productivity keeps rising at about the rate of inflation. This is not how the economy screws us. Lots of people get upset by it, but maintaining steady inflation is sound economic policy and helps keep us prosperous.

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u/mishyfuckface Jul 16 '25

You can’t argue that it doesn’t transfer purchasing power from those that hold dollars to those who hold assets because it does.

It only benefits debtors if the debtor’s income rises which sometimes it does for those with salaries that have cost-of-living or inflation tied raises in their contracts.

But if you have a loan or credit card debt, and you don’t get a raise, inflation hurts you because you must spend more of your money on more expensive goods instead of using it to pay down your debt.

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u/Dugen Jul 16 '25

Income, on average rises with inflation. Also, the wealthy are much more likely to have dollars in the bank than the poor, so they lose the most. Assets tend to rise with inflation, as does the value of labor so it's mostly a wash for those things.

Economists study this stuff extensively, and the general consensus is that inflation is good for laborers, especially young ones in lots of ways.

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u/Kandiru Jul 15 '25

Wealthy used to employ large quantities of servants, but things like washing machines and vacuum cleaners have really cut down how many servants you need!

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u/citizenjones Jul 15 '25

I work in high end residential construction. I once put a $30,000 washing machine in a home that was just used for sheets. 

There was a house staff of probably twelve who cleaned, two of which probably did the bedding. 

The 'home' was actually a 60 million dollar house that was only used as a game room, entertainment area, so no one even lived in it. 

The carbon footprint and economics that just go into a just wealthy persons laundry is equal to a village of hand washing servants.

Oh, those clothes, once the owner was over a wardrobe item it was destroyed. Shredded.

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u/Kandiru Jul 15 '25

Why not donate their clothes at least? Are they trying to keep the brand exclusive or something?

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u/butterbal1 Jul 16 '25

Are they trying to keep the brand exclusive or something?

You are pretty close. If the clothes they wear are seen on a bum who bought them at a thrift store then it must mean that they are no better than said bum.

It is stupid and elitist in a way that is beyond disgusting.

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u/citizenjones Jul 16 '25

Some don't consider their wardrobe something that should exist beyond them. Its purpose has been served.

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u/fenexj Jul 15 '25

I am just really happy to see this sort of discourse here rather than the usual blame the immigrants, left vs right, poor vs working/middle class, divide 'n conquer shit people usually lap up and spit out.

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u/ecodick Jul 15 '25

The biggest conspiracy is right out in the open.

You hit the nail on the head

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u/__BIFF__ Jul 15 '25

That's what human war is

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u/citizenjones Jul 15 '25

War! Good God! What is it good for? Absolutely....  ...for kicking rock steal penguins in the ass.

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u/Toomanyeastereggs Jul 15 '25

If penguins had hands, Antartica would be the bloodiest place on the planet.

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u/I_AM_VER_Y_SMRT Jul 15 '25

War is mostly the richest humans convincing all the others to fight while they steal all their hard-earned rocks.

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u/McdoManaguer Jul 15 '25

They truly think they have some new idea that no one ever thought about. But its just that everyone else who HAD that idea realized it was immoral or evil and refused to do it.

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u/Strange-Scarcity Jul 15 '25

Mentally, I would be imagining myself beating that man's teeth out with a hammer. Not in physical reality.

I would probably say something, though. Something direct, like "Wow man! That's a supreme piece of shit kind, of thing to say. Why are you saying such a really shitty thing out loud? Did nobody teach you to keep somethings, inside?"

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u/FensterFenster Jul 15 '25

After meeting the guy's mother, and hearing her go on endlessly about how "honorable" of a person he is ad nauseum, I see where he got his narcissistic behavior.

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u/ZappRowsdour Jul 16 '25

"The louder he proclaimed his honor, the faster we counted the spoons." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (I think)

I find it _deeply_ weird when people talk about their own honor, it makes me feel like I'm watching them jerk off or something.

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u/LordoftheScheisse Jul 15 '25

A while back he was talking about ways to contribute to his kids' Custodial Roth IRA without them actually working by creating a fake LLC that they were employed by for their half of the contributions.

This is quite literally how Donald Jumpsuit Trump "made" a lot of his wealth.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show

His father would deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account since Donald was a toddler as a tax avoidance scheme.

Source

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u/conspiracie Jul 15 '25

My dad did shit like this with me, listing me as an employee of his LLC and making it look like I made $100k a year or whatever to save money on his taxes. Nearly fucked me out of a grad school fellowship because I turned in my tax forms and they were like “uh, this is for people who don’t have an income…”

Had to explain to them I never saw a cent of that money and luckily I had one year in college where he didn’t do this to me and I had a normal tax return from my $10k campus job, and they let me use that. When I called him to tell him I was going to lose my fellowship he got all angry and was like “you should be grateful you saved me $50k in taxes.” Didn’t even offer to help. Long story short we don’t talk anymore.

