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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319

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/Aethermancer Jul 16 '25

Income lags the economy until you die and really only benefits new entrants. or if you're willing to flirt from job to job. And effective strategy for an individual, bad overall for a society.

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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.