[edanm]

> I read quotes like this and reminded that it is common that people forget money is just a competitive resource we use to outbid each other for _real_ things.

But money is an abstraction of wealth, and wealth absolutely can be destroyed, in multiple ways:

1. It can be physically destroyed - if I break a window, that's wealth that is destroyed. That window now needs to be replaced, which costs materials and labor, which could've gone to building something new instead.

2. It can be spent on things that end up not used. If five years from now, those millions of GPUs are no longer in use, we created them for nothing instead of creating more of something people would use.

3. Wealth can be spent on the less important things, rather than the more important things. This is not exactly wealth being destroyed, just built more slowly, because instead of building lots of new wealth (via innovation, say) we're creating less valuable things.

I don't think any of the above are relevant to AI, btw.