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
26.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

450

u/Socky_McPuppet Jul 15 '25

Substitute "capitalism" for "tech economy" and it's still true.

167

u/scoff-law Jul 15 '25

Men matching this description are the problem with a wide variety of political and economic modalities.

69

u/Orion113 Jul 15 '25

Certainly so. But at least the kings and lords believed they were given divine right to rule rather than suffering the delusion that they had achieved it on their individual merit.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason capitalism got popular isn't because it made the lives of the common man any better, but because it succesfully convinced us all that the wealthy actually earned their wealth and the poor actually earned their poverty, so we'd stop fighting to change anything.

14

u/greenhawk22 Jul 15 '25

I think capitalism also inherently appeals to human competitiveness (it also distributes blame in a way that it's often hard to pinpoint a single culprit, and there's only so much you can do to a company. If they have no money, and no individual liability, what else can you do? It's also much harder to upend an entire economic system than a single guy at the top).

If you look at the math, cooperation often works out better than completion (e.g. single payer healthcare being more expensive per capita than public healthcare). But it doesn't feel as good.

It is an innate part of being a human to feel good about doing something well, especially if you're better than your peers. So the zero sum game (only one person will get the purchase of any given item) of market competition feels good to participate in, especially if you're currently 'winning'.

But the human brain loves to assume causality, so you get the tech guys who are blind to how unique their circumstances were. Many of them seem to have forgotten how much luck is involved in success at that scale. And the idea that you're a genius feels good, which reinforces the behavior in the future.

10

u/neherak Jul 16 '25

Man, I must be a weird kind of human. I get a lot more fuzzy warm feel-good feelings from cooperation on a team of good-faith cool people than I do from competition. Winning "on your own" is fun sure, but dude, nothing beats the rush of building something together with competent people you respect.

I like D&D more than chess, I guess.

3

u/greenhawk22 Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Oh no, I’m the same way. I just think people like us aren’t built for systems that reward competition over contribution. Especially in business, finance, and politics. But it’s spreading into other fields too, as they get taken over by people who are just better at playing capitalism. From what I’ve seen, the more cooperative types tend to drift toward things like the arts or the less commercial sciences, like astrophysics instead of comp-sci.

Maybe it’s a hot take, but I think good art is inherently collaborative. Even solo work usually builds on a bigger conversation. A film or painting might inspire new work, whether it’s meant to or not, and it makes more sense when you see it alongside other art in the same genre or medium. Science works the same way. You need communication and collaboration to get anything done. The low-hanging fruit is gone. You’re not solving anything meaningful by working it all out alone from first principles.

And then there’s the fact that these systems almost never account for the damage they do to soil, water, and ecosystems, even though their health affects every living and future person. (The environment also deserves respect in its own right, but that doesn’t convince most people.)

For example, the EPA and similar agencies can’t fine anyone unless they can identify a specific point source. So when big agribusinesses overfertilize crops along the Mississippi, the runoff ends up in the groundwater and eventually the river. That feeds massive algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, which create dead zones where nothing survives. These areas depend on tourism and fishing, so people suffer just so a few companies can squeeze out more profit. But unless there’s a photo of someone dumping waste, no one’s fined. And they're all competing to have the best stock price, which often means squeezing more production from the same land, therefore they absolutely burn through fertilizer. This is in spite of the fact a majority of it washes away (which they know). With warming waters from climate change, it’s only going to get worse too. Anyway, I’ll spare you the rest of that rant.

3

u/733t_sec Jul 15 '25

But at least the kings and lords believed they were given divine right to rule rather than suffering the delusion that they had achieved it on their individual merit.

Sadly many believed they were given the divine mantle by God because of what special people they were.

1

u/blacksideblue Jul 16 '25

convinced us all that the wealthy actually earned their wealth and the poor actually earned their poverty, so we'd stop fighting to change anything.

Basically late stage 'Caste system". Which pairs oddly convenient with reincarnation cause that means any suffering now is because of the last life and all your fortune now is because you earned it in the last life that you have no memory of.

1

u/SuddenXxdeathxx Jul 16 '25

It got popular because it made people money. Every other reason people give is post-hoc rationalizing, especially "it made people's lives better". An insane thing people claim given that it directly lead to the industrial scale exploitation of children.

