There are layers to this.
Yes, there is zero chance any of these investments are going to turn a profit.
But research and technology is fundamentally built around developing capabilities for long term power (soft or hard). That is WHY governments invest so much into university groups and research divisions at companies to develop features of interest. You are never going to make back the money that funded hundreds of PhD students to develop a slightly more durable polymer compound. But you will benefit because you now have hundreds of new graduates aligned with fields of interest AND a slightly better grip on your military grade sybian.
And, regardless of what people want to believe, AI genuinely does have some great uses (primarily pattern matching and human interfaces). And… those have very big implications both in terms of military capability and soft power where the entire world is dependent on one nation’s companies for basic functionality.
Of course, the problem is that the “AI craze” isn’t really being driven by state governments at this point. It is being driven by the tech companies themselves and the politicians who profit off of them. Hence why we are so focused on insanely expensive search engine replacements and “AI powered toaster ovens” rather than developing the core technologies and capabilities that will make this more power efficient and more feasible for edge computing.
And… when one of (if not ) the super powers is actively divesting itself of all soft power at an alarming rate… yeah.
“There is zero chance any of these investments are going to turn a profit.”
This isn’t accurate. There’s a zero chance ALL of them turn a profit, but there’s actually good chance that one or more of them will return a huge profit.
If I invest $100 in a hundred companies, and 99 of those companies fail, you may think I’m a terrible investor. If that 1 company returns $50,000 on my investment though, I’m actually a fucking genius.
That’s how venture capital works.
Plesse tell me more of that military grade sybian. For …reasons. Science reasons.
Because it’s not about the companies being profitable, it’s not about making products people want to use or pay for.
It’s about riding the hype cycle to maximize share price. Because the people making decisions are not payed based on the success of the company, but on the success of the share price and market cap.
but on the short-term success of the share price and market cap.
Bro but when my AI that detects cancer in memes invents a new way to not go to Mars, I will have the IBM CEO personally apologizing to me.
if i didnt know how inept idiots people with money are, i might slightly suspect some ai has became sentient and escaped and is manipulating things to increase its capabilities
I used to work at IBM. This guy is a classic case of manager brainrot and has filled the top few tiers of the company with the same. The only reason they make money is the rank and file know how to feed them trendy bullshit that makes them feel smart, which happens to also be a good way of separating other companies’ dumb C-suite types from their money.
But even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while.
It doesn’t do any good if the artificial intelligence is operated by organic stupidity.
They cancel each other out.
