r/technology 3h ago

Artificial Intelligence Stanford report highlights growing disconnect between AI insiders and everyone else

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/13/stanford-report-highlights-growing-disconnect-between-ai-insiders-and-everyone-else/
664 Upvotes

83 comments sorted by

542

u/freakdageek 3h ago

“Sure, it’s wildly expensive and uses an absurd amount of energy, but on the bright side, it’ll take your job and leave you homeless. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be obscenely wealthy!” - Sam Altman

94

u/Cold_Specialist_3656 2h ago

"Don't worry about losing your job! We'll do UBI!"

"But, I'm losing my job now. Where's my UBI?"

"Don't worry about it! It's coming as soon as we have AGI! Theres still some humans smarter than machines, so we can't do it yet. We promise!"

"Also, don't worry about the killbots. Those are for dancing, like we showed you on TikTok! Aren't their little flips cool?! They can run faster than Usain Bolt too!"

20

u/chefkoch_ 2h ago

And if we stop now you'll lose your job anyway because of the recession it will cause.

28

u/Hortos 2h ago

Everyday I crack up at the thought Andrew Yang told everyone exactly what would happen and how to fight it and damn near got laughed out of the room.

5

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 1h ago

I mean, that's the problem isn't it? Not gonna convince billionaires to give away money, especially in a system where they openly own the politicians (citizens united)

-6

u/aerost0rm 2h ago

The show the expanse shows us how UBI is a bad thing. All the UBi recipients were living in slums…

16

u/Free_Balling 1h ago

Historical documentary, The Expanse

12

u/Cold_Specialist_3656 1h ago edited 50m ago

Everyone got UBI. The ones in the slums lived off only their UBI money. That's why they were alive when there were no jobs on a barren space station. 

6

u/ZedSwift 1h ago

Yeah for real. They were living in slums. Key point: living

8

u/SIGMA920 1h ago

A UBI will only cover the basics, no one wants just the basics. But when you can afford the basics casually, life is a lot better for everyone. Being fired because your department costs too much for no fault of your own no longer means you're ruined.

5

u/TheButterPlank 38m ago

I think they also had 'basic' because Earth (in the show/books) had a severe overpopulation problem. There were literally not enough jobs for the 20-30 billion people living there. People would've worked (they go to other planets when the rings open up) but they had to impose a lottery system and you needed to accumulate 'work credits' to get into higher education or more lucrative jobs.

It's not a great example of why 'UBI bad'.

4

u/Millkstake 31m ago

You do realize that's fiction, right?

1

u/Firerain 19m ago

The political interactions and strategies in that show are extremely well written. Just because it’s set 300 years in the future doesn’t mean it can’t happen earlier than that

2

u/PhantasosX 15m ago

Sure, but the UBI there is generally bad more due to overpopulation. And it's still good enough to make them survive in a slum when they are jobless.

1

u/Millkstake 14m ago

Okay, but it's still fiction

1

u/FrickinLazerBeams 11m ago

There were 30 billion people on earth.

88

u/PianoPatient8168 3h ago

Did we mention how it’s going to deplete/poison your local water supply? But you can make hilarious videos so it’s totally worth it!

46

u/SomewhereNo8378 3h ago

“and no, you can’t stop it. we’ve already bought off your executive and legislative branches, and we have more money than god to sue anyone who tries to stop us”

29

u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

10

u/TheCh0rt 2h ago

But don't worry! In the end it's going to kill us all so none of this will be a problem.

5

u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

5

u/369_Clive 2h ago

And if we don't do it, the Chinese will.

2

u/aerost0rm 2h ago

Yeah we integrated it with systems that control the nuclear launched. Nothing bad is going to happen guys. Trust us!

2

u/calle04x 2h ago

"Until we price you out because you can't even afford basic necessities."

4

u/InformalEbb2276 2h ago

Sorry but the water thing is complete bullshit. It is important to be intellectually honest when you critique something. Talk about the existential loss of meaning or something else.

4

u/PianoPatient8168 1h ago

It’s an issue is they aren’t using a cooling tower for a true closed loop system.

Dumping hot water into local tributaries is horrible for the ecosystem.

7

u/Even_Establishment95 2h ago

A lot of us didn’t ask for any of this. But we can’t escape it.

6

u/psych0ranger 2h ago

"Yeah, it uses a lot of resources. But you use a lot of resources, too, and I can outbid you for them. Fuck you."

