[pacifi30]

I think this is where government steps in for each country, go on the path of exploration that has no profit per se in it like space exploration, human body understanding. I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects.

Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a public utility and the profits of automation goes to fund infrastructure or grand projects via government.

We do not need to do menial work anymore and AI is helping us with it, what we can do exploratory work, and we need a visionary to get this rolling.

[hunterpayne]

"I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects."

The thing that ended the Great Depression was WWII and most those government projects weren't civilian infrastructure. In fact, during the time we were building civilian infrastructure, the Depression was continuing and deepening. Not saying we shouldn't have done those projects, but they didn't end the Depression.

[Shalomboy]

There is absolutely zero will in the United States to invest money in unprofitable exploration or scientific research. There used to be such will generations ago, but today's wannabee-autocrats couldn't care less. Look at how they gleefully cut scientific research funding, undermine academic sovereignty, and strip-mine the public sector performing that work in favor of private enterprises. When the shit hits the fan and we're all broke because the corpos laid everybody off for Devin, Claude, and Clippy, there won't be much left besides surrogacy and plasma donation.

[blix]

Patronage programs for people with advanced degrees is a woefully inadequate solution to the current economic pressures. Large segments of the first-world working and middle classes hollowed out by globalization had already turned against it before AI even came on to the scene. People are generally hostile to patronage directed towards people above them on the ladder.

[hunterpayne]

Look into how much of that research money actually goes to research and how much goes to administration. And since that administration has a reputation for being to the left of Mao, perhaps then you can understand the unwillingness to put money there. It isn't that people don't want to invest in research, they have lost faith that the money allocated will actually get to the researchers.

[Shalomboy]

... so now the money explicitly does not go to research, on purpose.

[pacifi30]

That is perhaps the current administration, may be we do need a visionary in government again

[BigTTYGothGF]

> America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects

There was a certain other undertaking in those years that went a little beyond infrastructure.

[pacifi30]

World war I and II in general?

[BigTTYGothGF]

WWII yes, but when exactly do you think WWI ended?

[hackable_sand]

The only way this sounds believable is if you don't actually do any work.

Those of us that work know what you really mean.

[BobbyJo]

> I think this is where government steps in for each country

People quite often lose the plot that "government" is "collective will". Governments will only do this if their constituents want them to. If the constituents would rather spend those recourses on free VR for every household and gatorade from drinking fountains, then that's all we're getting.