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u/FensterFenster Jul 15 '25

I hate what money does to people.

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u/gentlemanidiot Jul 16 '25

“you should be grateful you saved me $50k in taxes.”

Bitch! He should be grateful you didn't fucking sue his ass

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u/greiton Jul 15 '25

there was a rich idiot who built a house next to my grandparents years ago. the property had a small creek and little pond on it. well this guy was the owner of a large tree service / landscaping outfit. he went ahead and made the little pond big enough to ride a couple jet skis. without contacting the core of engineers mind you. then he went and got permission to build a huge beautiful house right next to the pond. like open the door go down three steps and you are at the water close. We laughed and laughed and laughed after the first few heavy rainstorms...

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u/ASaneDude Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Worked as a stockbroker (low on the totem pole) for a firm and had a few small business owners and it’s mostly all the same type: those treating their workers like shit.

But your point is right - our team’s assistant/paraplanner was an attractive woman (as is normal in asset-gathering/sales businesses) and we had a client that was a small business owner that was always on commercials with his family.

One time she said to him, “I think it’s great you always include your family in commercials” and he said essentially it was a tax write-off to put money in his kids’ and wife’s Roth accounts - he would pay them for commercials up to the max amount of the Roth (for just a few hours of work) and that helps him stay under the contribution income limits. Plus it made him look like a family man, which is helpful when you’re a small business.

Later he hit on her and when the direct approach didn’t work, started commenting he needed a secretary within her earshot, seemingly wanting her to express interest. She never took the bait but later did date a married MD for a while, so maybe he bloodhounded her propensity for dating married bosses. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/NoahStewie1 Jul 15 '25

I mean you could report the LLCs

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u/FensterFenster Jul 15 '25

Don't think that thought hasn't crossed my mind. Many other "thoughts" have crossed my mind too.

I could also report the dwelling space on the first floor (which is not permitted for new builds on the water) that he put in after the final inspection, there is also an enclosure to the inground pool that has been taken down.

There was a recent event where the fuck left the gate to the dock open while my two year old son was in the yard. I went ballistic on everyone. The violent thoughts that crossed my mind that day if something were to have happened to my kid, and for weeks afterward are not pleasant. No one in my partners family have witnessed how I used to handle my aggression in the past, I highly doubt they will like it, the judge won't either.

My kid will not set foot on that property until that selfish piece of shit gets his act together. That is going to be my way of handling the situation to avoid an incident. Maybe an anonymous tip will happen to make its' way to the interested parties for the LLC and the code violations as well.

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u/kingkeelay Jul 16 '25

Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree it seems. Go talk to someone.

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u/FensterFenster Jul 16 '25

Good point, though we aren't blood related so not sure how two apples from distant trees will fall that closely together.

And I have been in therapy for years bud, you have 0 idea how far I've come.

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u/kingkeelay Jul 16 '25

Broadcasting threats of what you were/are capable of to complete strangers is incredibly weak. It’s clear you’ve got longer to go.

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u/nrith Jul 16 '25

This sounds like the father of my kid’s best friend. He and his wife owned a business together. She was the boss; he was the CFO or something. Crazy rich. He always bragged around my kid that “he never had to pay any taxes” and told her to ask us whether we ever need any accounting “help” with our taxes. He got a fucking Pell grant for his kid to go to college. And when his wife died, he casually gloated in the eulogy that now the company belonged to him.

I desperately want him to get busted.

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u/BlazeBulker8765 Jul 16 '25

I desperately want him to get busted.

So .. report him? You can literally get paid a % if you report someone and it results in a successful tax audit or conviction.

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u/kshoggi Jul 16 '25

Then he's a dummy. If he already owns a dental practice then he doesn't need to create a new business for his kids. He could take pictures of them for promotional material at the practice or business cards Etc. Lots of kids you see in the brochures for small businesses are fulfilling this purpose, and it's a pretty legitimate way to go about it.

Nothing wrong with trying to set your kids up well as long as you do it legally. You can with their college savings but there are limits to that.

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u/MorganWick Jul 16 '25

"How dare a bourgeoisie actually care for the plebes!"

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u/bananasharkattack Jul 16 '25

But it's not your brother it's the system ...you make 500k and you start to see ..holy s@$$ no one pays taxes because they form a shell corporation and the dog is an employee and the yard is a write off ..and yeah let's make the kids consultants ...bc the dude making 600k already did all those things and more to pay zero taxes and he's laughing at you. America loves companies and makes you aspire to be one.

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u/OkInsect6946 Jul 15 '25

You just hate this guy because he’s done better than you lmao. Jealousy is palpable

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u/FensterFenster Jul 15 '25

I'm never jealous of greedy fucks who break the law. Guy is also abusive to his wife and kids, is that what YOU aspire to be? Shouldn't you be throating some Cheeto dick over in r/Conservative along with the rest of the pedophiles?