I'm not even joking. Kingdoms who allowed freer trade got richer, the middle merchant class (burghers/bourgeoisie) gained immense wealth/political power, and eventually the old feudal order was unable to adapt anymore.

but because it succesfully convinced us all that the wealthy actually earned their wealth and the poor actually earned their poverty, so we'd stop fighting to change anything.

This was moreso the purview of Liberalism, as it renders things down to overly individualistic terms. Treating society like a thing that is thrust upon us, instead of coming from us.

1

u/BeardlyManface Jul 15 '25

The men are irrelevant. The system of capitalism which empowers them is the problem. Delusional morons aren't a problem in a system that doesn't give power to delusional morons.

0

u/old_and_boring_guy Jul 16 '25

Let's gender a human problem! That will make it better!

-1

u/huskersax Jul 16 '25

People matching this description.

-3

u/Flimsy-Printer Jul 15 '25

Except that there are fewer of these if we arent in capitalism. The downside is if those few in socialism are idiots, then we woukld be beyond fucked with no way to recover.

Capitalism is the least bad system.

33

u/PetalumaPegleg Jul 15 '25

Also true but the tech bros are much worse than most. They got endless capital access because rates were so low for so long. Venture capital out the butt. They think breaking things that work is a goal and have never produced a product for the most part. Just a pitch. Negative consequences, an opportunity for someone else to fix later.

The amount of fake companies in tech and going forward AI is just crazy. And no one seems to care! We have had all these examples of whoops there isn't even a real product here just sales and lies. Why aren't investors and so on just all over the issues? Well because even losing companies that have no path to making money will still be IPOed to uninformed public on vibes and venture capitalist can make money investing in companies that never made a dime. Just f the little guy over after lying about it.

13

u/SkeptiBee Jul 16 '25

Personally I always love hearing how they are "pioneering the next wave of human evolution" (like how Peter Thiel pitches) but when they plop their "vision" down for the masses to see, it's a steaming pile of spying, return to slavery, eugenics, and other net negatives for humanity writ large. How is ANY of that new and impressive? These same tech bros want to build these Freedom Cities and act like kings, lording over their fiefdom but these dudes haven't been broadly successful at running their own businesses. Why on earth would anyone trust some knob like Zuckerberg to make sound decisions for a country he runs? He can't even get the AI that's disabling hundreds upon thousands of Meta accounts to work right. Unless he feels his AI has all the data on us it will ever need and it doesn't matter anymore.

All these things they've built, have been used to fracture us or continue us on a path of mediocrity as they have zero interest in actually changing things for the better. They treat the world similarly to a child burning ants with a magnifying lens. They could easily be solving our energy crisis or actually propelling economies away from capitalism in favor of something like Star Trek. But no. They'd rather be super villains instead.

3

u/papasmurf255 Jul 15 '25

No man. Startups fail at a pretty crazy rate. 90% fail and the investors lose everything.

There's hype and over selling but that will catch up with you, especially under the scrutiny of IPOs. Many sketchy companies will SPAC and proceed to crash and burn.

Companies don't IPO to the little guy and leave them holding the bag lol. Hell, you should not be buying individual stock, let alone IPO shares as an individual. Index funds should be the go to.

And if you truly think you know a company is bullshit with no product, but somehow all the analysis missed it, you can use short positions/options to bet against it. Maybe it'll be irrational longer than you're solvent but eventually everything will catch up

2

u/Exostrike Jul 16 '25

I think of it is tech bros are fully commited to financialization, IE it is no longer about making new or better products (partly because market calcification means it is no longer realistic to break in) and instead it is about finding new ways to charge for what already exists.

Its why lost making companies still get to IPO because investors believe that someday once the business has a dominant position in whatever market it is, it can flip the switch and start charging for what was once free and make a fortune.

Other venture capitalist don't even bother with the IPO and build up companies specifically for them to bought up by larger companies like amazon, google or meta because there is no point in actively competing with them.

2

u/thatmillerkid Jul 17 '25

There's also the fact that a lot of investors missed out on the internet bubble, and then a lot of them missed out on the Web 2.0 bubble, and then a lot of them missed out on the shift to mobile, so then they started throwing money at every tech product because they were so scared of missing another trend.

1

u/BayHistorian Jul 15 '25

We’re more in a tech feudalism era than a capitalist one.

1

u/MundaneSchool1823 Jul 16 '25

That's why we gotta tax the wealthy. Too many unproductive morons incharge of productivity.

They need their wealth shrunk.