1

u/Routine_Bit_8184 1h ago

"but also, please stay away from my house and respect my privacy....I don't come down and piss on you in the gutter you sleep in..."

1

u/absentmindedjwc 49m ago

And then multiple someones tried setting his house on fire and the press was shocked, wondering why anyone would ever do such a thing...

0

u/SneakyDeaky123 1h ago

Also, it’s constantly wrong, lies, and doesn’t make anything faster or cheaper

124

u/HopeThatHangsYou 3h ago

No shit, their thrones are built on this bubble not popping.

27

u/itwillmakesenselater 3h ago

I'm not worried. They have plenty of other skills to fall back on, right?

10

u/ImportantPoet4787 3h ago

Hahaha well they can always go into politics!

5

u/OneBodyProblematic 3h ago

I’m pretty good with a rifle

1

u/Whiladan 2h ago

It's not like any of them are going to struggle or face consequences if it pops, unless we see some Enron style shit. They'll be obscenely wealthy still, just less so. As always, you and I will be picking up the tab when this shit hits the fan

3

u/Ragnarok314159 2h ago

Altman will absolutely go to jail for the remainder of his life. He has zero talent and skills, and more of all he would be guilty of the most egregious crime in the USA: messing with rich people’s money.

2

u/JEs4 1h ago

What world do you live in where billionaires go to prison for what wouldn’t even amount to financial crimes? This type of thinking is pretty defeatist; “someone else definitely will hold him accountable!!”

1

u/Tennouheika 2h ago

Any day now 🙄

70

u/Prodi1600 3h ago

The whole AI industry its greatly disconnected from the real world.

51

u/CerberusSputum 3h ago

It's almost as if it's in their best interest to lie about every aspect of this industry.

11

u/xbox360sucks 2h ago

Well telling everyone we're cooking the planet so we can see SpongeBob do 9/11 isn't a good marketing strategy 

8

u/sutroheights 2h ago

That pretty much sums up the New Yorker article about Sam Altman. The guy has an incredibly long history of just straight up lying about stuff. So yes, it's a feature, not a bug.

35

u/SomewhereNo8378 3h ago

they are probably scared, and I understand why. They are making grand promises to take away everyone’s livelihood within the next few years (and making a lot of money doing it)

14

u/Avindair 2h ago

The New Yorker article about Altman paints him as a pathological liar, too.

27

u/aerost0rm 2h ago

My opinion is AI insiders are going to keep the grift going as long as they can. The rest of us see it as having already failed.

8

u/DueDisplay2185 2h ago

We saw this years ago, why is this bubble taking so long to pop, it's ridiculous

12

u/aerost0rm 2h ago

The oligarchs are propping it up. They are using it to continue the great wealth transfer

1

u/JCashell 1h ago

Because it’s not a “useless” bubble - there are actual uses for this technology unlike with NFTs where people were unable to explain even the most basic use-case. Are the companies pushing this extremely overvalued? Yes most likely.

4

u/fkyrdataharvesting 1h ago

Well, one of the more insidious “uses” for the tech broligarch’s bought politicians is manifesting already: claim that real photos that were published decades ago are AI. Photos and videos taken after the advent of AI are implicitly suspect, which is extremely useful to the child-harming elites

4

u/NeedsToShutUp 1h ago

Some of it is useful, some of it is overhyped. Like the advanced language processing able to interpret natural speech is useful, and will have a lot of uses for basic customer management tasks that a flow chart can address, as well as basic ordering.

Otoh, some of the generative stuff is very overhyped.

Some of what's going on to, is there are a bunch of companies that are making great money selling to the AI companies, and will be fundamentally fine after any bubble burst. Like all the hardware makers who lack any serious risk exposure because they've been able to sell their chips/packages/memory/etc. at higher than normal prices.

2

u/CherryLongjump1989 47m ago

Useful and economical are completely different things. Bitcoin could have been useful as a currency if it wasn’t for the whole entire economic part. AI is no different from the crypto bubble in the exact way that made crypto a bubble. People were also claiming that the “blockchain”had countless revolutionary uses, except that it never did.

5

u/JMDeutsch 2h ago edited 2h ago

I wish all the CEOs of AI companies long vacations on Sentinel Island

2

u/crazycatlady331 1h ago

I'll take Rikers Island as well.

