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by ido 4 days ago
But we know global GDP per capita (a proxy to wages)- the US represent about 25% of total global GDP (a metric which accounts for US wages being higher than average). I’m not being contrarian, I genuinely think the addressable market is the global market and not just the US (and by a wide margin) and as such thats the real potential of anthropic/openai/et al.
2 comments

You're partly right. But OTOH, China is (pretty successfully) developing its own AI solutions, and even the (former?) US allies in Europe, America and Asia have become painfully aware that they are dependent on a hostile US administration and tech companies cozying up to that administration, and will be wary of further deepening this dependency, so they will also prefer home-grown solutions. So the addressable market for US companies is much smaller than the global market, even in countries that could theoretically afford Anthropic's and OpenAI's prices.
Globally available AI means cheap LLM pilots offshore means huge wage deflation in white collar jobs in the US.

…assuming the AI pace of progress slows down enough that there are still meaningful white collar jobs to have.

This is just the offshoring and remote discourse all over again. It turns out that the prestige of having a big office full of workers that the CEO can see is well worth the massive expense of siting it in California and paying California salaries. For whatever reason.

(also I suspect the anti-globalization discourse will get even more pointed)