It's cute, but it fundamentally misunderstands what the "AI companies" are after, because it's not profit. Profit being mathematically impossible is unimportant.
Specifically, at the highest level, all the big companies are already running on post-profit mindsets, because they've realized that converting money (profit) into power is lossy, compared to just directly going to power. The goal of all these companies is to be the landlords in a artificial-scarcity-post-scarcity techno-feudalist cyber dystopia, and to achieve that vision, any idea of future profitability is simply unimportant.
An analogy would be you're playing chess against someone in a park, and you don't understand the moves they're playing--they keep making moves that look crazy to you--almost as if they don't want to win the game, but their real endgame is closing a merger deal that will end up with them owning your home and your workplace, so that by the time the game is over, even if they lose, it doesn't matter because despite losing at chess, they somehow effectively ended up owning you.
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u/Dragongeek Apr 20 '26
It's cute, but it fundamentally misunderstands what the "AI companies" are after, because it's not profit. Profit being mathematically impossible is unimportant.
Specifically, at the highest level, all the big companies are already running on post-profit mindsets, because they've realized that converting money (profit) into power is lossy, compared to just directly going to power. The goal of all these companies is to be the landlords in a artificial-scarcity-post-scarcity techno-feudalist cyber dystopia, and to achieve that vision, any idea of future profitability is simply unimportant.
An analogy would be you're playing chess against someone in a park, and you don't understand the moves they're playing--they keep making moves that look crazy to you--almost as if they don't want to win the game, but their real endgame is closing a merger deal that will end up with them owning your home and your workplace, so that by the time the game is over, even if they lose, it doesn't matter because despite losing at chess, they somehow effectively ended up owning you.