[pfdietz]

The Erdos problem solutions have been accelerating, including a $250 problem and a $100 problem.

It's been fun watching the cope collapse from day to day. No one told me a slow takeoff Singularity would have so much schadenfreude.

[muldvarp]

> It's been fun watching the cope collapse from day to day. No one told me a slow takeoff Singularity would have so much schadenfreude.

I'm constantly surprised at how much schadenfreude there is on hacker news about LLMs. Like, do you guys (and girls) not have to work for a living?

[pfdietz]

I don't. I'm retired.

I'm also not going to live all that much longer, most likely, so it's kind of annoying I'm not really going to see any upsides to an AI world either. I'm discounting the possibility of our AI overlords figuring out a miracle like reversing aging.

But it is really f-ing cool that automated math is now a thing and we are seeing it. Eat your heart out, past me.

[muldvarp]

> so it's kind of annoying I'm not really going to see any upsides to an AI world either

I don't think the "permanent underclass" will see many upsides either. They certainly won't have the money to pay for it. I'm excluding myself in that statement because luckily I have access to large amounts of barbiturates.

[pfdietz]

The math community was not a global underclass. World wealth is increasing, the actual global underclass is seeing rapidly improving lives.

You may be seeing a loss of privilege due at least in part to the inevitable reversion to the mean of US economic dominance. But on a global scale, things are going well. AI will lead to a much larger pie.

[muldvarp]

> The math community was not a global underclass.

I never claimed they were. The term "permanent underclass" refers to the preferred world order of AI techbro billionaires[1] where human labour is worthless and in consequence normal people no longer have any leverage. Societies where most of the value is dug out of the ground and where human labour is comparatively worthless already exist and living there is not necessarily fun[2].

> World wealth is increasing, the actual global underclass is seeing rapidly improving lives.

The global underclass has been seeing improving lives well before LLMs were a thing. The question is whether they will _continue_ to see their lives improve if their labour is no longer required.

> You may be seeing a loss of privilege due at least in part to the inevitable reversion to the mean of US economic dominance.

I'm not from the US, I don't live in the US, and in fact I've never been to the US.

> AI will lead to a much larger pie.

Which will only benefit people if their piece of the pie doesn't shrink because they don't have any leverage. There is also more than one pie. The real estate pie for example won't grow, instead every piece of the pie will become even more expensive. Most people only own pieces of the pie that will decrease in value (human labour) not pieces of pies that will increase in value.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/opinion/ai-labor-work-for...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

[pfdietz]

Why do you think tech bro billions aren't also subject to replacement by AI? They compete with each other, and if AI does their jobs better than they can themselves they are strongly incented to use AI.

Absent a world dictatorship there's always competition here. And fully superhuman AI eliminates the main objection to socialism, that you need markets with smart people to make an economy function. Full automated luxury communism (like Ian Banks) is a possible outcome.

[HappyPanacea]

This is slow?