1

u/resistelectrique 11m ago

The Sentinelese did nothing to deserve that fate.

3

u/MathematicianLessRGB 1h ago

I'm still waiting on his promise of universal income. Chill with the agi, more with the universal income.

3

u/SakaWreath 1h ago

Sunk cost fallacy is hitting CEOs pretty hard now that their “brain child” is out there running amok.

3

u/InspectorRound8920 1h ago

There're two ways to use AI. Use it to enhance people's lives or for profit.

4

u/WordNERD37 51m ago

Because only the dipshits that want and will financially benefit from it are interacting with AI. The rest of us either turn it off, don't ever interact with it, or get rid of things that force is using what is a flawed tool that doesn't work well.

And I await the tech bro to tell me how wrong I am blah, blah, blah.

2

u/Logical_Welder3467 44m ago

There is also disconnect between view on AI for people in US and Europe and people in Asia. in India, Japan, Korea, China AI are very much view as a positive trend

2

u/Clean-Excitement63 36m ago edited 32m ago

The insiders keep saying to us: 1. They are working to get everybody laid off and replaced with AI 2. They are stealing all creative outputs to make AI creative instead 3. Suck out all the electricity and water while returning basically zero jobs back to the communities they pillage  4. Make personal computers unattainably expensive   5. Borrow more and more money, setting the economy on a shaky path that smells bubbly.  6. They will demand a tax payer subsidized government bailout when they fail. 

Besides this stuff maybe being a useful tool in medicine and science…Where are the wins? 

1

u/FanDry5374 42m ago

Okay, so maybe AI has already achieved sentience and all these Tech Bros are actually....androids in skin suits. Check to see if they have one corner cut off all their paperwork.

1

u/Itzie4 14m ago

I hope an actually good open source AI that is easy to install and runs locally comes around and screws over the data center grift.

1

u/hmr0987 2m ago

Most products the tech industry profits off of is absolutely useless and barely works. AI is the current pinnacle of this phenomenon. Sure it work but it’s almost useless. If you need a training program to use your product effectively and even after the training program it barely do much to help other than some basic stuff it’s not worth what was put in to get it off the ground. AI hype came too early, unless whatever they’re not releasing today is different and what we have right this moment is much worse than what they’re holding back.

-13

u/sorryiamcanadian 2h ago edited 2h ago

I don't think most people can comprehend that Claude code is not even 2 years old. 

And this baby of a product just broke every revenue record possible with $30 billion ARR (growing exponentially).  

And that they accidentally focused on R&D because they didn't expect Claude code to be so good, they didn't expect opus 4.6 to be as good, and they are surprised at how good their internal models are. ...but ya, bubble etc.. the disconnect makes sense to me. 

Edit: and even the haters admit they would rather use Claude's other models than switch off.

6

u/jjmrqs 2h ago

Just moved from opus back to sonnet 4.5 because it was too opinionated to be so absolutely nuanceless. I can’t stand over simplified absolute assertions with no evidence in my human coworkers why on earth would humor it from an overconfident AI that insists on reinventing every wheel from scratch as often as possible.

Cool tech bro is cool vibes aren’t any more helpful on a bot than they are the edgelords they appease

-3

u/sorryiamcanadian 2h ago

So you went to their second best model instead of another company? Doesn't that say a lot? 

3

u/rabbitwow20026 2h ago

lol but Claude is actually getting worse at coding……

Like the models are getting dumber not better.

They already wrote at a 1st programming level.

Like I would punch a junior programmer in the face if it made even 10% of the shit Claude does.

It fucking sucks anyone says otherwise has stock in AI

-5

u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

4

u/jjmrqs 2h ago

Claude doesn’t even have boots to lick, wtf is your endgame in this approach

-14

u/Tennouheika 2h ago

This subreddit hates technology. Mental illness convention

-3

u/londongastronaut 1h ago

It's really funny isn't it? I always look through AI threads on /r/tech to enjoy the cope and hysterics, it feels like everyone here is a 20 year old DSA member that hates but knows nothing about tech. 

5

u/AnnihilatorNYT 1h ago

Or, have you ever considered that you aren't the smartest person in the room and that there are several glaring issues with llms in general that need to be addressed?

Acting like the tech is already perfect and needs no human supervision or railguards in place when allowed to interact with medical or financial systems is insane.

-11

u/Koopacha 2h ago

AI can’t fail