Current “AI” from my perspective is less like a technological breakthrough—“the genie is out of the bottle”—and more a research fusion reactor: no matter how much energy and money you throw at the thing, nothing changes the fact that it costs more energy than it produces

All that scaling it up accomplishes is waste. LLM true believers are effectively arguing their tech accomplishes free energy when the costs mean it’s effectively the opposite

Trillions invested, entire industries destroyed, our information ecosystem fundamentally compromised, and all we accomplished was, at best, a 0-5% bump in overall economic productivity.
@baldur Prove it. Where is this economic productivity increase?
Also, please explain what "economic productivity" even entails? Are we ignoring repair/rework/support/maintenance?

@elmuerte

You might have misread what @baldur said?

The expression "at best" means you're describing a cap or maximum. You're not saying the number necessarily _is_ that high.

To _disprove_ a statement in that form, logically you'd have to prove that the benefit was _higher_ than 5% - and I don't think that's what you're arguing.

@unchartedworlds @baldur I was doubting those percentages to even be that high. Unless you eliminate a lot of factors, so basically tune the numbers to support the narrative of increased economic productivity.
But as per Baldur's reply, reported increase is probably the "statistics" part of the famous quote.

@elmuerte @unchartedworlds @baldur

"at best, a 0-5%" certainly includes the possibility that it could be negative. Possibly very negative.