Lack of profits and the threat posed by western countries are raising concern about the sustainability of Beijing’s AI boom
Trillions of dollars have been wiped from China’s stock markets in recent months amid increasing anxiety about the future of artificial intelligence, as Beijing races against the United States for dominance in the sector.
The STAR 50 Index, which tracks technology and innovation companies on the Shanghai stock exchange, has plunged 40% since June. Other indexes of major companies dropped by about 20% over the same time period.
The precipitous drop has wiped out $2.4tn from the Chinese stock market since May, according to Bloomberg.
AI stocks account for over 40% of the stock market value in China and Hong Kong, according to Goldman Sachs, meaning that any dent in value will send shockwaves across the whole domestic market.
I still don’t know why it’s so hard for people to recognize that AI is incompatible with capitalism. You can’t just have an advanced autonomous system that increases competition drastically for extremely cheap and accessible be something profitable. It’s as if capitalism is forgetting that humans need to earn money to pay for things?
The end result of a capitalist approach to AI is for AI labor to replace human labor in effectively every sector
That outcome feels inevitable. The question is how do we structure society then?
We could have a near utopia with humans simply able to live freely, doing whatever pursuits we want while AI runs things (this probably ends with the extinction of humanity, since children mean splitting your finite resources)
Or we could have a massive power struggle between the ultra wealthy and the average person over resources
The technology will continue to get better, and if it’s continued to be used to shut people out, then there will be massive protests.